When You're An Author, The Squeaky Wheel Gets The Grease

There is a complaint I've fielded many times, and it comes in a pretty wide variety. Sometimes it's, "Why are you always posting your stuff in this group? Why don't you go start your own page?!" Other times it's, "Dude, stop spamming your Patreon. If you've gotta beg for money, maybe you should go get a real job!" Every now and again it's, "Hey, just so you know, I blocked all your ads to be sure you don't get paid when I look at your content."

Boiled down, the most basic form of the complaint is, "Shut up!"

I WILL LOUDLY TELL YOU HOW MUCH I DON'T CARE!

Generally speaking, I agree with all the folks who complain about how often I have to get up on a soap box to talk about what I do. Believe me, I would absolutely adore having a career successful enough that there was a legion of fans waiting with bated breath for my latest release so they could run off to social media and tell all their friends about how amazing my work was. Because if I had a following so big that everything I put out got tens of thousands of views, and I had a few thousand bucks rolling in every month from Patreon, believe me, I would just quietly work while the audience did the hard work of marketing for me.

And you know, every now and again that happens. Sometimes I'll write a post, and before I can pop over to a Facebook group to share it, someone else has already started a discussion. One time I woke up, ready to tell folks about a new book release, and I found someone had already tagged me, and there were half a dozen congratulations. But that isn't normal. Most of the time I have to go over to my social media pages, get up on my box, and shout as loud as I can in a digital medium to persuade someone in the crowd to come over and see all this work I'm doing.

Why do I have to do that? Well...

Algorithms Suck, And You Have To Repeat Yourself

Real talk, here. I've got about 665 followers on my Facebook page at time of writing. Not a lot, but not bad for an Internet nobody. Now, this is a group of people who have chosen to follow my page of their own free will. By clicking the follow button, they have told Facebook they are interested in what I have to say. So you'd think that, when I make a post there, my followers would see it.

Ah my sweet Summer child. You know not what lurks in the wastes of social media.

It's possible that's how Facebook worked, in the long ago and far away. But today, if I make a post on my author page, my reach is severely limited. An average post will reach between 74 and 150 people. A popular post, one where my followers actually see, like, comment, and share what I put up, might reach as many as 400 people. Once I even reached 500, but that was an occasion so rare that I can still specifically recall it.

So, despite having a couple hundred followers, an average post from me might show up on 100 of their news feeds. Using the rule of 10 percent, only about ten of those followers will interact with that post. That is a very small drop in a very big bucket. So I have to post to my personal page, to group pages, to Reddit, to Google +, to Tumblr, to Twitter, and to anywhere else I can find.

Unfortunately, if you want to get noticed, you've got to put your message in as many places as you can reach, because only a fraction of the people are going to see it. And of those who see it, only a fraction of them are going to interact with it.

The Squeaky Wheel Really Does Get The Grease, Though

For some people, a post is only spam when the person repeats the same thing every day. For others it's when someone posts more than once a week. And for a rather vocal minority, any time a person posts about their own work at all, it should be labeled as spam.

You can't please everyone, though, and you shouldn't bother trying to. Instead, make sure that you set your speaking platform up in such a way that you're in compliance with a group's promotion rules, and do your best to get noticed. Give a good speech, provide a good product, and if someone wants to start taking shots at you, be professional. If you do that, I promise that you will start to find an audience. Not only that, but if you ask the people interacting with your content to do something, there's a better than average chance they'll do it.

Which, really, is pretty good odds.

Try it. Ask people to share this post if they liked it. Ask them to follow you on Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter if they like what you're doing. And ask them to become patrons by going to your Patreon page to donate at least $1 a month.

Most importantly, though, you have to keep asking. Because, as I mentioned before, you're going to miss a lot of people on any given sweep. But people who didn't see your first request might see the second, or the third, or the fourth. If you keep squeaking, sooner or later folks are going to grease you up. Especially when it's clear they can't shut you up.

