I kill people for fun. In books.
OK, first of all, I still don’t know why people who view The Musubi Murder are also interested in banana slicers and butter warmers, rather than, I don’t know, other murder mysteries?
But second of all, what is this marketing wizardry? People will pay extra not to have two banana slicers in the house?
Thanks to those who have listened to or read The Musubi Murder. Here are some quick links to leave reviews, if you’ve finished The Musubi Murder and haven’t reviewed it yet. No spoilers please!
Goodreads / Amazon / Powell’s / Audible / iTunes
It has three million subscribers and growing. @JimKukral and Bryan Cohen (@bryancohenbooks) of the Sell More Books Podcast have a running joke about all of the free advertising they do for BookBub on their show.
What is it? Basically, it’s an author’s dream mailing list. BookBub sends notice of free or discounted ebooks to its database of eager readers. The catch for authors, and the reason readers love it? They’re very selective about which books they’ll promote. You can’t just go in waving your money at them and expect that they’ll promote your ebook.
At this time, I don’t have the option of participating as an author. I won’t have an ebook out for a while, and when I do, any price promotions will be at the discretion of my publisher. So I’ve been watching BookBub’s increasing popularity with sort of a distant interest, admiring their focus and discipline (how tempting it must be to increase income in the short term by accepting more books!)
Well, today I thought I’d see what it was like to be on the other side, and signed up to be on BookBub’s mailing list. It took about ten seconds. And then I had a look at all of the ebooks on offer.
Holy kazoo.
There are so many books. Books with hundreds of five-star reviews. Books with awards.
Many of them are free. And I can download them RIGHT NOW.
So yes, I should be writing, or, um, doing my day job. Instead of downloading books like this and this and this and this and this. And more, much more. Hours and hours of free reading pleasure.
For the record, I’m not goofing off. I am researching promotional strategies in the publishing industry.
I just ran my first giveaway on Goodreads.
Giveaways are great for readers: click a button, and next thing you know, a free book might show up in your mailbox.
They make it really easy for authors too: I choose which book, how many, what countries I’ll ship to, and when to run the contest; they pick the winner and send me the mailing address; I mail out the books.
Following Catherine Ryan Howard’s guide to GR giveaways, I ran a short promotion and listed only one copy. Readers in the US, Canada, Great Britain and Australia were eligible to enter.
Congratulations to A.M, who was the lucky winner chosen from 815 entries. A.M. hails from the Great Plains, so I hope The Musubi Murder provides a bit of welcome tropical atmosphere.
So I’ve set up my Wordpress blog, and I’m pretty happy with it (except for the fact that their restrictions on iframes and javascript means no cool Amazon or Zazzle widgets). My WP posts automatically post to Facebook, Tumblr, and Google+.
But what about Blogger, Google’s blog publishing tool? My Gmail address automatically entitles me to a Blogspot site, and I wanted to take advantage of that. I hunted for tips on autopopulating my Blogger blog with my WordPress posts, and immediately found myself neck deep in fairly technical stuff on RSS feeds.
I finally hit on a simple way to do it. Here it is:
(TL;DR: On Blogger, set up the email address for posting via email. Then on WordPress, subscribe to your blog using that email address that you just set up.)
1) Set up your Blogger site.
2) Set up your mail-to-Blogger email address. Anything you send to this address will be automatically posted on your Blogger blog. Do this by clicking “Design” (in the upper right hand corner) and then “Settings” (at the bottom of the menu on the left hand side of the screen)
3) Click “Settings,” which will open a new menu underneath. Click “Mobile and email.”
4) Select “posting using email” and think of a word to insert in the box. I put “post” in this example. Don’t put “post.” Too easy to guess, and Blogger won’t accept it.
Now every time you send something to that super-secret email address, it will automatically post on your Blogger blog. If you don’t want everything from WordPress showing up automatically, select “Save emails as draft post.” I chose “Publish email immediately” because I’m reckless like that.
Now subscribe to your Wordpress blog:
5) Go to Appearance>Widgets and Add a “Follow Blog” widget to your site if you don’t already have one.
6) Visit your WordPress site while you aren’t logged in. Use the “Follow Blog” widget to subscribe using your super-secret Blogger email address.
7) WordPress will send you a confirmation. If you selected the “Publish emails immediately” option it will post right onto your Blogger blog. Don’t be embarrassed. This just means it’s working!
8) Click “Confirm Follow” and follow the directions.
A confirmation post will appear on your Blogger blog:
9) There! It’s working. Now every time you post something to WP it will automatically be reposted on Blogger as well.
Frankie Bow’s first novel, THE MUSUBI MURDER , is available at Audible.com, Amazon.com, andiTunes.
This is not going to be your ordinary book trailer.
Darrell Gabonia of The Kellogg’s Network and DorkCore fame will be taking on The Musubi Murder as his first book trailer project.
Darrell is a writer and filmmaker from Hilo, Hawaii. After graduating from the Academy of Art University San Francisco, he spent a couple of years honing his craft in Los Angeles working with non-profit 826LA and talent management company Principato-Young.
Darrell is a co-founder of the award winning sketch comedy group Super Genius Momo and works closely with the Performing Arts Department at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. He currently has several projects in development with San Francisco based production company Dawnrunner Productions, and splits his time between Hawaii and California.
Darrell’s keen timing and offbeat humor are a perfect combination for The Musubi Murder. I can’t wait to see what he comes up with.
Frankie Bow’s first novel, THE MUSUBI MURDER , is available at Audible.com, Amazon.com, andiTunes.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that whether traditionally published or independent, authors need a Platform (also known as an online presence). I use a pen name, not to be anonymous (that plan would fall apart quickly the first time I did a talk or a book signing), but because I publish research under my real name and I need to keep the identities separate. I needed to build my new online author presence from scratch.
