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What I Didn’t Learn in 2023

Posted on by Brenda Poulos

If you are like me, you made a list at the beginning of the year. For a month or so, you revisited the list, checking to see how you were doing toward reaching your goals.

Somewhere during the second or third month of the year, you realized you were falling short.

Then, around month four, you rewrote your goals, using more realistic expectations.

After you gave yourself this swift kick in the seat of the pants, you seemed to improve. You even got a couple of items checked off.

Feeling better about yourself than you had in a long time, you made the big push—until

October.

That is when you started getting requests for book fairs and podcasts. And other writer-friends asked you to read the books they had been working on and write endorsements for them.

Then came Halloween and Thanksgiving, followed closely by two or three rounds of shopping for Christmas.

And, you were faced with the hard reality in the few days leading up to the new year: you hadn’t achieved many of your goals.

A few days later, the cycle would repeat itself once again. And some of those same things on the list for 2023 would be on your 2024 list.

Here are my leftovers—things I swore I’d learn to do in 2023, but didn’t: How to use Instagram and Twitter more effectively; How to run more successful ad campaigns on Amazon; How to write poetry.

What about you? 

Why Do A Pre Launch?

Posted on by Brenda Poulos

I don’t know everything there is about Pre Launch, but I did learn something very interesting this week.

It seems that all the books one sells before the actual publish date are combined and the author gets “credit” for them on Amazon on the very first day of publishing.

You can use a PreLaunch format to accomplish this, or you can simply go on Facebook, Twitter, a web email list—whatever you’d like—and offer your book at a discount on Amazon until the book is actually published. 

Pre Launches help an author garner publicity early on. So do social announcements, combined with discounts.

By next week, I will have learned much more and will write a blog post about these two methods of pre-advertising.

Until then…

A Trip Down Memory Lane

Posted on by Brenda Poulos

I recently took a trip down memory lane. I reread some of my blogs from five and six years ago.

I have learned some things since then. One of which is to shorten my writing to a few paragraphs instead of several pages.

In the age of texting and Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, we have all become accustomed to short snippets of information. So, for the next few weeks, I am going to take my early blogs (which you may not have read because they were sooooooo long) and shorten them into concise bits of knowledge.

Rewritten, I hope they will be more useful, with the ultimate goal of encouraging you to keep on writing.

Even in isolation, amid Covid and natural disasters, writers can still write and take solace in the fact that your words can mean all the difference to readers worldwide.

Hit the USA Today’s Bestseller’s List

Posted on by Brenda Poulos

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Learn how, along with me:

I’d like to share what I have read so far. (Book Bub has lengthy articles on this. I have condensed it for this blog, but feel free to go on their site for the “expanded” version).

They suggest a concept called PROMO STACKING, which is “running multiple marketing campaigns within a short timeframe to maximize the volume of sales within a bestseller list’s reporting period.”

Here’s my outline from reading on BOOK BUB:

  1. Promo stack during the preorder period.

            a) One month before a book release run a Book Bub Preorder alert. (More about this is to come.)

-or-b) Discount the book during the preorder period, promote on author’s blog, do giveaways, do a Book Bub Ad campaign. (Yes, we’ll learn about these, too).

2) Discount a previous book, along with making the new release only .99 or 1.99. Run a Book Bub Ad campaign.

Put ads on Books Butterfly, Kindle Nation Daily, and Bargain Booksy. Blog. Do an Organic Twitter campaign. (Again, I will be learning about these and passing the information along to you in the coming weeks).

3) Bundle previous books into a Boxed set at a discounted price. Write new back matter for the boxed set. Run Amazon Marketing ads and Facebook Ads.

It’s okay if you aren’t familiar with one or more of these.

Each week, read my blog. I will be researching them, individually, for you…

and learning right along with you!

Linking

Posted on by Brenda Poulos

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NETWORKING. LINKING. MAKING CONNECTIONS.

That’s the name of the game.

Five years ago, I was told I needed to blog. 

Give content. Encourage.

I got in the habit of writing once a week on each of my websites, www.brendapoulosauthor.org and www.spiritualsnippets.com

That is a lot of writing. I learned to get as much “mileage” as I could from everything I wrote.

One simple way was linking my websites with Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads. Every time I write on one of my blogs, the content automatically goes to these three other social media avenues.

All I had to do was set and forget.

Authors have more and more to think about nowadays. As many things as we can set up like this, the easier we make it on ourselves.

That means more time for doing what we love—

Writing!