That's all for this week's Business of Writing. Just remember, when people start trying to shout you down, keep your voice raised. Someone's hearing you.

Understanding The Ben Franklin Effect (And How It Can Help Your Career)

It isn't easy maintaining your hustle as an author. Any time you don't dedicate to writing new stories is taken up by marketing, fishing for reviews, talking to your beta readers, trying to get interviews, and the dozens of other activities that keep the engine churning. Sometimes it can be hard keeping up that energy, especially if you aren't getting the kind of results you feel you should. If you've been struggling to get those results, then you might want to explore an odd bit of human psychology known as the Ben Franklin Effect.

Cause it's all about the Benjamins, baby.

What is The Benjamin Franklin Effect?

The basis of this psychological tic goes against everything you know. For example, say you had a coworker you've been at odds with. Ask them if you can borrow a book, or if they'd be willing to help you with a minor difficulty at your desk. Then keep asking them for progressively bigger favors. Psychologically, this co-worker is more likely to do those bigger favors for you specifically because you've already persuaded them to do smaller favors for you in the past.

Look Sharon, I know it's a big inconvenience, but will you kill Dave for me? Thanks.

Most of us treat other people's goodwill like a pool, and every time we ask them for a favor, we take a little goodwill out of the pool. However, according to the Ben Franklin Effect, by asking someone to do you a favor, you're actually building a response in that person.

The weird thing, though, is that by asking someone else to do you a favor, you will get better results than if you were doing them a favor.

How You Can Make This Work For You

The hardest thing for an author to do is to convince people to follow them. You could create the best content in the world, but you need to grab someone by the lapels to make them look at it. However, the Ben Franklin Effect can do at least part of your job for you.

How, you may ask? Well, all I have to do is ask you for a favor. Something small, like asking you to go check out my book New Avalon: Love and Loss in The City of Steam, and to read the free sample by clicking the "Look Inside" option on the cover image. Now, not all of you are going to do that, but those who do have taken a step closer to becoming fans of mine. Not because they like my book, but because I asked them to do something, and they did as I requested.

Seriously, though, don't you want to know what the stories in this book are like?

If you did as I asked, and you liked what you saw, that has made you more positively inclined toward me as an author. I didn't help you, you helped me, but your brain still gets tricked into being more likely to help me out. So if, at a later time in this post, I asked you to follow me on Facebook, Tumblr, or Twitter, you'd be much more likely to do so if you'd already acquiesced to my first request. Even though you following me boosts my numbers, helping me out, instead of me doing something for you. And, if I managed to persuade you to do all those things, then later on when I ask you to consider going to The Literary Mercenary's Patreon page to donate $1 a month so I can keep this blog running, you'd be much more likely to do it. Especially if I offer you a free copy of New Avalon as a reward for becoming a patron.

Now, maybe you did some of those things. Maybe you did all of them. Maybe you did none of them. The important thing to remember, though, is that the Ben Franklin Effect isn't a one-time thing. Anytime you ask someone to do something for you, that's a new chance for you to tug them into your gravitational pull. So every time someone stops by this blog, I have a chance to ask them one more time to become a follower. If they're already a follower, I can ask them to become a reader. If they're already a reader, I can ask them to become a patron.

And, sooner or later, repetition is what gets the job done.

That's all for this week's Business of Writing post. Happy hunting, and remember, start small when asking for favors!

Sell More Books By Marketing to Readers, Not Other Writers

Before we get started with this week's entry I'd like to make a request of my readers. If this is your first time, check out the archives on the right to see if there's anything else you find helpful. Seriously, sit down and stay a while. If you're a regular reader then please stop by my Patreon page by clicking here and becoming a donor. $1 a month goes a long, long way to keeping this endeavor running, and as mercenaries go I work quite cheap.

Now then, let's get into why you simply aren't selling as many books as you'd like to shall we?

This is why they pay me the big bucks.

