Jenn Lessmann One of the first rules of marketing any indie author learns is to identify your ideal reader. You build an avatar of the person you’re writing for: their age, gender, socioeconomic status, interests, habits, and anything else you can think of that will help you visualize and personalize your audience. Then you use […]
Chelle Honiker As an indie author, your imagination is boundless, conjuring fantastical worlds, intricate plots, and memorable characters. Yet the reality of managing your indie author business often paints a different picture—one of a cluttered desk and digital spaces teeming with disparate ideas, scattered notes, endless to-do lists, and burgeoning files of research materials and […]
Gill Fernley Your book is finally finished, and it’s been edited to within an inch of its life. But you’re not quite ready to publish yet. As well as a quality, genre-specific cover, you’re going to need to get your book formatted for every way you want to publish it: e-book, paperback print, large print, […]
Michael La Ronn Your backlist is a vital part of your author career because it’s always available. A book you wrote ten years ago may seem like old news to you, but it will be just as fresh as it was on launch day to readers who find it today. Backlists take the pressure off […]
Content creation for social media can be fun and engaging, but it can also be time consuming and tedious. Batching content creation—focusing on one step in the creation process for several projects at once rather than finishing one project before moving to the next—reduces task switching and saves you time and brain power as you […]
Wendy Van Camp Ever wanted to find a single virtual space where readers could chat, you could give presentations, and you could hold online book launches or other events? Welcome to Discord! Discord is a place of many “servers,” or communities. Each one offers threaded text conversation and the ability to talk in real time […]
10 Tips for: Threads If you have previous experience with X, originally Twitter, Meta’s new text-based social media app for Instagram users, Threads, will feel familiar to you. With similar content-sharing capabilities and a limit of five hundred characters per post, the focus, as the name implies, is creating conversation threads with followers on topics […]
In the hushed solitude of the writer’s room, the clatter of keys is the only sound. The author weaves worlds from nothing but creativity and caffeinated determination, crafting tales that possess the power to transport readers to distant realms. Yet a specter lurks, threatening to shatter this tranquil image. Its name? Marketing. Often a daunting […]
Visual storytelling is arguably the most powerful medium used by creators on social media today. It has gained immense popularity in recent years due to its opportunities for enhanced engagement, audience building, brand building, and content versatility, and nearly every social media platform has taken advantage. YouTube Shorts, Facebook and Instagram Reels, and TikTok videos […]
Many writers in the indie community know the AI generative writing app Sudowrite (https://sudowrite.com) for its ability to serve as an always-there assistant in the writing process. The program runs on a subscription model based on the number of generated words per month and markets itself as “the … AI writing partner you always wanted,” […]
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the organic method of driving traffic to your website, as well as to your other channels. As opposed to targeting audiences with paid ads, SEO allows you to utilize keywords, content creation, and links to create meaningful metadata that will place your site in potential readers’ search results and drive […]
Whether it’s your alpha or beta readers, your advance review copy (ARC) readers, or your editor, there are plenty of situations in which authors need to share their work with others before it’s published. Doing so securely and easily can be daunting, especially if the person you need to share with uses a different program […]
Unlock a world of creativity and communication with the integrated tools of Google Workspace. Once a free platform for writers on a budget and not thought to be useful, Google’s ecosystem has matured. More and more writers are turning to it as their platform of choice. Anywhere you need to go, Google is there with […]
The social media platform with the biggest potential for 2023—and the foreseeable future—is YouTube, according to marketing guru Adam Erhart. It’s the second most visited platform in the world, and over the past three years, YouTube’s partner program has paid out $30 billion to content creators. BookTube is a thriving subset of YouTube channels that […]
Generative AI text and art programs may be receiving the most attention right now, but they aren’t the only ways authors can use AI technology. Released in 2020, OpenAI’s GPT-3 large language model made possible many of the text AI services that authors use today, such as Jasper.ai and Sudowrite. GPT-3 was also the language […]
