How to set up a Facebook author page

It is absolutely essential for all indie authors to have some kind of an online media presence. The easiest place to start, of course, is Facebook. If you're like me, pretty much everyone you know will have a Facebook page, and it is on Facebook that you'll be able to find a lot of new fans. It's also a good, user-friendly place for them to find and interact with you.

However, unless your current Facebook friends have the patience of saints (my don't - drunken confessions have informed me that I'm on quite a few blocked lists ...!) then you'll want to set up a separate page for your author name, your series, or even a major character. While your friends and family might be a good place to start in the hunt for fans and sales, they'll quickly get bored of hearing about it ... All. The. Time. Creating a separate Facebook page allows real fans to come to you without you resorting to annoying those close to you with endless posts about your books.

And it's easy as pie to do. Here I'll demonstrate while setting up a Facebook page for my latest alter-ego, village cricket short story writer, Michael White.

First of all, log in to Facebook and then go to this link to select the type of page you want to set up.

You can choose whatever type you want but for an author it's probably best to go with public figure.

Click on Choose a Category and you'll see Author in the drop down menu.

Now, give your page a name (I went with the wonderfully clunky Michael White Cricket Fiction Writer, check the terms box and then click Get Started.

Next you come to the screen below which asks for a few details.

Here you also have the option to add a external blog, website or Twitter account if you have one. For the question at the bottom I check "no" because Michael White is a pen name. I think this box is for fan sites for celebrities, but if you are the person in question then it's perfectly okay to check "yes".

When you're done, click Save Info.

You'll come to this page.

You can choose whether to add a profile picture now or later. I added a stock photo of a cricket pitch which I bought for the covers of Michael White's short stories. You can change your profile pic anytime, though. When you're done, click Save Photo or Skip to go to the next page.

The next screen gives you the option to choose the Facebook address for your page. This is the link you can use in your books to send people to your Facebook page.

I went with the one they suggested. When you're happy with it, click Set Address.

You'll be taken to your completed page.

Facebook will automatically highlight the Like button so you can be the first person to like your page, and then the area where you can invite your friends to like it.

You're finished! Now all you have to do is add stuff to your page, share it to get Likes and start posting. If you're ready for something a little more complicated, you can set up an Amazon Store for your books in the toolbar. Click here for my guide to doing it.

See, told you it was easy. Enjoy!

Any questions or comments are welcome in the comments section below. And if anyone wants to give Michael White's brand new page some love, here's the link.

Chris Ward
June 23rd 2013

How to add an Amazon Store to your Facebook Page

Take a quick look at my Facebook page. There, next to the Mailing List is a button saying "Store".

If you click on this button you go to this page, where you can see all of my books -

Why is this awesome? Well, not only can my fans easily view my bookstore and click the links to go straight to the Amazon page for each book, but the links go through my affiliate account so any purchases make me a few extra pennies.

Personally I think this is really cool, and it's pretty easy to do. In this blog I'll tell you how.

First of all, big thanks to Phyllis Zimbler Miller for this guide and YA author Elle Casey for posting this information on this thread on Kindleboards. This is basically a pictorial step-by-step guide comprised of this information.

To do this, you will need a Facebook page for your writing. That is a proper page, which people "like", not a personal page.

You will also need an Amazon Associates account. If you don't have one, sign up here.

Finally, you will need to add a Static I-Frame to your Facebook page. This is pretty easy, just click this link, the big blue button in the middle and then select the page you want to add it to. Easy.

Once you have your I-frame ready for your Facebook page, log in to your Amazon Associates account and click the "astore" button in the middle of the picture below.

In the sidebar, click on Category Pages.

Then, Add Category Page (please note, there are more options in these pictures than you'll see because I've already set a store up).

Then, Add Products.

On the next screen, choose the field you want to search and then enter your book name or ASIN. Of course, you can create a store for any products you like, not just your own books. You can see the results below when I put in one of my books. Click Add to add any products you wish. They will then appear in the Added Products box.

If you want to order your books in a certain way or add specific text, click on the book in the Added Products box on the left above, and this box will appear -

Add your order or text and click save.

When you've added all the books you wish, click on Back to Category Pages, which is at the bottom of the search results page.

Then click on Continue at the bottom of the first screen.

Next to you come a page where you can decide your colours and design, as well as give your store a name. When you're done, click Continue at the bottom of the page.

The next page you come to allows you to add extra stuff such as side bars, wishlists, and the like. I kept mine simple, but it's up to you. When you're done, click Finish & Get Link at the bottom. You're almost there!

