Marketing Yourself as an Author

by Christine.

There are incredible resources online today that authors can use to sell their products, promote themselves and acquire new readers.  As an aspiring author or one who has many novels under their belt, are you using all that you can?

There are more than I am aware of, but I thought I’d list some here and their associated benefits:

• Goodreads
  So many people today are keeping track of what they’ve read, what they thought, and what they would recommend.  As an author, you can add your books to the Goodreads database, list them in appropriate lists (e.g. best horse series), offer giveaways to promote your latest release and best of all, create an author page where all of your public works are listed.
  This list allows people to mark them as read, rate them out of 5, leave a review and even mark down that they want to read your books in the future!  If you’re not using this feature yet and have published works, I encourage you to look into it. 
• Amazon
  Again, you can have an author profile and list all of the books that are authored by you.  Your profile can also include a biography, photo, recent blog posts from your own blog feed and Twitter updates.  It’s a great way for fans to keep in touch with your latest news and books.
  As an added bonus, if you have your books on Amazon, you can keep tabs on monthly sales, see how your book/s are faring on the best sellers lists and get reviews and ratings from purchasers. 
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• Authorgraph
  This is a nifty way to interact with your fans for free and offer them something they may not have the chance to request in person – an autograph!  The images of the covers of your published works are made available and you can create an autograph that is then placed across any of these images that a fan may request.
  For example, a reader of Horse Country – A World of Horses may fancy a signed copy of the cover from Christine Meunier.  Authorgraph is set up so that your signature is created by you and then saved – this is then sent out whenever you approve a request from a fan.  You can also personalise messages! 
• Lulu
  If you are interested in creating paperback versions of your books, then I encourage you to check out this print on demand set up.  Lulu’s service is free to set things up – they can even help you out with book formatting, ISBNs for free and cover creation.
  You can determine if your books are available to yourself only, to only those who you invite or to the general public.  And from here, you can submit your works into bigger selling networks like Amazon and Barnes and Noble – all for free!
  They make their money through earning a percentage of your profit whenever a sale is made, not before.
  Once you have books set up on Lulu, you can set up your own author store and provide a biography, links, profile image and of course details of your released paperbacks.  You don’t have to pay to have your books printed (except for proof copies), but instead they are only printed when people order them (print on demand).  It’s a great way to cater to the one off buyers all around the world without making a dent in your pocket!

What author platform do you use that has benefited you greatly in the form of sales, reaching out to fans or keeping people updated on your latest releases?