Use the Writing Process to Gain Readers

K
Hello, my beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you’d like to be welcome to the Writer’s Triangle podcast about publishing and all things books. And today, we’re going to be talking about bonus content that you can create to boost the best for your book pre launch post launch during the launch, just materials that we’ve used, the platforms and mediums that we’ve put the material on how they’ve performed, and how much they’ve cost us as a press, we know some things might be a little bit out of the price range, but I’m going to give you tips and tricks to get them cheaper than than what we paid for them. But I will tell you just the ballpark of how much we pay for bonus content. For every book that we published, we spend anywhere between 615 100 United States dollars on bonus content, to promote the book. And that’s for creating art and creating social media posts. But there are lots of ways that you can create the same content with the same amount of impact for a lot less. The reason why it costs us so much is because we have team members that do them. And if it were my own book, this is not what I’d be paying. But these aren’t my books, I guess they’re technically my books, because I own the press. But they aren’t. I’m not an indie publisher. And if you’re an indie press, if you’re going to outsource these things, you can outsource them to Fiverr, which I find to be a little iffy. I think it’s better to build relationships with people that you have a mutual promotion agreement with. There are a lot of artists that will have things priced a little bit lower than the price that our artists charge us and what we pay our artists to do, and graphic designers and digital designers. And there’s a lot of tools out there, like Photoshop and Kambah that can make making these materials, very easy. And so I don’t think that you have to be spending anywhere from that 600 USD to 1500 USD to make this content and have bonus content, I think that they can be done a lot lessons to have a really polished and professional look.

K
For us as a professional press, it is easier to just have people that we work with consistently. And this is their price point at at the level that we’re doing it. So I think that if you do it yourself that you have a lot more time to tweak things and, and move things around to get the same polish that we get. But we need a quicker turnaround because we have, you know, 30 days, basically to spend on every book. So and our artists get 30 days, everything is done in a 30 day turnaround. And that always increases the price. Because next month, we have another book that we need to be promoting. And you all know that we promote, you know, starting around the six month mark is where our pre launch promotion starts, I find that it’s really easy to promote a book, once you have the cover done, that it’s easier to start promotion. But I think there are a lot of things that you can do even before you have a cover. And one of them is creating like character art or maps, we have a book coming out called the path of chaos. And it is an alternate history. And it has a map of what Britannia looks like and what the world looks like with the Roman Empire still, and power. So a map is really impactful if you’re dealing with an alternate history that changes the lay of the land, or if you’re dealing with fantasy books, I think if you’re dealing with just a historical book that’s not changing geography, that it might not be worthwhile to create a map of the world, I don’t know how impactful that will be. In the past, we have created maps and included them and goodie bags that we send to our PR list. And our parent list has been really clearly that they value those maps when they’re included for worlds that have a different map than the world that we already live in. And that makes total and complete sense to us. And that’s how we use our maps with the character our I think the character art is really great because you can pick side characters that are not main characters, and really do a lot with them if you feel like they’re going to be a fan favorite. And one of in all of our books that we’ve published hands down the most popular book, the most popular character and all our books is next. And they’re from they’re the dog from relatively normal secrets. And you have to read the book to find out why but they’re like, just like the coolest dog ever in life.