Never one to do things by half measures, I consumed every indie author blog and podcast I could get my hands on, and then I did my best to follow their advice. Here’s what I did. I hope this serves as a useful checklist:
1) I set up a website, following Simon Whistler’s excellent video tutorial. However: I stuck with the free and easy-to-manage wordpress.com, not the self-hosted wordpress.org recommended in the tutorial. (For excellent, free header graphics, try freepik.com.)
2) I bought several domain names and pointed each one to my WordPress.com site. I used domain.com, although I’ve also heard good things about Hover. Why more than one?
First, I wanted to be easy to find. That’s why I registered my author name (frankiebow.com), my series protagonist’s name (mollybarda.com) and the name of the first book in the Molly Barda series (musubimurder.com). Second, I wanted to keep the option of doing spinoff merchandising for some of the entities in the book series: maritime-club.com, island-confidential.com, merriemusubi.com, and bananawrangler.com. Third, when the .ninja top level domain became available. I couldn’t resist claiming musubi.ninja.
3) I set WordPress to post automatically to my other social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Google+) every time I put up a new blog post. Instructions on how to do that are here.
4) If I think a particular post is interesting enough to share broadly, I post it on a site like Reddit, Fark, or Stumbleupon. My most read post by FAR was about using IBM’s text analysis software to analyze characters’ personalities. Author interviews are popular as well, and I hope to do more of those.
5) Inspired by Elizabeth Spann Craig, I opened a Wattpad account. I’ve already posted Chapter One of The Musubi Murder. I’ll post the first three chapters (my contract allows me to post up to three chapters as a sample) and direct interested readers to the audiobook and hardcover editions.
Will all of this translate to book sales? We’ll see what happens when The Musubi Murder is released. I’ve enjoyed reading all of the information that’s out there, thanks to generous bloggers like Simon Whistler, Elizabeth Spann Craig, Joanna Penn, K.M. Weiland, Jane Friedman, Jim Kukral and Bryan Cohen. (Also: I love listening to Bryan Cohen’s voice because I imagine Phil from Better off Ted.)
Frankie Bow’s first novel, THE MUSUBI MURDER , is available at Audible.com, Amazon.com, and iTunes.
The Musubi Murder hardcover edition is available for preorder on Amazon right now. Fortunately(?) the market intelligence is already accumulating.
Frankie Bow’s first novel, THE MUSUBI MURDER , is available at Audible.com, Amazon.com, andiTunes.
What is the purpose of an author photo? It allows the reader to feel a connection with the author, of course, but the photo also communicates something about the genre of the book.
Janet Evanovich, Sue Grafton, Diane Mott Davidson and Shelley Costa write funny, PG-rated mysteries, where the violence and sex happen offstage.
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| Janet Evanovich | Sue Grafton | Diane Mott Davidson | Shelley Costa |
All four author photos feature a smile and a slight head tilt; the authors look friendly and approachable.
This kind of pose is not necessarily the best fit for all genres. You probably wouldn’t mistake Mercedes M. Yardley for a writer of cozy mysteries.
Nor does Anna Taborska seem like someone who pens madcap adventures involving cookie recipes and precocious cats.
For my author photo, I’ll be working with a talented Hawaii-based photographer. The Molly Barda mysteries are lighthearted and fairly clean, so we’ll go for something in the spirit of the first set of photos. I’m looking forward to seeing what we come up with. Stay tuned!
Frankie Bow’s first novel, THE MUSUBI MURDER , is available at Audible.com, Amazon.com, and iTunes.
The Musubi Murder audiobook is nearing completion. I’ve really enjoyed listening to the chapters as they come in. I should be well sick of the manuscript by now, so I have to give the credit to my talented (and, as you will see in a moment, very patient) producer.
In a printed book, when you have a conversation going on among three people, you’re going to need a few dialog tags. This is especially true when you’ve just introduced the characters and the reader doesn’t know them yet.
But in an audiobook, the listener can hear the different voices. All of the “said”s break up the flow of the dialog.
Unfortunately, I didn’t realize this until after Nicole had done a good amount of recording. She is now going back through the recordings and removing the superfluous dialog tags. This is beyond the call of duty, and I am extremely grateful. It’s a hassle for her, but it improves the listening experience.
Here’s an example from the print manuscript of The Musubi Murder:
“Who’s Moira?” Emma asked.
“His sister,” I said.
“What kind of Korean name is Moira?” Pat asked.
“Moira’s not a Korean name,” I said. “Why would it be a Korean name?”
“Yeah, Pat,” Emma said. “Stephen’s not a Korean name either.”
“Why would Stephen be a Korean name?” I asked.
“I didn’t say that Stephen is a Korean name. I said it’s not a Korean name.”
“All right,” I said, “why would you say it’s not a Korean name?”
Emma made an impatient, palms-up gesture.
“Because it’s not?”
“Why do you keep talking about Korean names?”
On the printed page, Emma’s words look a lot like Pat’s words or Molly’s words, so the tags help the reader to keep track of who’s speaking. But in the audiobook version, the characters sound distinct. Pat is the only male speaker; Emma is the only local. Too many “said” tags become repetitive for the listener. For the audiobook we’ll remove one or two of them.
What have I learned for the next audiobook? I’d mark in advance which dialog tags should be omitted by the narrator. I wouldn’t take them out entirely, because the narrator needs to know who is speaking, but maybe I’d strike them out to indicate they’re not to be read aloud.
And yes, I realize that this might mess me up with Whispersync. But maybe by the time the Kindle version of The Musubi Murder comes out, Amazon’s algorithm will be set up to deal with this.
Frankie Bow’s first novel, THE MUSUBI MURDER , is available at Audible.com, Amazon.com, and iTunes.
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