So You Want to Self Publish: Stage Four

STAGE FOUR: BECOME EASILY ACCESSIBLE - WHERE CAN YOUR READERS FIND YOU?

Last chapter I talked about creating an online presence by joining writing based websites. Let’s delve a little deeper into it here and talk about how your readers can find you. Early on in your writing journey it is a very smart decision to create a Facebook author page. Everyone and their mom is on Facebook and the majority of the news, real or fake is housed on that website—what better way to connect with your readers? This is a great place to post up teasers, excerpts, cover reveals, giveaways, reviews and more. Another really nice benefit to Facebook is the advertising aspect, but we will round back to that later.

Find other authors to follow and even bloggers! Facebook is chalked full of book bloggers who are looking to review the next best thing. Get ahead of the game by researching them and liking their pages! Try to use hashtags as often as possible to have a bigger reach. #ManCrushMonday, #TeaserTuesday, and #ThrowbackThursday are some of my favorites! If you are into reading a lot and want to let your followers know what you are currently hooked on, another hashtag that would be beneficial is #SpotlightSaturday. Which could also be used to introduce your followers to another fellow indie author!

Twitter is another amazing resource for writers, readers, bloggers, reviewers, agents, and publishers. They have Twitter pitches that you can take part in and if you follow the right people, you could really put your name out there. Make sure not to be obnoxious though and over sell yourself. It’s awesome to announce a new book release on Twitter, but don’t post updates on Twitter every time that have to do with your books ranking or every time a great review comes through…remember it is not all about you!

Now, let’s talk about your website. You want a place your readers can go to learn more about you and your writing journey and what better place than your own site? Wix is a pretty easy website to use and allows the user to create an engaging website for free. I know a lot of people who have used Wix and said it was very user friendly.

I chose to go another route myself. I’ve always had a blog where I shared my feelings…but when I started getting serious about writing I completely transformed my blog to share my books and my writing journey. I use Blogspot which I have always found to be easier to maneuver than Wordpress, but they are pretty similar in being user friendly. One of the things I was able to do on Blogspot was create other pages (tabs) that take my visitors to my books or my about me section. I basically use Blogspot dually as my blog and website to connect with readers. It is free, easy to use, and I think the interface is attractive.  I am able to update my followers on what I am working on while also giving them the website feel to explore my books.