On the next page, select the second option, "Embed my store using an inline frame". Then highlight and copy the link. To make sure your store covers the full screen, edit "width" in the link to say "100".

Now, return to Facebook. If you've already added your inline frame, it'll look like the "Welcome" button below (this is from my pen name's page).

Click it and you'll see this -

Paste the link into the box (deleting the information that you can see above first). You'll then get this rather scary message -

This terrified me, and stumped me for about twenty minutes. Don't worry, simply change "http" to "https" (maybe this is obvious to the computer types out there, but I struggle with the complexity of a typewriter ...!) The red message will immediately disappear. Click Save & Publish (the blue box on the top right) and you're done.

Now all you have to do is edit the button itself. Put your cursor over the button and you'll see a little pencil appear in the top right corner. Click it and you'll see this box -

Click "Edit Settings" and this box will appear. Now you can rename your store or at an icon or picture.

You'll remember from my first picture that I had a nice little icon for my store. This was actually a stock icon I bought from a stock photo website called Pond 5. You can do the same or add a picture of your own. Anything will do.

And you're done! Good luck with your store - I hope many people visit it (and feel free to visit mine anytime!)

Chris Ward
June 8th 2013

Don't be a Spammer

This morning I banned someone from my Facebook page. It's only the second time I've done that, and it was for the same reason - some random indie spammed me with his own Facebook page and book link without so much as the decency to even introduce himself.

Don't. Do. It.

I don't barge into a private party and start trying to sell cars to the first person I meet without so much as introducing myself first. The poor recipient would be quite within their rights to throw me straight back out the door, which is what I will do if anyone spams my Facebook page, one of my blogs, Goodreads, or anywhere else (you can do it on Twitter - I really don't care what you do there because Twitter is just one long spam feed anyway). There are no second chances.

In indie publishing, making contacts is vital. I've spent more than a year getting to know other indie writers and I've learned a lot from them. I hope some of them have learned from me. Approaching someone you don't know is just as difficult on the internet as it is in real life - if you do it correctly. It's a thousand times easier to be a dickhead and flood their inbox with your book links or post them on their Facebook wall.

If someone sends me a private message saying they've looked at my books and would I be kind enough to look at theirs in return, then there is a pretty decent chance I'll do it. I'm a nice guy. I'm far more tolerant than most people I know. And I've met some cool people this way. As a general rule I don't do the "I'll follow you if you follow me" thing. I get plenty of likes on Facebook without doing anything and in general I see no point in "liking" something I couldn't care less about. However, if you ask nicely, there's a good chance I will.

But if you post random links to my Facebook wall or write "that"s nice" (here's my link) on my posts, I'll ban you. I don't care if you're the next Charles Dickens, you're a dickhead and I'm not prepared to give you the time of day, let alone look at your book.

There are a lot of self-published writers out there of varying quality. I have a lot of time for the nice ones, regardless of how well they write, because they're following their dreams and they're not being a douche to everyone they meet on the way. I have time for those people. I'll talk to them, I'll help them out, I'll even read their books (eventually - I'm a very slow reader!).

However, there are a lot more that are pushy and spammy and nine times out of ten these people can't write for shit, almost as if the two go hand in hand. If you want to be an asshole in this business you'd better be the next Shakespeare because otherwise you'll get nowhere. Only one person out of a thousand that you spam will actually click on your book so unless its so good that they'll immediately go and tell all their friends about you rather than rolling their eyes at the spelling mistake in your first paragraph, then you have even less chance of getting noticed than if you'd just been a nice guy (or girl) in the first place.

There are ways to get noticed without spamming people. On Goodreads, for example, you can set up an event to notify the people on your friends list. They get a small, non-intrusive line on their news feed to say they've been invited and its quite easy to ignore if they're not interested. I get loads everyday, and while I ignore the vast majority I'll occasionally check one out. However, if you send people personal messages that's likely to irk them. I had some guy send me a personal message with a spammy link to his book EVERY DAY. After a week or so I told him to stop doing it. He actually refused - he said it was a social experiment and that he would be doing it for a month. Of course I blocked him, but by doing that what he achieved was negative publicity. I would rather shove chopsticks in my eyes than read his book. Just for sake of argument, I did click on it just to have a look at the Amazon Look Inside - and no surprise it was poorly written rubbish. It almost always is, because people who have not taken the time to learn correct etiquette tend not to take the time to learn correct writing either.

Building up contacts in this business is extremely important. You want people to help you and read your books. So be nice about it. Don't be a dick, or you might as well just shoot yourself in both feet and go back to bed.

Chris Ward
21th April 2013