Marketing a book is like solving a Rubix cube, blindfolded, underwater, in a sack, going over Niagra Falls. It looks effortless from the outside, but if you come through it with the result you want it's something of a miracle. Even if you have a sexy book cover (which I covered in this blog post), you chose an intriguing pen name (more on that in this entry), you're hand-selling like crazy (using the Literary Mercenary's handy-dandy tips posted right here), and hitting all of the other self-promotion mile markers (this is the last link, I promise) it's still possible for your carefully conceived plan to fail miserably.

One reason it fails is because you're preaching to the choir.

You Need To Reach Readers, Not Writers

This sounds really obvious, but it's something that a lot of writers miss. This is particularly true for authors who use a lot of social media to try and get the word out about their books. While it might seem like a great idea to post up information about your new novel in Facebook groups with titles like "Horror Authors" or "Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers," chances are good that's actually a pretty terrible idea. Whether you're on Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, LinkedIn, or any other social media machine you should avoid putting up posts in places where you're surrounded by other authors just like you.

Why? Because writers aren't looking around online to buy books. They're looking to sell books, which means they're probably ignoring you.

But Reading is Part of Being a Good Writer

On the one hand this is very true. On the other hand being an author doesn't make someone any more likely to pick up a book by a writer he or she has never heard of. Look at your own behavior; when was the last time you saw a mass-post style ad for a book and thought to yourself, "yeah, I got to get my hands on that!" I feel it's a safe bet that almost no one reading this has ever had that reaction.

Except regarding this book, now available at Amazon!

Before you decide to utilize a particular marketing platform ask yourself who is going to see what you're putting out there. Are members in a particular group actually watching the posts other people put up and looking for books, or are they just waiting for their turn to talk about their books? It doesn't matter if you're talking on a forum, a wall, or placing an ad in a magazine; if no one is looking for books to read then you're going to get lost in the shuffle.

So How Do I Sell Books, Smart Guy?

Put yourself in places where readers gather, and get your books into their hands however you can. Once readers say nice things about your books, and recommend you to their friends you have the beginnings of an avalanche.

No I'm not just talking out of my ass here.

Yes that's a really hard thing to do, and no there's no guarantee it will work. As a strategy however, it's a better bet to try and recruit readers by going to places where they're looking for new books than it is to shout into a venue where a hundred (or a thousand) other authors are doing the exact same thing.

Rather than tell you what you shouldn't do, here are some things you should do to narrow your focus and recruit more readers. First and foremost, get a website. Get a blog, get an Amazon author page (if you don't have one, here's how to set it up), get a Goodreads page, and make sure that readers have no problem tracking you down. Make sure you put these websites on your business cards, your stickers, your giveaway bookmarks, and that you mention them in your blogs, guest blogs, and any time you manage to get an interview.

Speaking of interviews, you should be trying to get those as well. Get yourself featured by as many book reviewers and literary websites as possible because their audiences are made up of people looking for books to read. Contact local radio stations, newspapers, magazines, and anyone else who will give you some screen time, air time, or ink. People who catch segments about you might not be readers, but they're watching/listening/reading for a reason. That means they're less likely to tune you out or gloss you over, and that means you can get your foot in the door of their minds.

Perhaps the most important thing you can do is get good reviews. Whether it's a 5-star rating on Amazon, a blurb on someone's blog, or just someone telling a friend about this great novel he or she just read, that's how you get noticed. If someone comes across a book with a cool cover, a killer elevator pitch, and a few hundred positive reviews then that person is going to wonder what makes this book so good. Additionally sites like Amazon promote books with lots of positive reviews, which makes it more likely you'll be discovered by other readers looking for a new author to follow.

From that point onward it's all about transmission, and sustaining your infection. That's why it's called going viral.


As always, thanks for dropping in and reading at The Literary Mercenary. If you're looking for a new book check out my Amazon Author Page on the right hand side, and if you'd like to keep up to date with all my updates follow me on Facebook or Tumblr.