This is a new free promotion for authors and book bloggers. Every Friday, there will be a new way to promote your books on this blog. Today just tell us about your book. The title, author’s name, a short description and a link to the purchase page. This blog is fed to a lot of different social media sites, blog directories, and blog feeds, so you will get some good exposure.
For Next Friday: Send me an email ( janis@assistingauthors.com) with the YouTube link to your Book Trailer Video, Video Book Review, or Video Interview.
While you are here, check out the rest of our website and our services.
The apps on the app-strip that I explained in the previous post are actually buttons that link to custom pages that you can create to make your Facebook Time Line Author Page interesting and exciting. The following are the pages that I would suggest you have:
A welcome page that includes a give-away of some kind if they like the page. I give away an ebook, Promote Your Book on Amazon if people like my page and fill out my opt in form. My email distribution site sends the eBook to people who fill out my form. I also have this form on my website.
Your blog or website.
Your Amazon purchase page if you have one book. Your Amazon author page with your bibliography listed with links to each book’s purchase page. People hate to leave Facebook so they will be able to purchase your books right from Facebook using this page. If you do not have an authors’s page, you can create one using Amazon’s Author Central. You can import your blog feed and your twitter feed into the author’s page as well.
A video page where you put your book related videos such as interviews, trailers, video book reviews.
Your Pinterest pins from different boards that have something to do with your books.
You have room on the apps-strip for 12 custom apps so you can use your imagination.
Now that you know what you should have, how to you bring in these pages is a different story. If you are computer savvy, you can use Facebook to find an add the apps. This is not that easy to do. I suggest you use the following links as tutorials:
I have found some sites that provide somewhat easier applications to do this:
http://wwwlLujure.com is a site that provides a drag and drop system to create these apps with full support. You can use the free version but that only gives you one app to use or you can use the consultant option which is $30.00 per month and is unlimited. You can quit at anytime.
https://www.facebook.com/vindiapps?sk=app_106878476015645 has an app called ZoomFrame that is free for now and will allow you to bring in your website, Pinterest Page, and Amazon author page or purchase page. It allows you three apps. It works great because unlike some other apps it does not cut off any of the page so you can see all of it. They have some other apps available as well.
http://www.fanpageengine.com: This also has a variety of apps. You can get started for free. You can buy packages of apps and there are no monthly fees.
If you do not have the time or energy to make these pages yourself, Assisting Authors Online can do this all for you and optimize the pages so you get promotional value as well. The price depends on how many pages you want. As a special offer to our readers, you can get all the pages including the Timeline Page listed above for $200.00. This price won’t last long so if you are interested, email me at janis@assistingauthors.com and we can get started right away. This package is also included in our Amazon Book Launch package (click on Services on our main menu).
Joanne Barnes is a Facebook Guru and owner of http://www. socialmedianetwork.com She has a fantastic video explaining Facebook”s Administration Panel. When you go through the video, you will be able to follow the steps in yesterday’s blog. Be sure to put the video on full screen so you can see what she is talking about. There is a lot to it, so I would set up each section that she explains before moving on to the next section. If you have any questions or don’t understand something, please comment below so I can help.
For those of you who are overwhelmed by what I have posted so far, I have a special for May and June to create your Facebook Book Timeline for Authors for you. I also am feeling magnanimous and have a special on formatting and distributing eBooks as well. I use a comprehensive process to format the eBooks. They have linked table of contents, a navigational menu for Kindle, and can handle images. Please email me for the details at janis@assistingauthors.com.
Now that your Facebook Author Page Timeline cover is up (hopefully), it is time to work on the next section right under the cover called the Apps Strip. We will discuss the strip from left to right.
The first section is called the About section. Not only is it a description, but here you can put a call to action to get fans to like your page. To enter your About section, make sure your admin panel is up. The admin panel is the section above your Timeline cover. If you can’t see it, there is a button top right that is labeled Admin Panel. Click on it.
Once it is up, click on Manage on the upper right and edit page from the drop down menu.
The page back end should appear. There is a list of links on the left.
Choose Basic information.
In the form that appears, half way down is a place that you can enter About information.
