Author: CMPR

Two Ways to Influence Your Rankings on Amazon

Posted on by CMPR

If you self-publish, there are two ways to influence your rankings on Amazon that I have learned from adapting and experimenting on the platform.  Although these tactics have been available in one form or other for a while now, they are still a mystery for many self-published authors who upload their books directly to Amazon.   Here I will address each method in order of importance.

1. Kindle Direct

I love Kindle Direct because it satisfies the practice of giving to get something in marketing.  When you publish your book directly on Amazon and sign up for Kindle Direct,  you are giving Amazon the right to sell your ebook exclusively for a period of 90 days.  This means  you are not publishing your ebook on any other platform until the 90 days are over.  In exchange you get access to a very valuable tool–a Kindle promotion.

A Kindle promotion is either a free ebook giveaway or a countdown deal.  If you look on your “marketing” tab in your KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) account you can read the descriptions of both.  I like to do the free ebook because it generates more downloads–“free is free” after all.  By signing up you are now part of an Amazon promotion that is optimized based on an algorithm.  You didn’t have to learn it or guess it or pray for it, it is just there because Amazon sees some value in having exclusive access to your book for three months.

Your deal will help generate awareness, rankings, and reviews.  Rankings are based on sales numbers, rate of sales, and page visits.  So when more people click through to your deal they are counted toward your bestsellers number.  Also, in my experience, people who receive free copies of books often rate and/or review them.  You don’t even have to ask!  The rate of return of reviews is based on the amount of downloads you get.  If 100 people take advantage of the promotion, you could get between 5 – 10 reviews, which is a 5 – 10% rate of return.  Not bad for clicking a few boxes.

2. Amazon Categories

The second way to influence your rankings on Amazon is to take advantage of selecting as many categories as you can, at a granular level.  This year Amazon changed its category policies, which has made some people upset.  You can check out this Reddit link to read arguments for and against the new rules. I have a more favorable view because the new system allows you to apply some powerful marketing to themes in your book.

For example if your book is a thriller you can drill down to “psychological thriller”, “sci fi thriller”, and “techno thriller”, among others.  We had a client with a “techno thriller” book that ranked in the Amazon bestsellers top ten.  You are allowed three category listings per book page and some classifications allow you to enter two subcategories.  There are people who have expressed concern because Amazon made changes to their books’ category listings without getting approval.  In the fineprint your will find that this is permissible.  To reduce the chances of this happening, do your best to be creative but stick to topics that truly represent what is in between the covers.  If you want to play with more ideas, use them as keywords.  Just remember that what is cool or witty to you may not be for your readers.  Always think about what your readers want.

My recommendation would be to take advantage of both of these tools.  Pick your categories carefully (and your keywords) and when you are ready, launch your Kindle Select promotion.  If you do and you want to share your experience, please email us at info@clairemckinneypr.com.  For other information about Amazon, check out our most recent post about Amazon’s ordering policy.

Amazon’s Order Policy Will Affect Indie Authors and Publishers

 

Generating Awareness with Influencer Outreach

Posted on by CMPR

With the prevalence of social media continuing to grow, influencers are becoming incredibly powerful tools in content marketing. Generating awareness with influencer outreach can be incredibly useful when it comes to relationship development. A simple Instagram post or story can go a long way in terms of making a lasting impact on consumers.

Using Bookstagram to Generate Awareness Around Your Book

A bookstagram is an Instagram account dedicated to — you guessed it — books. The bookstagram community itself is massive. It encompasses authors and readers who love sharing their passion for books. This can be a great place to share your book, especially if you have a budget. Unlike in newspapers or on the radio, people who follow these influencers and engage with their content are a lot more likely to love books. If you connect with bookstagrammers that have a specific niche that is relevant to your book, then you are placing your book directly in front of an audience that is likely your ideal audience for sales.

The key in initially building durable relationships, in my experience, is to come across as genuine as possible. Considering the numerous amounts of DMs these influencers sift through every day, taking an unorthodox, new approach can help achieve the attention you desire. Here are some tips to help you pitch bookstagrammers and begin working with them:

Tips for Pitching & Working With Influencers

1. Design your pitch around how your book can be beneficial to the individual influencer and less about how they can be beneficial to you. Any salesperson will tell you that people are of course more interested in what they stand to gain, so always keep that in mind. For instance, when reaching out to a teacher influencer, emphasize why your book would be a great addition to their classroom libraries. What teacher doesn’t love free books!?

2. Be relatable. It’s basic human nature to be drawn to people who you can relate to. It further shows these influencers that you’ve taken the time to scroll through their feed to find out what they’re all about.

3. Do not expect large creators to share your book for free. Many of these influencers have huge, active audiences. Would you want to give something of value away for free? Probably not. Smaller bookstagrammers may be more willing to trade for a free book — but make sure they have a public profile.

4. Research before reaching out. If you write thrillers, it would be a waste of time to reach out to a bookstagrammer who only enjoys romance. Show them you know who they are. Social media bios are convenient, go-to places to find that kind of personal information – so utilize it!

