The GoodReads Giveaway by Shauna Bray/WiDo

Giving away a book can actually increase sales.  And an excellent way to give away and get attention for your soon-to-be-launched book is through Goodreads.

A Goodreads giveaway generates excitement about an upcoming book launch.  Prior to launch, the typical author is blogging, building relationships with other authors, setting up the blog tour, arranging reviews and blanketing social media with reminders about the release date.  The author is definitely excited, but an author needs reader excitement as well.  And what piques the avid reader’s interest more than a brand-new, FREE print novel?  Go where the readers are to dangle that incentive in front of them.  Right now, the gathering place for avid readers is Goodreads.

Goodreads members relish the chance to discover new books and authors, and pass on recommendations to their friends.  These are dedicated readers, the type that post reviews and follow their favorite authors.  Setting up a giveaway of your book allows Goodreads members to discover new books and authors, like you!

Once a book is offered in a giveaway, the number of readers posting it on their “to read” list increases.  Winners generally post a review of the book they’ve won, and more reviews mean a chance to boost an author profile.  And consider that the recent purchase of Goodreads by Amazon could mean reviews and to-read lists are likely to be incorporated into Amazon as well.

A Goodreads giveaway is pure promotion; a book is being exposed to a huge audience of readers. (Click here to see a list of current Giveaways on Goodreads.) In addition, the cost is minimal.  Running a Goodreads giveaway for a few weeks is  equal in exposure to any paid promotion and probably much more effective.

Starseed author Liz Gruder generated more than one thousand “want to reads” for her book when it came out in February.   She said she wouldn’t hesitate to do a giveaway again.  “They gather lots of “want to reads” and exposure for your book, and for free…  I’ve heard of authors griping about winners selling their books on Ebay or Amazon after the giveaway, but really, who cares? Exposure is exposure. What they do with their winnings is their business.”  Liz had a highly successful launch and is still garnering great reviews as a result.

Goodreads provides authors with the tools to make a giveaway easy to set up and even easier to publicize.   Go to this page to find out the guidelines.

To maximize your giveaway’s effectiveness, keep these tips in mind:

  • Schedule your giveaway to run for a month, maybe two.  If you have more than one book coming out, you may want to overlap your giveaways.  This allows an author to have plenty of time to promote and push readers to enter.
  • It takes the Goodreads staff at least two business days to approve your giveaway, so submit your dates well in advance of when you’d like it to start, particularly if it’s during a holiday.
  • Try ending your giveaway midweek, rather than on a weekend.  That way, readers are more likely to see it on the “Ending Today” list.  This creates a sense of urgency that can leads to more entrants.   Remember, also, that the giveaway ends at midnight.  If you want the giveaway to end on Wednesday, put Thursday as the date, so it will end at 12:00 am Thursday.
  • How many copies you want to give out is up to you, but don’t go overboard.  One or two copies are great, but ten copies is overkill.
  • Don’t limit yourself to just a national audience.  The more you open up the contest to people in other countries, the more participants will add your books to their “to-read” list.
  • Mention your giveaway in your blog, social media pages or on your website.  Post the link so that readers can go there automatically.
  • If you mail out your books yourself, make sure you send them immediately.  You don’t want to mar your event with  a complaint that the winner never got the book.
  • Consider adding a personalized note to the reader, along with your autograph inside the cover, thanking them for their interest and expressing hope that he/she will enjoy it and post a review.  A small personal touch can go a long way in turning a giveaway winner into a loyal reader.

 

About Shauna Bray: Shauna is WiDo Publishing’s marketing director and social media coordinator.  She started her career in television news and through many twists and turns found her way into the publishing world, where she’s happy to be.  Shauna lives in Houston with her very literary husband and two exhausting children.

Story Plotting: Turn off the GPS by Julie N. Ford, WiDo Publishing

Every now and then I’ll hear a writer say that plotting is his/her least favorite part about writing a novel. Okay first of all, “novel” and “plot” are nearly synonymous. Without a plot, there is no novel, no story. So technically, if a writer doesn’t like to “plot,” said writer probably shouldn’t be wasting his/her time writing a novel. Just because a person enjoys writing doesn’t mean he/she must become a novelist. There are other ways one can express oneself through the written word—columns, editorials, poetry, blogging, journaling.