K
And all of the character art that we use to promote relatively normal secrets included mix and we also have individual art that is just dedicated to Nick’s because we know, we read the book, and I just knew instinctively that that was going to be a favorite character. And now that we’re publishing the third and final book in The phone home Chronicles, we’re going to be bringing back some of that character art with NYX. And with Zed, and Tuesday, the two main characters. So when I look at the character art, I usually pick just two main characters, and limit it to that unless I know for sure, there’s going to be a standout character. And with the art, you can use the character art in multiple ways. And I’m going to talk about how to use it and Photoshop, which is not necessarily what our art team does with it. But I want it to be a good price point. There are other like Adobe studio that I think is a little bit more challenging, at least for me, if I was going to try to create something that’s a little bit more challenging. And Canva. I think Canva is the easiest for me to use at my school level. And then Photoshop is next. And then like Adobe studio goes up from there, and it just keeps going on up from there. When you have character art, something that you can do is you can do a meet the character and then describe that character. And also do like snippets about from the book different quotes from that character with their picture, so that when you get the image of the character, you can use one image of a character, you know, multiple different ways. As long as you’re creating different words that are around the character, you can use the same character image, and that helps bring the price point down on how much you’re spending on character creation. A good example of multiple ways that we use character creation I like the bony which which is from Izzy Hoffman is not a witch, which is one of the spookiest characters I’ve ever read in the middle grade space is just really a terrifying character. And using her introducing her and then talking about her relationship with the main character is he and then also doing fun things like, you know, you can read as you Hoffman, but I can’t promise that the bony which won’t haunt your dreams. And those kinds of really fun things. It is the same image of the witch themselves. But the different contexts and what you put a rounded and how you dress it up and whether or not use filigree or whether the background contrast the foreground, and if it’s really obvious that it’s drawn, or if you use the eyedropper tool to make the outside of that character drawing look seamless, and then put everything in it. And in. I think in con, I don’t think you can do it in Canva. But I know that you can do and fault in Photoshop, you can take the book and put it in and make it a 3d book. And that’s really nice to put it next to you know, the character and the book next to each other. And then we like meet Izzy Hoffman MC have, and then have your book, these are just some of the ways that we do. And we found it’s been really impactful to start conversations. And when we have the most conversations, as when we introduce so we get the most interactions on it as when we introduce that character and use a character art and then ask a question or make a statement. And then that tends to have more interactions when we do the book covers with the character art, we don’t get as many interactions with that. But we do get as many views. And looking at whether or not something is successful. It isn’t always just based on like how many likes or comments that it gets. It’s how many people have seen it. Because you do need a lot of people to see your book cover.

K
So only putting out character are only putting out maps that leads to them not knowing what the cover of your book looks like. And so they don’t know what they’re shopping for when they’re buying if they never see the cover of your book. So when you’re using this bonus material is important to have days when that bonus material is also going to include the cover. So for me, I tend to do a particular books cover maybe two to three times a week, and then bonus content the rest of the week. And I try to tweet about every book that we publish, I try to go through the entire list of books that in a week and say go with batches and having that that extra bonus content really is and this is for authors that have multiple books, right? You don’t want to just be spamming and just putting out buy my book, buy my book, buy my book, using this bonus content. If it’s a map, you could say you know, where would you want to live in this new area? Or you could say Something about the terrain, or something about the characters and tensions. Like for example, with the map for the path of chaos, it’s really significant because the Emperor’s is the emperor of the Roman Empire believes that Britannia is important and is an is an Britannia because they want to use that what we know as the UK to launch a strike against what we know as North America, and take over the rest of the world, because half the world is not enough. So having like those taglines and what the characters and tensions are, why the map is set up that way, or how the map got to be that way, you can allow to a lot of different content and a lot of different interactions. And something that I’ve seen our authors do that we don’t necessarily do is that they do create characters that necessarily aren’t in the book, but could be in the book. So if your book is steampunk, having steampunk images, and starting conversations about steampunk, and starting conversations about also starting conversations about genre, I really love that our author Katie green, was really passionate, in the same way that I am about making new adult, like come on. And that’s that space, right that 18 to 25 space is new adult is just different than adult is different than why a let’s just make it happen. And we have really great conversations on social media about it is also a way to get your name out there, get your opinions out there in the publishing space and in the writing community, on Twitter and and the writers of Twitter. And I find using those kinds of make sure that you know, what are the hashtags for the people that are in the population that you’re trying to reach. And I find that writers of Twitter, am reading and writing community are three really great hashtags on Twitter to use whenever we’re putting that that bonus content out or just asking questions or increasing engagement.