I suggest that you enter something like this: “Please like my page to enter my contest for a free eBook , ”My title.” Then go to the Welcome page to enter.” That statement is a call to action because you are asking them to do something ie. like your page. You will enhance that power by using the next section which is the icon that is labeled “Photos.”
Change the Photos icon image: You want to change the photo to a call to action to reinforce your About section. The problem is that the photos icon changes every time you add a new image to a post. You can keep a call to action button image permanently. Like I have. Here is how: [click to continue…]
I was browsing on http://www.slideshare.com and ran across this wonderful collection of Facebook timeline covers. I thought this would be a graat addition to yesterday’s post. It will give you some more ideas for your timeline covers. This presentation was created and generously shared by by Consonaute Social Media.
I am having a lot of fun creating Facebook Timeline Pages. I have posted before how important Author pages are to promoting your books. In the next few posts, I am going to go through in small segments, how to set up Facebook’s new timeline format to best sell your books. Today you will learn how to create a timeline cover.
If you do not have an Author Page here are a tutorial on how to initially set up the page :http://www.learnfacebookpages.com/ui.html. When you set it up, make sure you name it correctly because you won’t be able to change the name. Use your author name or blog name, something professional. Look at all three links, because Facebook is fussy about what you can put on the cover image. These links will explain it all.
The main page is where most of the action that will help you promote your book happens. If you want to create the cover graphic on your own, you will need a graphic program. I used Photoshop for the cover image for our page see the image above, but there are a lot of free graphic programs you can download from the Internet. If you do not want to make your own, below are links to five tools that will make it easy to make your cover with your own photos, book covers, etc. Make sure that you have uploaded all the images you want to use in your cover if you choose one of these tools:
Pic Scatter: http://www.picscatter.com. This site is best for Friend’s pages rather than Author pages, but if you have written a lot of books, it would be a fantastic cover using your book covers. It would look similar to what I did with our cover image above.
Timeline Banner Maker: http://www.timelinebannermaker.com. You can do a lot with this using your images or their background images. This tool gives you a lot of flexibility and choices. Really take some time looking it over.
Faceit Pages Time Line Cover Maker: http://www.faceitpages.com/ this a great tool but a little more technical. It is worth a look.
Cover Junction: http://coverjunction.com/ This has many catagories of images to use as FB covers. You can upload your own covers as well.
Cover Canvass:http://thesitecanvas.com/. I really like this one. It has the most interesting choices. It brings images from your Facebook profile then provides templates to put an interesting spin on them. They have a lot of templates and use only three images. They automatically load it on to your Facebook Timeline (Friends). I think if you want to use it for your pages, you would have to take a screen shot of it.
Look around and explore to see if you want to use any of these sites to create your Facebook page timeline. Here is an image of the sizes the cover images and the app images have to be:
To Do:
Sign up for a Facebook Page according to the directions above. If you already have a page and not a cover, your main page will just have the bottom part of the size image shown above. It will have your profile image, the about description space , a photo app and and space for three other apps. Apps is Facebook’s name for other pages because you use apps to make them. I use a trick for the photos app that I will reveal in my next post.
Don’t forget to enter Diane’s contest. You will automatically get an entry by “Liking” the page. There are several ways to get more entries. The prizes are a Kindle Fire or one of two Amazon $50 gift certificates . Trish also has a contest. Like her page and win one of her gorgeous bracelets.
Then go to the listed timeline cover sites and create your own. You can rest after that.
The next post will cover the uploading of the cover and the rest of the size diagram above. I will show you how to make the app images and links. How to optimize the about section and the photos icon. I will talk about what pages you will need to have a Facebook magnet for selling your books.
Please comment below and let me know how this is working for you. ( As we go on, if you think the process is a bit time consuming or you would like to have your pages more quickly, Assisting Authors Online will do them for you at reasonable prices.)
I thought you should know why have not done a post lately. I have been learning and practicing certain skills to add more to our services as well to my blog posts. I have been learning and practicing skills in three areas, eBook formatting, Facebook’s New Timeline and app format, and Pinterest.
eBook Formatting
Image via CrunchBase
I have a client who decided to use his publishers offer to format his ebook and upload it to Amazon. I went to look at it when it was up and it was a mess. Chapters and pages ran into each other, images weren’t centered, no table of contents or Kindle navigation system. I decided to use my skill at formatting books and bring it up a notch. Now I feel confident to be able to format eBooks and upload them to Kindle, Nook, Sony Reader, Ipad, Smashwords with even better results and fair prices.