And second, maybe the reason so many writers have a hard time plotting is because we as a society have become too dependent on technology doing our thinking for us. We don’t memorize phone numbers anymore because all of our contacts are stored in our cell phones. We don’t have to think about how to spell because Word and even our phones do that for us.

I’m showing my age here but I remember when telephones still had party-lines and TVs were black and white. *Gasp* Viewers had to actually get up and turn a knob to change channels. (Currently, I don’t even know where the on and off switch is on my TV much less how to change channels without the remote.) And when I started college, students were still using typewriters for term papers and libraries to do research. Ah, I do miss the days of rifling through the card catalog . . .

Back in the good ol’ days when we needed to travel somewhere we’d never been before, we used something called . . . a map. For those of you who don’t have a firsthand knowledge of such a thing, maps are somewhat cumbersome, accordion folded sheets of paper that often hitch at the seams and have a tendency to flap away at the slightest breeze. But when laid out flat, a map is a vision to behold—a colorful labyrinth of intersecting paths that offer options to one’s destination while branching out into a myriad of possibilities. Stretched out across a table or the hood of a car, maps are a visually pleasing tool that allows an individual to plot his/her path to a desired destination while highlighting each and every point of interest along the way.

The beginning, middle and end of a new journey.

When traveling with the use of a map, one needs to be keenly aware of where he/she is at all times, pay close attention to mile markers and state lines, watching for signs indicating the next turn in the journey. The traveler is an engaged, active participant in the success or failure of reaching the desired destination.

Enter the GPS.

An ingenious piece of technology you can feed an address and then like magic, the course to follow appears on the screen accompanied by a pleasant voice that guides you effortlessly to your destination.

Easy, peasy.

The last road trip I took was from Nashville to Kansas City. I plugged the hotel’s address into my GPS and then started driving. Along the way I passed small towns and big cities often asking myself, “Where am I?” But it didn’t matter. I didn’t need to know. Dave (the name we gave the voice that comes from our GPS) dutifully warned me of every upcoming turn, while repeatedly reminding me of the impending change in course, followed by an exact measure of when to make the change in direction. And I never even questioned, never wondered if Dave was leading me the right way, never thought to check the correctness of his course. I blindly followed Dave, and he led me straight to where I needed to go.

Like going back to the “dark ages” and planning out a trip on a map, plotting our story seems tedious—a waste of time and effort. You see, plotting a story is much like mapping out a road trip. Our stories must stretch out in front of us with a beginning, middle, and then an end. If we don’t know how to visualize the possibilities, experience wrong turns, back track, take unexpected stops along the way and roll with diversions from the path, then how can we envision the same for our characters?

We’ve become lazy.

And this lack of plotting ability may just be the reason that many novels and movies are sent out to readers and viewers with holes in the storyline. Could it be that we are losing our ability to step from one point to another without the help of technology? What’s next, electronic story plotters? One day, will Dave be capable of plotting my novel for me as well?

Good gracious, I hope not. Plotting is, after all, half the fun in writing a novel.

 

Julie N. Ford is the author of four women’s fiction novels, The Woman He Married (March 2011) and No Holly for Christmas (November 2011), published by Whiskey Creek Press. Whitney Award Finalist, Count Down to Love (July 2011), published by Bonneville Books. And Replacing Gentry to be released April 2013 by WiDo Publishing. Currently, she lives in Nashville, TN with her husband, two daughters and baby hedgehog, Wallace. Julie’s website is julienford.com.

Utilizing the Book Blog Reviewer by Karen Jones Gowen, WiDo Publishing

Note: WiDo author, Charity Bradford, did a Guest Post last month on Organizing a Blog Tour. She had some great tips. This month Karen Gowen, author and Managing Editor at Wido Publishing, follows up with more tips on how to find Book Blog Reviewers and establish a relationship with them.

Reviews are key to getting sales for your book, and a valuable resource is book blogs. On my sidebar (click the link to see Karen’s sidebar) is an extensive list, from the super busy who may not have time for you, to the ones just starting out who will be happy to get your request.

