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The world of writing and selling books is an ever changing chameleon these days.  There are many ways to get your book into the public hands, whether publishing with big publishers, small press or even independently. And it’s been my joyful experience that today the author has so much more input into the look and marketing of their book. (Though not always as much as they’d like or want. lol)

Sometimes, however, we find our sales not as we, the author, would like to see. Though some of this could be due to marketing shortcomings, other elements could also come into play as well…the cover, blurb, price, and the writing itself.

Enter…Why is My Book Not Selling - http://booknotselling.blogspot.com/ … a blogspot started by Victorine Lieske, author of best-selling novel Not What She Seems. This is an extremely helpful tool to help authors examine these very elements.

Authors can submit their books, offering the cover, blurb and the beginning chapter of the book and receive critiques from Victorine as well as from her loyal followers. This site is not for the author who cannot take criticism, as the critiques are honest and quick to point out the flaws they see. But for the author who only wants to produce a better product and enhance his or her sales, this is a valuable tool, definitely worth of a look.

Visit Victorine at http://booknotselling.blogspot.com/ and either offer up your own critiques on our fellow author’s work or submit your book to find out how you could sell more today!

Thanks for stopping by.

C.K. Volnek


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Happy Halloween! I hope you all have a ghoulishly good holiday. Today I would like to welcome a guest to my blog. Jo Linsdell is a freelance writer and author. She also organises a free, annual, online event called PROMO DAY for people in the writing industry dedicated to promoting, networking and learning. Welcome Jo!

                                                                      Social Media Marketing: When and how for the best results

                                                                                                             By Jo Linsdell

The growth of the internet and in specific the increase in the number of social media sites, means that the potential for online marketing possibilities is unlimited. Best yet most are completely free.

Given the large number of social media sites available and the number of users each of them has, it’s important to have a marketing plan in order to get the best results,

You’ll obviously want to consider your short and long term goals, your target audience and the type of content you’d like to post.

Something else you should keep in mind is which days and times have the most action on each site.

In a recent study Facebook showed that it’s 500M+ users are most active on weekdays at 11:00 a.m., 3:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m. ET. Twitter users are 3 times more active than average social media users according to another study and another shows Thursday and Friday are the most active days on Twitter, whilst 10-11 pm is the most active hour.

Another study showed that a video on YouTube gets 50% of its views in the first 6 days it is on the site, according to data from analytics firm TubeMogul. After 20 days, a YouTube video has had 75% of its total views.

Although you’ll want to have posts going out throughout the other days too, by being active on these busy periods you increase your chances of being seen by a larger audience.

As for Social news and bookmarking sites, Reddit.com is the most active.

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Graph from http://www.alexa.com

Other ways to get noticed include using hashtags with keywords and tagging people or pages on your posts. A popular use of a hashtag on twitter is 
#followfriday or #FF.


The use of applications to enhance your profiles and posts can also help capture readers.

 
The most important thing to being successful in social media marketing though is to keep it social. If you just promote the whole time people will stop listening. Visit other peoples profiles and leave comments, ‘like’ and ‘retweet’ others posts, ask questions and answer others questions where you can.