K
On Instagram, it’s really hit and miss, I find using genre specific hashtags. And looking at a book that’s similar to yours or looking at a best seller that’s in your same category. And then using those hashtags can increase engagement and eyes on your book. Because even if it’s not, you know, in the most viewed, it’s still in those used hashtags. And people do look beyond the crease in school. And so you might get extra eyes on what you’re doing that way. Something that we’re just starting to do, that I wish we had done sooner, is using the first couple of lines of your book, or a paragraph that you think is is impactful to give a reader a sense of what your book is going to be. And the reason we’re starting is because we have a really transgressive opening in the path of chaos. It is a hard opening. And if people are going to like it, then they’re going to love the book. And if people are going to hate it, then they’re going to hate that book. We limit how much of that we’re using, how much of that opening line we’re using, because it really is that graphic. And so we won’t post that on Twitter because we post a lot of middle grade content on Twitter, and I wouldn’t want those young middle grade eyes reading that. But our Instagram, it feels like our Instagram following and the people we connect with on Instagram are older and they can handle that transgressive opening, when you say something as transgressive, or when you say something as great, right. If it’s great lip trim, they’re like they’re they’re different right transgressive and grit lit, they’re a little bit different. But they are still hard hitting and I just wouldn’t feel comfortable posting that on Twitter. I know for a fact on Twitter, we have some really young followers that I just don’t want to expose to that and our timeline. If I try to keep our timeline, it is very political. And I don’t think that’s bad for the middle grade space and middle grade people on the internet. But I do try to keep it clean every once in a while, you know, an F bomb might fly out. Bad language I think is about the worst that we do on Twitter. And that’s another thing to consider when you’re putting this content out. Is is who is your following who is already your audience that you have on these different platforms. And for like Facebook and Instagram we have we know our following is very adult. On Twitter, we know that we have middle grade and up on Tik Tok.

K
We’re still building our following on tick tock and so we don’t really have a firm idea one way or the other but because tiktoks Audience is so young, I think we’re going to mostly be doing because we’re right now we’re creating our content that we’re going to put out. And one of the things that we’re going to put out is reading from the authors, or the authors pick their favorite passage and read their favorite passage from their book. That’s about 15 minutes long, and we’re going to be putting that on YouTube, we’re going to be putting that on Twitter, and on reels for Instagram and shorts, and tick tock with the 15 minutes, we know that 15 minutes is too long for any platform, other than YouTube. But we have the ability to edit videos, because we have a video editor and we have a team that’s working on on our social media, we’re able to do that. But if you’re going to make that video content, that bonus video content, I suggest making the most out of that content, and slicing up all of your bonus content, as many ways as you can think of slicing that up. And using it as many times in different ways that you can think of. So with the author’s reading, have 15 minutes with reading from their book, that’s 15 minutes, that we can take 32nd snippets of and use for shorts and use for reals and those types of things, but also use for full length videos, and we’re gonna get tons and tons of, you know, tick tock videos from that, or we’re gonna get tons and tons of Instagram rules for that, and YouTube shorts out of that. And I think that that’s a, that’s a great way to sit down, commit that 15 minutes of time, and then get a lot of use out of that time. Do you see these things multiple times, I cannot express enough. It’s so important for the financial investment and the time investment that you put in and created yet. And all the things I’ve mentioned, we’ve had really, really great success with, we haven’t done the author reading yet. We’re still gathering the readings. And and that was me reaching out to authors and asking them, hey, you know, will you do this? And our authors are so beautiful and generous with their time they’ve all said yes, and I’m just thrilled to bits about that. When you’re looking at the character R and the maps, that’s also an opportunity for you to create a video voice of you talking about it, talking about how you created that character, or writing about how you create that character. Where did the inspiration come from? Where did the idea of their look come from, and that adds another layer of complexity and house people see sort of behind the curtain, all of that be material that didn’t make it into the book. Absolutely use it in your social media, something we haven’t asked authors for that we haven’t done yet. But I’ve seen other authors use that I love or deleted lines that they loved, but just absolutely did not work in the book at all for them. I see other authors using that. And I always engage with it. And I always share my thoughts about it.