My Top Ten Tips on Getting Book Blog Reviews:

1. Start early researching reviewers. Don’t wait until your launch. Look for reviewers in your genre. They will have an About Us page and/or a Guidelines for Requesting Reviews page. Read it carefully to see if they’ll be a good fit for you and your book.

2. Develop a relationship with the ones you pick. Follow their blogs and show up regularly. Comment on their posts. Thank them for their reviews. You yourself will need a blog to effectively implement this important step.

3. Pay attention to how they review a book. Some will copy and paste a Goodreads summary, and then give just a word or two about the book. Sorry, but this is not a review. You are looking for valid book reviewers, not just those willing to make an announcement about your new release. Watch for those who are intelligent, fair, and thorough in their reviews.

Helpful reviews will give highlights of the story, discuss themes, plot and characters, share how the story made them feel, talk about what they liked about it as well as what bothered them. “I don’t like the cover,” is not a review and is not helpful. You don’t want a reviewer who gushes over everything, or one who is too critical– you’re looking for a nice balance

4. Check out the title of their blog. It should be something that will display well with a quote or blurb on your website or your book page on Amazon. Again, check out my sidebar and see how cool some of these blog names are. They legitimize the review, add interest to the blurb.

5. After you have chosen your favorite reviewers and visited their blog so they know who you are and it’s finally time to email your review request to them, be sure to explain why you picked them.  Copy and paste requests are too easily ignored and refused. Make it personal.

6. Be patient but clear. Reviewers get a lot of requests and the good ones are busy. The good ones also read the book all the way through and take their time in writing a thoughtful response. Tell them your release date, give them a deadline if they ask, but let them know you’d still value their review regardless of when they get to it.

7. Don’t get upset if it’s not the 5 star review you had hoped for. Positive blurbs can be gleaned from just about any response. I once asked one of my English professors for a blurb. Her response after reading my ms of Uncut Diamonds, was critical and in the end said she couldn’t recommend it. But she did say that she really loved the dialogue. Cool. We went with that because “I really love the dialogue…” makes a fine blurb.

8. Thank them privately, even if the review was less than you had hoped for. No need to add a thank you comment on your Amazon or Goodreads site. You want to be invisible and not seem like you’re checking out all your reviews and commenting on them. That inhibits potential reviewers. But a private email showing appreciation is appropriate and should be sufficient.

9. Don’t pay for anything. There was a time when paid review sites were popping up everywhere. After the negative press that led to Amazon removing reviews, I wouldn’t think paying for reviews is even considered anymore. I never have done it or recommended it. Why should we pay? There are thousands upon thousands of book review blogs out there, with more popping up every day. They are book-lovers happy to get an ARC in exchange for a review. Do NOT pay for reviews. It’s completely unnecessary and even frowned on in the current climate.

10. Don’t stop now. After the excitement of your launch and those first initial reviews you may think, okay time to write the next book. Which it is, of course. But still continue following book reviewers, add to your repertoire, keep building those valuable relationships. New blurbs and reviews will add to the saleability of your book, even if it’s been out for awhile.

 

About Karen Jones Gowen: Born and raised in central Illinois, the daughter of a Methodist minister from Indiana and a school teacher from Nebraska, Karen Jones Gowen has down-to-earth Midwestern roots. Karen and her husband Bruce have lived in Utah, Illinois, California and Washington, currently residing near Salt Lake City. They are the parents of ten children. Not surprisingly, family relationships are a recurring theme in Gowen’s writing. She is the managing editor for WiDo Publishing and the author of four books, all of which fit loosely into the category of LDS Fiction. Karen’s website: karenjonesgowen.com. WiDo Publishing website: widopublishing.com

Organizing a Blog Tour by Charity Bradford

We all carry an idea of what our book release will look like inside our vivid imaginations. People will be cheering and falling over each other to get to the pile of books. Our names will be plastered on billboards and all over the internet.

We wish! Sometimes being a new writer is hard only because the reality is so different from that dream in our heads. People don’t automatically know we have a book for sale. Getting the word out can be a lot of work. However, there are some things we can do to make our book release amazing—for us and for our readers.

Blog tours are a great way to start spreading the word. As an added bonus, the more “stops” you have will drive you closer to the top of search engines. Blog tours don’t have to cost a lot of money. In fact, I didn’t spend a dime on mine (not including items for the giveaway on release day), and yet they can be inventive and fun for everyone involved.

