Friday, May 17, 2019

Chelshire Inc. Presents Marketing Indieworld

Chelshire Inc. Presents

Marketing Indieworld

FEATURING
Award-winning Author's

ANGELA HAUSMAN, PH. D, WITH CAROLE P. ROMAN AND JULIE GERBER

You've written your opus. You hit publish. Now what? Well, sales won't find you. You have to market your book. And, there are charlatans out there ready to take your hard-earned money in exchange for snake oil--empty promises and little to show for their efforts. But, you don't have to face bankruptcy. You can market your book all by yourself without having to go back to school for a business degree. In fact, Angie has a Ph.D. in marketing so she brought cutting-edge marketing tactics to this book and, as an author, she knows what works in this context. Carole is an award-winning author of children's books and, under the pen name, Brit Lunden writes thrillers. Julie owns an agency with years of experience helping authors. In this book, we bring all our skills and years of experience to help you, the Indie author. We show you how to market your book with relatively inexpensive and effective marketing tools. And, when I say show, that's what I mean. We don't just give you some general advice and throw you to the wolves. We give you step-by-step instructions, templates, screenshots, and links to videos that walk you through everything you need to do to make your book marketing a success.
Purchase
Meet Angela Hausman, Ph. D.
What’s motivated you to write this book?

Well, I’ve spent my career writing, as a marketing professor, and recently made the jump into writing novels. Just like every other novelist, I had to work on marketing my books to readers, so I joined a bunch of Facebook groups, Goodreads groups, and went to a bunch of author meetup groups. Through this, I connected with authors, which was
great support for my writing journey, but I noticed a common thread in all the groups—how do you market your books? I realized that advice authors were getting was incredibly general, such as join Goodreads. That’s great advice, but beyond joining some groups and building your connections on Goodreads, what was an author doing to get more book sales? In marketing, as with everything else, the devil is in the details and no one was sharing this. Even in webinars, the advice was more of a promotion for the hosts services than true advice. Thus, there was a disconnect between what authors needed to know about marketing and what they were getting. So, several friends, including my co-authors, encouraged me to share my expertise.

How is Marketing Indieworld different from other books on the market?

Well, for one thing, I’m a nationally-recognized leader in digital marketing. I teach digital marketing and host one of the most influential blogs on marketing that focuses on digital. I have a
PhD in marketing, so I understand the concepts behind what works in digital marketing. You could say I know my stuff.

Next, I’m not writing a book to get clients. Frankly, the clients I work with are mostly midsized businesses and I bill out at $250/ hour. Not that I’m not happy to share my expertise with fellow Indie writers, but I’m not really looking to make money by providing services to them. My only goal is to help Indie authors, so I didn’t hold anything back to upsell you later.

Finally, after teaching this stuff to undergrads for decades (yes, sadly), I know how to break concepts down to their basic components. I know you have to show, not just tell (just like in writing). The book is chock full of screenshots, snippets of code you can just copy and paste, and examples to help guide you.

Why should an Indie writer buy your book?

I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t want to buy it. 
  • At $3.49 it’s a bargain
  • It’s full of links, images, screenshots, worksheets, and outlines to help you market your book
  • Increasingly, it’s even hard for authors of books published through traditional publishers to succeed without doing much of their own marketing
  • Everything is written in plain language, with a minimum of jargon so it’s easy to understand regardless of how new you are too this
  • I’ve used years of experience and hundreds of hours of research over the last decade to winnow the wheat from the chaff. I’m only giving you the best stuff and, in some cases, I’ve even arranged for discounts from providers like web hosting and design (just use the links in the book to get them).

Tell us a little more about you.

So, I live with my 2 dogs in Northern Virginia and teach at several local universities (including George Washington and James Madison). I started writing in 7thgrade; creating a series of 
sci fi short stories about a visitor from another planet. A friendly one. I received a lot of acclaim from friends, family, teachers, and fellow 7thgraders. One teacher even had me put it on as a play using my classmates as the cast.

Then, life took over; school, marriage, a job, and kids. I continued writing but it was all academic (publish or perish). About 3 years ago, I decided to try my hand at writing again, creating Buried Ladies. Before I even finished the first book, another book started taking shape and now I’m about 1/3 of the way through my 5thbook. The books are filled with a cast of characters, both good and bad. They’re dark; something I call apocalyptic thrillers because there’s not a murder mystery, there’s an existential threat to our existence in each book, such as bioterrorism in Azure’s Revenge. Some of the characters appear in multiple books, although each book highlights a different character from the cast.

What’s your writing process like?

I’m a
pantser. I don’t outline anything. I start with a threat that we might face as a people. The 5thbook is about domestic terrorism from white nationalists. You will believe this could happen as you read the story. It almost reads like a true crime novel.

I keep a notebook next to me as I write. I jot down names (I’m terrible with names and my writing experiences the same problem), characteristics like hair color, height, etc., location details, and research notes. In my second book, Scars of the Past, there was a terror plot fomented by Ukrainians. I filled pages of research on Ukrainian history and the conflict with Russia over Crimea.

How do you deal with writer’s block?

I see this all over the groups; writers complaining about writer’s block.

I’m not sure there is such a thing as writer’s block. I think it’s fear and insecurity. It’s almost like committing a thought to paper means it must be perfect. And, that’s not true. No one will see what you’ve written until you decide to show it to them. Until then, it’s between you and your writing device. So, don’t worry. Just write. If it’s terrible, throw it out. No big deal. Just write. Don’t worry about spelling or grammar, that’s what editing is for. I had a creative writing instructor in college tell me a writer needs to throw away at least 100,000 words before they write anything decent. That’s an entire novel worth of words.

Writer’s block is the writer
second guessing themselves; worrying whether their writing is good enough. It is. Just write. Even if what you’re writing is nonsense. Just write. If the inspiration gods aren’t smiling down today, just write words without worrying if they fit together. Write jumbled letters. It doesn’t matter. Just write.

Treat writing like it’s a job. Set aside time to write and use that time to write something, anything. But, give yourself permission to play hooky sometimes.

If I get really stuck on a scene, I just move to the next scene or write stuff I know is no good, stuff I’ll have to cull out later. Then, when my time to write is over, I take long walks to clear my mind and listen to what my characters tell me. Then, I write that.

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State Of Publishing

Carole P. Roman and R.L. Jackson discuss publishing, magazine news and other topics dealing with the indie publishing industry.