K
Those tweets always get engagement for me, because I absolutely love them. I also absolutely love when authors share jokes that their characters told that they didn’t know the punch line to until the character gave it to them. And I think that is hilarious to me. It always gives me a good giggle. And I love the use of memes to capture your mood when you’re when you were writing a scene, like maybe put the scene there and the mood. And if you have something in your book that fits a writing prompt for like Viet vs s 365. Or I forget the names of other ones, please forgive me, there are tons and tons of writing prompts out there. If you have a piece from your own writing from your book, you can put it there and then hashtag the name of your book, hashtag the writing prompt. And then people are getting to see your writing. I have one mutual on Twitter, that sends me excerpts from their writing of a series that they’ve written that I interact with a series that I absolutely love and enjoy. So don’t be afraid to put your writing out there for free. I think that’s the hardest glitch to get over of not wanting to share any of it in fear that it will spoil it, or it will make it stale. And that’s just not the case. It’ll increase interaction and it will make people feel more connected. And the way that the world does with so many authors giving their books away for free. Like that’s the price their book doesn’t have a price or the 99 cent. They’re getting tons of free content anyways. And they’re getting tons of free content on any social media platform, you open it, and there’s just millions and millions of free people on there giving away their content, if you don’t give a little bit away, you got to live it give a little bit away to sell a lot of it, you know, it’s just, that’s the nature of the game. And if you think how to get people connected, if you give them something for free, and they enjoy it the next time around, they will be willing to pay for it. So that’s something to consider when you’re looking at creating your bonus content. What is your objective? Are you trying to create interaction? Or are you trying to create awareness, something that we did early on that we’re not doing anymore, because it felt very labor intensive.

K
On our side of the street, I didn’t know how it was for the authors. But we didn’t get interaction with it. That was creating playlist. And playlists are like the songs that the soundtrack of your book basically, or the menu of your book. And I found that with the menu, because we’re oppressed, we had to be inclusive with our menu. And so we had to have a vegan option, a vegetarian option, a pescatarian. Option, and a meat lovers option. And that was just too many different menus to ask authors to create. And it wasn’t creating a lot of engagement, because the authors would send us the dish, and then our team would have to research a recipe for the dish of video of someone making that recipe. And then we would share it on social media, and we weren’t getting a lot of views on the playlist, or you weren’t getting a lot of interaction. And it just felt labor intensive. And I think that if you’re an indie author, or if you’re a press that isn’t that is like, Hey, we’re we’re representing the meat eating community. And we’re not doing vegan options for this. I think that’s okay for us. I don’t know, I just didn’t. I’m kind of torn. Because I have a blood disorder that doesn’t, that forces me to eat meat. But I think if I didn’t, I would probably be vegan, because of the impact of me eating on the earth. But I’m a meat eater. So I for me, I think it is down to just for ism. I’ve just really, really conflicted about my meat eating. I just feel so guilty about it, that I always want to include a vegan option. And I always encourage people, when people are like, Oh, he could do plant based and my doctor is like, No, you’ll have liver failure, sweetie, you can’t do it. So I really can’t have just a plant based diet. So y’all see, I’m just like, losing all my guilt. Right now on this discussion of it. I don’t hate me eaters. I’m not slamming anybody who eat meat. I eat meat. Yeah, so you can see why we’re not doing recipes anymore. Because like it how can like how fraught it is for me. And the struggle is real. That’s just who I am. And I think that that highlights something to consider when you’re doing this is who are you? how is this impacting you? Is this hard on you? Is this hurting your heart? Is this making you feel bad? Is it creating more bad days than good? And when you put it out in the world? Are you feeling good about it? Are you excited to put that out in the world? Does it motivate you to get out on social media? And if it doesn’t, then don’t do it? Because anything that that kills your motivation and kills your inspiration as an author is not going to be successful in promoting your book, and is not going to be what you want. And to be honest, like when I think about our social media, I think about how many posts do we have to put per platform and all of that. So a platform like tick tock, it’s 365 posts, you need to post 365 days. And so collecting 365 posts before you do it.