Writers and book bloggers are often more than willing to help out with your tour if you give them enough notice. Why? Because it drives new traffic to their sites. Even though it’s a win/win situation, it’s important to remember that they are doing you a favor.

Here’s what I learned while planning my blog tour:

  • Start early. I started 4 months before my release date and managed to grab the last slot on the one blog I REALLY wanted to get on for my genre.
  • Be willing to help others regardless of whether or not they can help you. Remember how your mom used to tell you to be the kind of friend you wanted to find? Yeah, it’s sort of like that.
  • Use the resources that are out there. (See some helpful links below)
  • Be professional. Even though you are working through email instead of face to face, present yourself with confidence. Craft your correspondence with the same care you crafted your queries. Be honest with your expectations. Most importantly, when someone declines, say thank you and move on.
  • Be prepared with ideas for your tour such as guest post topics, games, giveaways, etc. I started with a list of 12 different pre-planned topics.
  • Don’t be afraid of trying something new. Just because you’ve never seen it done, doesn’t mean it won’t be perfect for you and your book.
  • Take some time to create good headers and buttons that draw the reader’s attention and give a feel for your book, or pay someone else to do so.
  • Keep good records of Who, What, When, and Where so you can deliver what you promised and answer questions when someone asks about “the plan.”
  • Work a little every day so you don’t feel overwhelmed. I ended up with 34 tour stops, which is WONDERFUL, but if I had to prepare all of those posts within a month I’d curl up and die. Because I started early, I was able to work on them over two months instead of weeks. Hopefully the posts were better because of that.
  • Be flexible. If someone wants to host you, but they don’t like any of the topics you pre-planned, be willing to write a post that fits their blog and readers. In the end, you’ll be glad you did.
  • Show your gratitude. These people have just become a part of your marketing team. Find a way to thank them sincerely. My favorite way to do this is to return the favor if they have a book coming out or offer a critique if they are still working on that first project. Marketing is as much about building friendships as it is selling books.

Perhaps the greatest thing I’ve learned from this experience is that I can do this. And if I can do it, so can you. Here are the links to sites that I found most helpful while planning my blog tour.

  • There’s a great new site called The Blog Tour Exchange. It pairs you with other writers in your genre so you have a few sites to swap tour dates with. Great jumping off point.
  • Pippa Jay has a huge list of Book Reviewers you can sift through.

Good luck and have fun!

Charity Bradford lives in Northwest Arkansas with her hubby and four children, and firmly believes a smile can solve most problems. The Magic Wakes(WiDo Publishing, 2013) is her first novel. You can read her blog at Charity’s Writing Journey.

Dealing With Negative Reviews by Whitney Boyd

As an LDS author, my purpose in writing was to create a clean, fun, flirty chick lit book that would appeal to both LDS and non-LDS audiences. I wanted my books to be realistic to life, but not to have excessive bad language, explicit sex scenes or  anything too crude or vulgar. At the same time, I knew it couldn’t be a book that was all butterflies and roses. Life, even an LDS life, does not have people walking around saying “darn” and smiling in every situation. So, I wrote my books. I made them as clean as I could, but still realistic. Words like “crap” and “freaking” are words that I occasionally use and do not find offensive. Basically I kept everything PG according to my temple-recommend-holding-returned-missionary-living-in-the-real-world moral code.

Then the reviews started coming. There are three types of reviews, for those who aren’t familiar with it. The majority were super positive (which I love!). There were a few super negative (which make me cry. Seriously), and then here and there a couple of the blah in between reviews where they say “It was a good book, but meh.”  Now, here’s where this gets interesting. The negative reviews I received were written by both LDS and non-LDS people. The LDS people expected the book to be more LDS and “Molly Mormon”. They didn’t like the border-line crude language in parts, nor the implication that one of the secondary characters in my Hollywood novel was gay.  They felt that I, as an LDS writer, should have made the main character 100% LDS in every word and thought. On the other hand, the non-LDS commentors wanted the book to be more “Fifty Shades of Grey”. They wanted the characters to do more than just kiss. They wanted a book like hundreds of other romance novels out there.