5. Engage with the accounts you would like to work with prior to reaching out to them. Although this is not absolutely required, it is good etiquette, especially if you are hoping to get something for free.

All in all, generating awareness with influencer outreach can be extremely advantageous if approached properly. Authenticity is essential when building any type of relationship, so treat influencers more like people and less like brands.

Social Media for Authors: 5 Simple Solutions

Posted on by CMPR

In October I spoke at an Authors Guild event in NYC about social media for authors.  It was moderately attended at the library but there were over 100 online attendees, which I thought was impressive.  I realize that digital marketing and social media marketing are areas where many people struggle.  I have significant experience and success helping authors.  We even have a Social Media 101 Guide you can download for FREE.   In the meantime, I think there are a few things you can think about right now that can boost your progress.

5 Simple Social Media Solutions

Here are 5 simple solutions to common problems I have noticed when auditing social media accounts for authors.

  1. Use your photo as your profile picture.  The panel I was on in October was unanimous with loud head shaking (if you can imagine that) when someone asked whether they should use their book jacket as their profile photo.   No.  You may write more than one book, so what happens to the following you have built on the current one?  People feel more connected to people and tend to trust profiles that feature a person, not a product.
  2. Make a plan.  Posting here and there is not the way to gain an audience.  Algorithms like to get to know you and to find that you are reliably connecting with interested followers.  Decide how many posts you want to do on a weekly basis on specific days of the week around pre-determined time slots.  Figure out what your topics are beforehand and try to be consistent.  This is especially important on your Instagram grid.  Random posting looks messy and disjointed.  If you want to show people a great photo of you on vacation, use the Stories function.  Otherwise think about what you want to share and try to stick to the topics and themes.
  3. If you hate it don’t do it.  My colleagues agree that if you absolutely can not see yourself feeding a social platform don’t get started.  It looks worse to have an empty page than it does to have a small follower count, but an active page.
  4. Spend a few dollars.  When you are starting out try boosting or advertising a post to a target audience.  See what kind of engagement you get.  If it doesn’t work well, try a different topic or image.  If that doesn’t work consider changing your targets.  Play with the platform and spend $20 for 4 days of boosting.
  5. Play.  Yes, I am telling you to play with social media.  Try different combinations of colors, images, videos, text, themes, topics, audience targets, and bids for boosting to see what starts to stick.  People born before 1985 have a more difficult time using social media.  That’s ok.  I’ve seen otherwise completely anti-tech and anti-social people get excited about the amount of creativity they can apply to start a conversation or make an impression.

You Can’t Break Your Social Media

So writers, try testing out a few things and let your work entertain you in the process.  You can’t break anything when you start out, because you haven’t built anything yet.  Worry about mistakes when you have thousands of followers.  The only caveat is that you try to avoid the same topics you wouldn’t bring up at a party: Sex. Politics, and Religion

I would love to see the community you are creating on your social platforms.  Follow me at @mckinneymediagroup and I’ll follow you back!

For additional ideas check out our blog channel and search “social media”.  You can start with advice on timing: When Should You Start Being Active on Social Media?

AI Writing: Parasite or Partner

Posted on by CMPR

Artificial Intelligence (AI) writing is not new.  Tech platforms have been using it to finish our sentences in Google Docs; to recommend headlines for ads; and to pull relevant keywords from an infinite number of potential combinations.  However, in a way the AI we know today is “new”, especially since Microsoft invested $1 billion in Open AI and then bought exclusive rights to the technology behind Chat GPT 3 in 2020.   Fast forward past a marketing and public relations campaign and we strongly feel the conflict that makes us excited and appalled at what AI can do.

When AI Writing Doesn’t Work

I believe that AI writing for book, articles and other long form writing will create a homogenous and boring world. Yes, there are definitely uses for AI, especially in the business world.  Who wouldn’t want a technology that could write form letters, contracts, privacy policies, and corporate boiler plates.  However, when it comes to writing there is so much that can be missed.  Here are four pitfalls of AI that I say should comfort writers.

  1. Just the facts.  How can you rely on an expert’s knowledge and advice if you suspect that AI is doling out the facts?  AI does not fact check itself.  It’s up to a human to do that.
  2. Misinformation.  Similar to not having the fact, AI can pull from thousands of opinions and false content to come up with something.  A user could be embarassed by something they publish that is more myth than reality.
  3. Innovative storytelling.  To Kill a Mockingbird, Little Women, 1984, Catch 22, The Color Purple, and Beloved are all stories that broke barriers.  That’s something that writers and creatives do.  They ask us to see the world in a different way thereby provoking thought, ideas, and discussion.   Does AI have an imagination?
  4. Personal stories.  Many writers start with what they know for their first books.  They write memoirs.  I suppose AI could write a book based on a person’s life, but that person would have to write it first.

Positive Uses of AI that Save Time

Now that I’ve pointed out why writers need not break their pencils and throw their laptops out the window just yet, I should also mention some areas where AI is likely to help and/or replace some of the things people do for the better.

