What can I do, right now, today, to increase my sales?

I was sitting there the other day, having finished writing for the evening, and I found myself staring at my rather static reports on Amazon, hoping against hope that if I refreshed them one of the numbers would click over to a slightly higher number, meaning I'd made an elusive sale.

I tried it.

The numbers stayed the same.

So I went to Amazon and browsed a few of my book pages, reading a few reviews telling me how awesome I am, and then I went back to my sales reports and saw that nothing had changed.

Of course it hadn't. Because all I had been doing was wasting time. It would have been as much use for my books to go and browse Yahoo for half an hour. I was procrastinating, and no amount of staring forlornly at my books would make them sell.

I needed to do something to make my books sell, but after two failed blog promotions over the Xmas period I was out of cash, and I was saving up my one chance at the big daddy, Bookbub, for when the final Tube Riders book got released.

So what could I do, without spending any money, to improve my sales?

Lots of things, actually.

First of all, let's redefine that sentence.

Let's change it to what can I do to improve my reach?

No matter how hard you try, without a gun pointed at someone's head you can't really force them to buy your books. But what you can do is start to persuade them, and part of persuading them is to let them know that your books are there in the first place. And part of letting them know that your books are there, is letting them know that YOU are there in the first place.

There are lots of ways to do this without being an annoying spammer, something I really hate.

Obviously, the zero, the most important thing, would be to write more. But you're tired. I understand. There are days when I'm tired from WIP in the morning followed by a full day at work, followed by cleaning the house, followed by more work on the WIP. I just want to do something mindless for a while.

So here, are a few options.

1. Write a blog. Exactly what I'm doing now. Write something that will be out in the public domain. You can write something to help people (as I'm hoping this will do), you can write a diary, or you can write a book or a movie review. Anything. What did you do today? Me, I wrote in the morning, then I taught a class for a couple of hours, then I went to the supermarket, then I came home. Yeah, sorry, not very interesting, but I took a couple of pictures of my cat today, so I could post them if I wanted. Better than nothing, and she's pretty cute.

Of course, if you don't have a blog, start one. Get a blogger like this, or a Wordpress. They're free. Set up your blog like mine, with all your links down the side so that anyone stumbling across it gets a look at your books. They might not buy any, in fact they probably won't - I know exactly how many people buy mine through the links, and its not many, haha). But, whereas you have perhaps a 5% chance of someone buying a book from a blog post, you have zero chance of them buying it if they can't see it at all. 5% is a lot more than 0.

2. You can post your book on Facebook. See that Facebook link under your book on Amazon? Click it and post it. Who cares if most people ignore it. You're not spamming because it's YOUR Facebook page and on your Facebook page you can post whatever the hell you damn well like. A link to your book is going to be way more interesting that some idiot writing something like "OMG me bestie just dyed her hair blue. Sick, innit?" and enough people do that. What's the worst that can happen? They block you. Oh, what a shame.

DO NOT post your link on other people's pages. THAT is spamming, and that sucks.

And while you're at it, I assume you have a Facebook page set up for your book? No? Here's how.  Do it. Then share your page on your main page, and start collecting followers.

3. Is your book on Goodreads? If not, then get yourself set up there. Goodreads is a site for readers, so the usual spam rules apply - in short, don't be a douche. Once you're on there, join a few groups and start some conversations. You don't have to talk about your book - in fact, in many cases its best not to - but if you're interesting people might want to find out more about you.

4. Write some stuff on Twitter. If you don't have one, go and set one up. You're allowed to follow up to 2000 people straight off the bat, and there is absolutely no reason why you should have less than this, unless you're waiting for your follower count to rise. Here's a few tips on the best ways to utilize Twitter from my friend and fellow author Kristie Haigwood. Follow those rules and you're well on your way. Again, if you just post endless links to your books people will likely ignore you, but if you write normal things from time to time people might take an interest and start a conversation. And who knows where that might lead ...

5. Next thing. Do you have freebies, either permafrees or books currently free through KDP Select? Get to Author Marketing Club and start advertising them. Fill out all the free book submission tools that your book meets the requirements for. Sure, they might not post it, but they definitely WON'T post it unless you ask. Just the way things work, that ...

6. Okay, so those sites are asking for a certain number of reviews? Start trying to get some then. Email book bloggers (a good list is here), or post your book on the Making Connections page on Goodreads. Again, no one might want it, but you don't know unless you try.

7. Are all your books in KDP Select? If not, then there is absolutely no reason why they shouldn't be available through other vendors, such as Apple or Barnes & Noble. If you're in the US you can go direct, but if not, go to Smashwords or Draft to Digital and start uploading. You're missing out on potential sales.

So, there are a few ideas to get you started. As a disclaimer, there is no guarantee that any of the above will get sales for you, but if you don't try, you never know. The biggest thing to remember is that if you want a career you have to treat it like a career. Careers last a long time, usually until retirement or death (although you might be able to publish to Amazon from the afterlife, they're pretty good at anything else!). So think long-term. If you set up your Facebook author's page today (I have three, for each of my pen-names), you could set yourself a goal of say 200 likes by the end of the year. Or if you have Twitter, try using the tips above to get yourself 5000 followers.

The key is to be proactive. As a friend of mine often says, it doesn't matter how many books you have, they won't sell themselves.

