I’ve spent the last few weeks migrating my website from WordPress.com to a self-hosted WordPress.org site. The old site was perfectly serviceable, but the self-hosted site lets me do more things. I can have different headers on different pages and posts (like the one at the top of this page). I can display t-shirts and coffee mugs from Zazzle in a nice grid.
I can use MyBookTable for more book display options.
And I can display Rafflecopter widgets right on the page, so readers can follow the contest in real time. Here’s where you can enter to win your choice of Professor Molly mystery, in your choice of format.
Here are my reflections on what marketing tactics have and have not worked for me.
The publishing industry is changing so quickly that business plans become obsolete almost as soon as they’re written.
My conclusion? Community is everything. Authors have to help one another. And the “sure things” aren’t, necessarily.
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.
Set up your custom email address
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.
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.
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.
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