Since Open AI’s ChatGPT was released last November, it’s arguably become the most talked about bot since the T-800. But before we face the inevitable future in which we must choose to either embrace our robot overlords or battle sentient toasters, we have an opportunity to teach this real-life HAL 9000 to serve the good […]
More than nineteen years since it launched, Facebook is still the largest social media platform, with three billion users in January 2023, according to DataReportal (https://datareportal.com/essential-facebook-stats). But organic reach on Facebook Pages is declining as paid traffic takes over user’s feeds. According to Hootsuite, the average organic Facebook Page post now sees engagement from 0.07 […]
Twitter is a unique social media platform built on brevity, requiring users to limit posts to only 280 characters at a time. But a writer can pack plenty into these tiny tweets. For many authors, Twitter has become the cornerstone of their author platform, their way of getting the word out for a book launch […]
As authors, we know how valuable time is. However, this non-renewable resource tends to slip between our fingers when it comes to accomplishing tasks we lack either the time or expertise to complete. Outsourcing tasks by using a freelance network platform like Fiverr can help save you time and money and prevent you from spinning […]
Planners can be an excellent investment of your time and money, helping you create effective goals and build actionable plans. But with so many options available, it’s important to research which planner will work best for your unique writing life. Ahead of the new year, we’re breaking down ten things every author should keep in […]
Roughly six years ago, a well-known Contemporary Romance author organized a book promotion. She posted the invite to participate in a Facebook group and opened it up to all authors, writing that she remembered her beginnings in the author world and that nobody would be excluded because their mailing lists were too small. Those who […]
Indie authors often consider the valid option of going wide and publishing on other platforms beyond Amazon. But with it comes a lot of work adapting your book formatting and spending time uploading to multiple platforms. At least, it used to. Draft2Digital is a self-publishing aggregator, allowing authors to publish a book automatically on multiple […]
Alice Briggs Since early 2021, indie authors have had the ability to create Amazon A+ Content to help promote their books. This bonus content on a book’s product page had already been available for traditional publishing houses for some time and had proven its merit—in 2015, during a ninety-day study of 134,000 products, Amazon found […]
Full disclosure: Canva is my friend. This user-friendly graphic design app is similar to Photoshop or Affinity. I use it for Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and my newsletter. A free account with the site can be great for mood boards, meme-making, and book cover design. For an annual $120 subscription, Canva Pro also […]
Patreon, an online platform, allows people to financially support creatives, including authors, through a monthly tiered membership. It offers an excellent option for any indie author looking to diversify their income and create a new revenue stream. But how do you optimize your profile on the platform for maximum returns on your time investment so […]
You’ve finally written “The End,” and it’s now time for the next stage in prepping your manuscript for publication: Find some beta readers who will take your story and help you make it better. But what’s a beta reader, where do you find these mythical beings, and how can you make the most of them? […]
Aside from writing and publishing a new book, email marketing is often touted as the key to many authors’ success. Whether you send regular emails weekly or monthly or use list-building tactics like newsletter swaps, group promos, and reader magnets, there’s little point in spending all that time creating great content if it’s not getting […]
Aside from book updates, newsletter swaps, and group promos, you might struggle to keep coming up with fresh content ideas for your newsletter. You will need to take time to figure out what your audience responds to and to build a relationship with them so you learn what makes them click on links, reply to […]
No doubt you’re reading this, hoping we’ll divulge the ultimate secret to getting accepted for a BookBub Featured Deal. And of course, we’re going to talk about it. But there’s far more to BookBub than just that. 1) Snag a BookBub Featured Deal Well, we have to start with this one. Sadly, we can’t guarantee […]
Facebook can be a great place for authors to meet and get to know other authors and readers. It’s easy to post and to add a variety of information to your posts, including emoticons, photos, and videos, how you’re feeling and what you’re doing, check-ins, and more to give people an idea of who you […]
Hello! I’m Indie Annie, and I would love to send you a copy of this month’s issue of Indie Author Magazine. Just join our email list and I’ll drop it in your inbox!