Best of luck!

Chris Ward
January 11th 2013

What Makes a Good Character and Avoiding Steve Syndrome

(Note: Originally published on my main blog, A Million Miles From Anywhere in November 2012. Apologies to readers who've seen this before - this is it's new home and I'll be bringing you new content soon)

What makes a good character?

I’ve been reading a couple of books recently (yes, really) and a couple of thoughts came to mind regarding characters, their development, and the empathy readers have with them.

In one book I read a few months ago, a YA dystopia, the male lead’s only recognizable feature was his spiky hair. On top of this he appears to be good-looking.  No surprise there. The female lead is a teenage girl who appears to be Bella out of Twilight with a different name. Several reviewers have mentioned “great characters”. Um, why? The guy is a TV presenter transposed into a sci-fi novel. The girl is a high-school girl of regular attractiveness and intelligence who will obviously at some point get with the guy. There’s nothing at all that makes either of them special or makes them stand out.

And perhaps here we have the answer.

Do readers, particularly young adult readers, merely want a character that they can pretend to be? So that they can pretend to be in the book itself, interacting with the other characters as if they were real?

Another recent book I read, an acknowledged sci-fi classic, had a review bemoaning the lack of character development. The book was set on a foreign planet, and revolved around a guy finding out what was going on in his world. Which he did, and it was great. Why would I need the guy to have some kind of big change in his life? The story wasn't just about the guy, it was about the whole world around him.

Another issue I have is with empathy. Matt Cassidy, the central character in The Man Who Built the World (that's him looking miserable on the cover), is an alcoholic, borderline wife-beater who hates pretty much everything. He’s intentionally detestable, in fact I went out of my way to give him no redeeming features. The point of the book is such that through his story you discover why he is how he is, and whether he can find redemption. You're not supposed to like him.

I once had a blogger pull out of reviewing the book because they couldn’t identify with him. While I fully respect the reviewer’s opinion this pleased me in a certain way because I don’t want my readers to identify with him. I want them to pity or hate or be repulsed by him.

I don’t write books with swimwear models or high school nice guys for characters. If you find one, you can be sure he or she won’t last long. Charles de Molay, star of my favorite of my unpublished novels, Hooks, is a cripple. Dan Barker in Head of Words is a nutjob.  Even the Tube Riders have their issues. Marta - the only one close to being good-looking, hardly ever gets to wash and her dreadlocks are a case of more grime than intention. Switch has, for want of a better expression, a fucked up eye, and Paul is balding and overweight. It’s not just about their looks, either, but their actions.  In a lot of books nothing seriously bad ever happens to the main characters, or they never do anything bad, take your pick. In Tube Riders, Marta sleeps with guys to pay her rent (or at least she did before the book starts). Paul does even worse. Switch kills without thinking whether his victim deserved it or not.

A reviewer recently said my book contained “real people”. This was perhaps the biggest compliment someone could ever give me. It doesn't matter if they liked it or not, they gotit.  In real life people don’t always do the right thing, and they certainly aren’t always good-looking. For every Che Guevara (cool enough to spawn a billion t-shirts) or Aung Sung Suu Kyi (gorgeous - at least in her youth, damn) there are hundreds of thousands of 'heroes' that are nothing much to look at. It is totally possible for someone who isn’t cool or an oil painting to have an adventure, to be a hero.

So what do I think makes a good character?

I used to suffer from something I call Steve Syndrome. I would have a couple of main characters who were more distinctive then everyone else would be a Steve (apologies to anyone called Steve!). This would be a character who had no real features or definition and often a generic name (the first character I identified as having this problem, in my third novel, Resort, was called Steve - hence the name). In Tube Riders, both Paul and Simon were originally Steves.  Marta and Switch were always pretty well-defined, but I had to make a real effort to make Simon and Paul distinct. Paul I made fat and more unattractive, while with Simon I went the other way, making him more feminine, almost androgynous.

Therefore, the first thing that I believe is important is memorability (is that even a word?!). A good character has to be memorable. And not just by having a cute smile - that’s not memorable, it’s generic - they have to have some feature or mannerism (or both) which makes them stand out.  It doesn’t have to be good, and it doesn’t have to be bad.

Also extremely important is voice. People talk differently. Some people swear, some people don’t.  Some people say certain words more often than others. Some people talk in long sentences, others talk in short, clipped phrases. You should (within reason) be able to write a three- or four- way dialogue without using any identifying dialogue tags yet still have the reader know who is speaking each time. If you can do that, you’ve got it.

Also very important to me (as you’ll notice from my character descriptions above) is flaws. I hate good-looking, perfect characters. Boooorrrriing. Have you ever met anyone who was perfect? (Actually, I have met a couple of people who were, and god they were dull).  Perfect characters are only allowed in comedy, because their very perfection can make them hilarious (see my novella series, Beat Down!, for an example).

So what do people think? Obviously few people agree with me. I’ve sold roughly 1000 books this year so far. How many has Stephanie Meyer sold? A billion? Even the book I was complaining about above has probably sold double what I've sold. So, I’m likely wrong (except in my own head of course!), but I’d love to hear your ideas on what you think makes a good character.

CW

June 19th 2013

(originally published 27 Nov 2012)

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