  1. Content creation for social media.  There is a rule I read in a book on content marketing that says you should be able to create at least ten pieces of content based on one thing. That’s a lot.  For marketers writing multiple posts to support press releases or articles, an AI partner could be a time saver.
  2. Internal marketing departments in big companies.  Eventually, you may not need writers to develop annual reports and other marketing collateral that is generated in house.  You could feed data into an AI program and have it write the language that is common to these types of documents.
  3. Writing back ad for book jackets, catalog copy, and other items that summarize a book’s content.  You could upload a manuscript into an AI program and ask it to write a summary. The question is, do you trust an open source software to observe copyright laws and protect your story?
  4. Prompts and ideas.  Generative AI may be able to help with writers block.   Give ChatGPT a prompt and see what it writes.

A Writing Prompt Result

In this example I asked ChatGPT to give me the first paragraph for a “mystery novel based in Scotland”.  I rejected the first try.  This is the second.

“The rolling fog blanketed the rugged Scottish Highlands, shrouding the ancient hills and eerie lochs in an ethereal mist. In the heart of this mystic land, a solitary figure moved silently through the gloom, his footsteps echoing on the cobblestone streets of a forgotten village. The wind howled, carrying with it the secrets of centuries past, as if the very whispers of ghosts were woven into the fabric of the night.

Detective Elinor MacGregor had returned to the land of her birth, a place steeped in history and legends. She had come in search of answers, drawn by a cryptic message from her estranged father, a man she hadn’t seen in twenty years. The message was simple but enigmatic: “Return to the Highlands, and you shall find the truth.” Now, as she ventured deeper into the heart of the misty wilderness, she couldn’t help but wonder what truths awaited her in the shadows of her ancestral homeland, and whether she was prepared to face them.”

What do you think?  Is it a keeper, or should we ask it to go back to the drawing board?

Writers Lead, AI Follows

From what I’m reading about AI writing, and other disciplines, people are still going to need to drive the bus.  So don’t ignore or fear what is happening.  (I do recommend paying attention to developments around copyright protections for your work). Learn how to play with it or use it in a business setting so you can take the lead.  You are the creative mastermind behind your material You know how to make it as impactful as it can be.

Some articles of interest include our blog on AI and Art, and this one from 2015 about Google’s win in a court case that allowed them to digitize all books.

The Daedalus Protocol by Jeff Sheckter

Posted on by CMPR

“Throughout the ages, humanity has fought a losing battle. Death is inescapable. All cultures have prepared their loved ones for the afterlife in one way or another. However, there are many stories of mystical healing waters with the power to give life itself…

Would this genesis-like elixir be a portent for eternal life, or the greatest weapon the world has ever known?”

As a lethal pathogen decimates livestock and destroys crops, a catastrophic famine looms large over the world. In a race against time, a shadowy figure named Daedalus gathers a group of extraordinary soldiers and brilliant scientists. Under the leadership of Gryphon Oake, a distinguished SEAL commander, they embark on a perilous journey that takes them from ancient tombs to the inner sanctum of the Catholic Church. 

Their quest: To unearth a long-forgotten treasure, the key to averting impending doom. Delve into The Daedalus Protocol (Wolf Willow Publishers, 978-1-738936106, August 2023), a heart-pounding thriller where the team unravels ancient enigmas, uncovers the true essence of immortality, and races for humanity’s salvation.

Special Forces and Top Ranked Scientists

The Daedalus Protocol is Jeff Sheckter’s debut novel that follows an elite team as they work against the clock to save humanity from a plague that has been unleashed upon the world. The pathogen they’re up against is like nothing else mankind has ever seen, able to survive under even the most inhospitable of conditions and seemingly impervious to harm. This elite force must discover who the crazed zealot behind the pathogen is and secure the antidote – An elixir of life and healing, long thought to be the stuff of legends.

The search for the Fountain of Youth takes commander Oake and his colleagues on an odyssey across the globe chasing biblical riddles while trying to stay one step ahead of the group that wants to kill them. They must decipher cryptic clues from ancient texts and follow a secret trail to locate a long-lost treasure from our past that may be the only thing that can guarantee humanity’s future. With the threat of starvation imminent, will commander Oake and his team be able to find this long-lost antidote before it’s too late, or will humanity succumb to the coming apocalypse?

Action Packed Adventure

“An action-packed adventure, it takes you on an archeological journey full of centuries-old puzzles that keep you guessing. The twists and turns are dizzying, and you’ll be on the edge of your seat… The characters are diverse, well-developed, and likable.”

— Anne-Marie Reynolds, Reader’s Favorite 5-star review

Jeff Sheckter’s first novel, The Daedalus Protocol, is a thriller that brings readers along for a heart-pounding adventure. Filled with archeological mysteries and intriguing conspiracy theories, Jeff Sheckter’s excellently crafted suspense will leave readers unable to put the book down. The Daedalus Protocol is an exciting novel that will appeal to anyone looking for a new, gripping adventure told with great pacing and an entertaining cast of characters.