K
There’s like a lot of no it should be in the moment and a lot of different understandings of that but the Tick Tock audience is voracious and that’s why we haven’t launched fully launched or tick tock we have a tick tock at cinnabar moth pub. We just haven’t put out any videos yet. Doing 365 book related things you have to think about, okay, what can they be? And I think when you’re looking at bonus material, doing it with intention, and doing it with the cost, evaluation, time, money and effort, and isn’t going to give you what you want it to give and for me I’ll be honest, a lot of the stuff that the press does is to Make our authors feel good. And that’s so much easier than looking at the engagement. I’m looking at what translates directly into cells. So in a way, I think we have it a lot easier beyond budget is that I know if I’m sharing information about an author’s book that is going to make that author feel good. And that’s my motivation is making an author feel good. So when you’re creating the content, are you enjoying the content you’re creating? And does it make you feel good to put it out in the world? And I’ll be honest, if you asked us, if you say, hey, at Silver, I’m off on any of our platforms, check out my thing, I promised you that, that we will engage with that, and give you commentary that is positive and uplifting, because I do want authors to feel good about promoting books and good about creating bonus content, because it’s so disheartening, it’s so hard to stay motivated to promote. And when you look at the promotion cycle, if you’re doing the most stripped down, and tightest promotion cycle, when I think of that, I think of at least three months before the book is published. So you’re pre launching it for three months, with no promise that there’ll be any sales. And what if, and I think that a lot of people create what they want their preorder sales to be. And then right as you’re getting those pre sale numbers, it’s time to do the hard launch, which is the first 30 days of the books, post publication date as their publication date and 30 consecutive days after that is the hard launch for us. 30 days after their publication, they become part of our back catalogue, and go into our our back catalogue promotion cycle. Sometimes, because of the nature of their relationship, if they’re part of a series, then they do get an extended 90 days of being our front catalog promotion. And thinking about your catalog that way, how often are you putting out books, don’t be afraid to create secondary, this type of, of art and this type of promotional material, after a book has already come out. I don’t think there should be any rules for when you put a piece of cool information out about a book, I don’t care if the book is you know, 10 years old. If you want to do some character art for your book, do it. If that’s what’s gonna make you feel good, if that’s what’s gonna make you feel excited about the book that you publish, do it because the fact that you published a book, bravo, bravo, like seriously and sincerely that is so hard to do, to write a book and publish it. And if you check out our Twitter, I tweet about it all the time.

K
Because I think that authors kind of get lost after they do the publication that becomes all about sales. And I think and this may be really mean of me to say, I think it’s because so many people are lying about their sales. There are people that I’ve seen that they’re like, Yeah, I have a best seller that like where, what list is this a best seller on, they’re just saying it and they don’t actually have the sales that make a best seller, or saying that they’re number one and this that or the other and they’re not, or saying that they’ve made $100,000 off of their book, and that it just doesn’t track. There’s no evidence of that. And I think that comparison, is just the destroyer of happiness. Do what makes you feel good, do what makes you feel happy. And I’m gonna be honest, putting out character art, for the characters that I’ve come to love. Because I get to know every character and every record that we publish, makes me feel good. And that’s why I do it. I enjoy it. It motivates me and it makes me want to get on Twitter. And there are days where I’m like, so excited about something. I’m like, no, don’t tweet about that. Because you haven’t on the schedule, tweet about this a different day. And there are times that I do multiple tweets about one book, and I’m like, I should have had better self control and like spread that out over the week. And that just happens when you get excited. And I’m wanting you to have that excitement about your book, and have variety rather than just tweeting violence all of the time. So I do think you get reader burnout. And when I’m tweeting other content is when I find that, you know, our Twitter grows and our Twitter has the most interaction. And I find that the people I interact with then in turn, will retweet post about our books. I do have five links. So that’s my little 50 cents and y’all know that I’m mostly on Twitter, I don’t Dr. Instagram at all. So I don’t feel like an Instagram expert and we haven’t done our tick tock yet because you know, I just shared 306 35 pieces of content is so overwhelming to me. And Tik Tok just so completely overwhelms me that I am so happy that I have someone else focused on that so that I don’t have to. And that’s the benefit of being a practice anything that I don’t want to focus on. I don’t have to there’s always someone to delegate that I think that even if I were a completely indie author, and just doing it all on my own, I would have the same attitude. Find the platform you love, find the bonus content that you love, and put that out, because that’s what’s going to create the most engagement. There’s just, you can just tell when someone’s like having a good day on social media versus when somebody is just there grinding. So try not to grind, try to have it be a party that you’re inviting us all to, because your book being published is something to be celebrated every day. And yeah, so that’s my 50 cents on on bonus content and how to increase interactions. And hopefully by increasing interactions, you’re increasing knowledge. And by increasing knowledge and awareness of your book, you’re increasing sales. And I hope that was helpful to you, then you to all of our beautiful cinnabar moth who tune in every week. Y’all are so awesome. And you don’t have to be a cinnabar moth you can be any moth like to be or even a butterfly, but I’m not Mariah Carey, and I’m not trying to bite her rhyme bye.