I read these reviews and felt conflicted. Was I right in my purpose?  I wrote a clean, fun, flirty book that a lot of members and non-members love. But why then were there a few people that strongly disliked it?

It took a little while, but finally I had an epiphany… I cannot please everyone. Simple. As much as I want to be the most beloved author in the world, that is impossible. Even authors who have sold millions of copies of their novels, like Stephenie Meyers, Sophie Kinsella or J.K Rowling, have received negative reviews. I know a lot of LDS people who refuse to read the “Twilight” books because they don’t adhere to church standards. Then there are even more LDS people who love the books and the movies and think they are great.

So what’s the moral of this story? Write your book. Figure out who you want your audience to be. And then be proud. You created something that nobody else could have created! As President Roosevelt said, “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

Whitney Boyd, author of TANNED, TONED AND TOTALLY FAKING IT and soon to be released ICED ROMANCE. You can read her blog at whitneyjboyd.blogspot.com.

Guidelines for Writing LDS Fiction by Karen Jones Gowen, WiDo Publishing

The LDS fiction genre encompasses everything from inspirational novels where characters accept the gospel and get baptized, to historical fiction about elements of Church history, and a whole lot in between.

The LDS fiction label can be a fairly clean novel written by an LDS author, with no Mormon characters or references, somewhat like the label “Christian fiction” might be given to one just like it. It can also be ascribed to a novel with some swearing or sexual scenes (not graphic however), but that contains Mormon characters and themes.

Surely there are books listed on Amazon under LDS Fiction that a reader might be offended by, and others that are so squeaky clean and spiritually uplifting as to be dull for those seeking the kind of conflict, tension and turmoil that a novel requires.

By now you may be thinking: But isn’t this a post on guidelines for writing LDS fiction? Then why is she essentially telling us there are no guidelines?

The fact is that ebooks have changed the guidelines. It used to be that LDS Fiction was what you found when you browsed an LDS bookstore.  The stores set the limits, sometimes restricting them so severely that shoppers got frustrated by the same formulaic genre.  Stores decide what they will or won’t carry. If it doesn’t suit them, they don’t order it.

For this reason, WiDo Publishing stopped accepting manuscripts that fit the strictest definition of LDS Fiction—Mormon characters and themes and squeaky clean. Reason being, there weren’t enough LDS bookstores around to sell them to, if you took Deseret Bookstores out of the picture. And other bookstores didn’t want “Mormon books.”

Hooray for the Kindle! We wish we could call up all those talented authors who submitted their LDS Fiction to us, because we can now sell it. In fact, it sells very well through the Kindle, which is how we distribute our ebooks.

Through the maze of inappropriateness that gluts their selections, LDS Kindle owners are desperately seeking clean fiction for themselves and their families. Even if it’s not “squeaky clean” or not strictly fiction, WiDo will label a book LDS Fiction if it fits three or more of the following criteria:

  1. It’s written by an LDS author.
  2. It contains Mormon characters.
  3. It deals with themes that are based on true principles.
  4. There’s restraint used in language and scenes, although we can’t always promise squeaky clean.
  5. We think LDS readers will enjoy it for all of the above reasons, and because they are seeking out the best books.

By these guidelines, Jewish author Mirka M.G. Breen would no doubt be surprised to see that her middle-grade novel, The Voice of Thunder, about two ten-year-old girls in Jerusalem during the Six-Day War, is categorized by WiDo as, among other things, LDS Fiction.

And those of you who sent us manuscripts we turned down back when “we can’t sell LDS Fiction,” please submit to us again. Because now we can.

 

About Karen Jones Gowen: Born and raised in central Illinois, the daughter of a Methodist minister from Indiana and a school teacher from Nebraska, Karen Jones Gowen has down-to-earth Midwestern roots. Karen and her husband Bruce have lived in Utah, Illinois, California and Washington, currently residing near Salt Lake City. They are the parents of ten children. Not surprisingly, family relationships are a recurring theme in Gowen’s writing. She is the managing editor for WiDo Publishing and the author of four books, all of which fit loosely into the category of LDS Fiction.

Karen’s website: karenjonesgowen.com

WiDo Publishing website: widopublishing.com