Facebook Timeline Author Pages
That isn’t the only thing I was up to on my educational adventure. David and I also studied how to use Facebook’s new Timeline and app format that goes into effect on Friday. We have our pages almost completed and are working on a couple more so you can see samples. I will let you know when they are ready to view. Whether you have us create a Facebook presence for you or you do it yourself, it is a very important tool for authors to use to promote their books. So I will be giving you ideas in future posts.
Pinterest
Pinterest is another important site for authors to use to promote their books. Pinterest is an exciting new site that uses images and videos to connect with people. It is the fastest growing social media site ever. There are so many clever ways to use it, I am going to present its features to you in my next post, but I have included an infographic here to give you a little taste of what it is all about. Please look this infographic over carefully. This is the best tool I have found in a long time to get your book to your targeted audience and traffic to your blogs and websites.
One of the things that I do for our author clients is format their books for Kindle, IPAD, Sony Reader, Nook, Smashwords, etc. Most of the authors are self-published. Many can’t afford to get editors. Being a former English teacher, it is difficult for me not to fix an error when I see it. I usually do. I am not a good typist so I frequently get hammered for typing errors by my readers. ( I deserve it.) I found a really cool infographic on Copybloggers that can help put some grammar errors to rest.
Do you have some challenging grammar situations to share? Please comment below.
Ambassador Jonathan Wutawunashe’s book, Fulfill Your Threats is being launched tomorrow on Amazon. Jonathan has decided to lower the price of the book from $15.00 to $5.99. You get 25 entries if you buy the book for the drawing for a Kindle Fire. Two $50.00 Amazon gift certificates are in the mix as well. Hope you take advantage of the contest. Here is the form for your convenience:
Going with the Social Media For Authors Theme, Today I would like to spotlight Linkedin, http://www.linkedin.com . I chose this infographic, because it gives you visual and written steps to get the most out of Linkedin,. I love linkedin because it has a lot of author groups with great discussions and advice. I have attracted most of my clients from there. You have ten days to go through the steps and comment or ask questions about each step you have tried or accomplished. During this time, I will elaborate on the points below to make Linkedin less of a mystery. Don’t forget you can leave comments and questions here, or contact me at janis@assistingauthors.com for more one to one help. If you use comments, other people can help as well.
Sign up for an account
Create a Profile Make sure you make a complete profile. You can put your book links on it, your book trailers, your blog can be piped in. I will go into all that during the week.
Make Connections. Search for authors in your genre, publishers, you will meet people you want to connect with in groups. This is not Facebook. Look for people who are authors or in the book business.
Write an interesting bio and a photo of you is a must. Use your writer creativity.
Recommend others. You can start we me. Connect with me on Linked in. Once we are connected recommend me and I will recommend you back. Make sure you send me a message and tell me about yourself.
Join groups. This is very important. Answer questions, comment, but keep your self-promotion to a minimum. Do not be argumentative, this is a real problem with some people. Don’t give them ammunition.
Once you are further along and understand how Linked in works, may an author profile for you and your books.
Optimize yourself for searches. I will go into how to do that as well.
We will also talk about how applications can work for you, for instance putting your blog and video trailer on your profile.
Next week we will do this with another Social Media site. I would like to make this a weekly course, free of course, to get you all confident in using social media to brand your name and your book. I think Infographic make things much clearer and easier to understand if you use them step by step.
An Aside: Before I get to the infographic, my friend, Trish Silver, author of When I Remember Love, launched her new jewelry website today. Her bracelets are gorgeous. I have five of them now. The image below is very similar to one I have, and I love it. Please have a look. They are very affordable. http://www.trishsilverjewelry.com.
Don’t miss tomorrow with my interview of Ambassador Jonathan Wutawunashe. You will have an opportunity to win a Kindle Fire.
To make the info graphic larger, click on it and a new screen will show up with a smaller graphic of it, click on that and it will expand.
