Can the Audiobook Save B&N?
This week in Publishing & Technology we’ll be talking about audiobooks. As Yasmine Askari reported on the Digital Book World last week, Barnes & Noble recently announced the launch of a Nook audiobooks app for iphone and ipad, as well as a new website to support the app with more than sixty thousand audio titles available to download without the purchase of a subscription. I’ll leave the prognosticating around whether or not this will be the magic bullet that saves Barnes & Noble from the same fate as Borders to smarter industry analysts. I’m more concerned with the audiobook as a product and it’s future in publishing.
My first attempt to get into audiobooks revolved around my year and a half stint covering the Inland Northwest territory as a B2B salesperson calling on grocery stores from the eastern side of the Washington Cascades all the way to the Billings, Montana – a vast, beautiful, and relatively empty landscape. I would sometimes drive as much as six hours in between sales calls, this in the days before rental car stereos came with audio jacks and in a land with almost no local radio signals. It was dull. So, I tried to spice up the windshield time by bringing along one of those suitcase-sized collection of audiobook CDs.
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Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent. You can also check out her marketing skills on Fiverr. Her author marketing book, The Extroverted Writer, is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
I barely have any Twitter followers!
No one tweets me! Heck, no one even retweets me!
My Tweets fall on deaf ears!
Have you ever wondered why Twitter isn’t working? Have you ever stared blankly at your Twitter home page in a painful attempt to write something that is reTweetable? Favorite-able? Enjoyable? And then have you whittled your overly long message down to 140 characters (link included!) and sent it out to the masses only to go…unnoticed?
If this fits you, know that you’re not alone! Many struggle with Twitter, and it’s understandable. We treat it like we treat Facebook. We throw something out there and wait for the interactions to roll in.
But Twitter isn’t like Facebook. With Twitter, you have to be far more relational.
It’s a scary thing to promise marketing results, because let’s face it…marketing is a gamble each and every time. So I was a bit hesitant when I set up my Fiverr account. I felt fairly confident that I could (and can) provide social media copy that gets results, but I had doubts. I didn’t want to fail. I didn’t want to go back to my clients and tell them that I don’t know how to help them. That I’ve done my best and my best isn’t working.
But eventually, I put my fears aside, created my page, and told a few people about my account.
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Thursdays with Amanda: Should I Have a Book Website?
Last week I identified some web options for authors looking to create a website. Shortly after, I received an email, asking me if I would consider talking about book websites. And I’m happy to oblige.
Many authors wrongly assume that by creating a site dedicated to their book, they will generate sales. But I’ve never ever seen this work. Sure, it may feel like you’re really nailing the marketing thing by having a book site, and it may look impressive and make you seem like you’ve got things under control.
But a book site is no different than an author website or a blog or anything else that you create and then put up on the Internet. NO ONE WILL VISIT THE SITE UNLESS THEY KNOW THAT IT EXISTS.
And furthermore, for those who DO visit the site, they certainly won’t revisit if they don’t have a reason to. Why? Content on these sites is very stagnant. There is usually one draw to get people there (maybe they clicked on an ad or were promised a quiz or a download), but once that bait has been taken, there is no reason for them to return. I know that I certainly don’t spend my time visiting book websites. Do you?
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PLANS: for an author website, you would probably only need the Hatchling or Baby plans.
COST: Hatchling is $3.96/month when you order 36 months. Baby is $6.36/month. They also try to sell you other things like web backup, SEO help, and site security. The domain is roughly $12.95/yr should you purchase it from them.
PLANS: shared hosting plans: for an author website, you’d want the Plus Plan or the Business Pro plan. WordPress hosting plan: for an author website, the Blogger plan looks great.
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Alight, folks. Here is round one of analyzing the various website hosting services that were recommended to me. All in the name of finding the PERFECT fit for an author site.
Now remember, I don’t really know much about tech stuff. I’m your run-of-the-mill person who can stumble through it without totally understanding what’s going on. So, my analysis reflects that! I’m sure there will be important things that I’m going to miss, and if you spot them, be sure to let me know! Especially if I have missed an important item that would be a deciding factor for an author website.
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A funny thing happened the moment I joined MacGregor Literary. Okay, maybe it wasn’t the moment I joined. Could have been a moment or two later.
Due to what was probably a massive dose of ageism and the fact that I knew how to blog on WordPress (whoopty-do), I was soon the de facto knower of all things tech. So, whenever our website broke, the solution was to call Amanda. Or the posts weren’t showing up like they should–call Amanda. Or we needed to set up some kind of new account or change something on our site or figure out why in the world Twitter was being crazy–call Amanda.
I know little-to-nothing about tech stuff. I can’t write or read HTML. I have no idea what “Nameservers” actually means. Or if I’ve even spelled it correctly. I can barely navigate GoDaddy (in my defense, it’s the least intuitive, clunkiest website ever), and I’ve just now gotten the hang of a few website building tools through WordPress…and only because I painstakingly replicated what I saw a REAL webmaster do.
And yet…I’m one of the go-to tech people.
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Websites…every author should have one. They are your central hub; your validation point. They are what will tell the world that you’re up and running and serious about this writing thing and that you aren’t going anywhere soon. All because you have a website.
It may seem silly, but that’s how we view these online spaces. They have a way of making everything OFFICIAL in a way that Facebook and Twitter and Google+ can’t. Weird, yes. But it’s true. I mean how many times have you googled a band, a company, a service provider and winced at the fact that while they may have a million Yelp recommendations or a slew of Facebook follows, they don’t have a site?
There’s something about a website…it’s like an online stamp of approval. And so yes, every author should have one. In the past I’ve talked about the components of a website, and I also touch on this in my book, but I wanted to provide a down and dirty list of 5 MUSTS FOR AN AUTHOR WEBSITE.
My hope is that you’ll spend the weekend adjusting your site to hit on each of these five things.
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Some weeks ago, I talked about keywords and PPC advertising. My husband, who used to be Google-certified (before he switched gears to work in the hobby game industry!), agreed to answer whatever questions you could throw at him to the best of his ability. Remember, his knowledge base is a few years old, and I’m sure things have changed. But I’m also sure that his insight is valuable for any author thinking about doing a PPC ad campaign!
1. Can you talk about what you did for clients?
PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising are those ads that are at the top and/or to the side of the search results page on Google (Bing has it too, but I didn’t work with theirs very much). I created and managed these ads for my clients using the Google AdWords program.
Every time anyone uses Google to search for something, PPC ads are triggered based on the words they used to search, also known as keywords. A keyword then tells your Google AdWords account to show the ads that you have created that are linked to that keyword. Each time someone clicks on an ad, you are charged for that click based on the bid you have put on that keyword.
2. How much does a solid PPC campaign usually cost?
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