Readers Want To Know The Author

We've talked in the blog before about how the major difference between those who sell two copies of a book and those who sell two million copies of a book is that the person who sells two million copies has a perceived relationship with more people. Even if that person has never met his or her two million fans, the fans feel like they are familiar with the person and nothing sells more than familiarity.

To read that blog post, go here:

http://www.makemoneywriting21.blogspot.com/2012/10/why-some-authors-sell-2-copies-of-their.html

In the 21st century, there are more ways than ever before to let your potential readers get to know a little bit about you. Social networking and website design tools make it very possible to put your own creative spin on a website, blog, or profile. And it also brings an interesting twists to the things people consider when deciding to make purchases.

For a long time people expected a certain level of pure professionalism--no goofing around, no sense of creative self, just a product and a proposal and a price. And then the customer or potential buyer made their decision. It was simple, it was direct, it was business as usual...and it was boring. It became so boring that in recent years the average customer/buyer/reader has been trained to ignore all sorts of advertisements that companies pay thousands and millions of dollars for. While maintaining professional standards is more important than ever--the customers, the readers, the people want more. They want to know the who behind the people who are doing things. They want to know what drives a person, what motivates them and how they can relate to them. This is why DVDs are often loaded with behind the scenes specials and extras. This is why since Game Of Thrones became big on HBO interviews of George R.R. Martin have been surfacing everywhere. And this is a great opportunity for authors writing in the 21st century.

Author Commentary: Sometimes what an author has to say about his or her own work can be just as interesting to a potential reader as the work itself. Sharing a little bit about what motivated the author to write the material and what the author was trying to do can be the insight readers need to want to find out more about the work.

Personal Q and A's: I would stress this as being different from interviews because the questions would come from the readers rather than a commentator, magazine or host. Readers love these because they feel very connected to the author--after all, the author is taking time out of their day to answer questions from the readers and if you happen to answer a question from a particular reader odds are that reader will be a fan for life.

Interviews: A more rigid questions and answers where the person doing the questioning is a host, another author, a publisher or even the author themselves who put forth questions that they chose to answer.

And in the 21st century, there are more means than ever at our disposal to show that personal touch and get our readers to know us:

YouTube: Youtube and other video websites allow us to post our own videos without permission from anyone. Why not take advantage of this to the fullest extent possible? Video interviews go over quite well.


 

Audio Files: Some authors aren't comfortable on video. That's fine, because podcasts, radio segments and audio interviews with the author's voice answering questions and talking to the reader can be almost if not quite as powerful. They take less time than videos and can still show readers how much you care about them.

Pictures: This works particularly well if you have live events for your work. Potential readers online love to see pictures of author readings/book signings, and even the author hard at work. Text on a wall is boring, pictures say thousands of works.

Of course the benefit to all these methods is that they help the author greatly in handling the job of connecting to their audience while leaving the author with time to do their writing. After all, if an author has to spend 24/7 connecting with people it becomes exhausting and they will never have time to actually be an author and give the fans the material they love. The great thing about utilizing all these means in the 21st century is that you do the work once, and they do the work for you indefinitely.

The $7500 Dollar-A-Month Poetry Blog

              You are probably wondering if you read this right. 7500 dollars in one month for poetry? Poetry? The art that no one pays for? Well, I've seen it happen personally. It's real, it works, it just takes a little bit of creativity. The prime example that comes to mind is someone we shall call Julie.

                Julie was a poet--she mostly wrote love poetry. True it might be sappy, love poetry certainly isn't original, and maybe people won't go out to the book store to buy volumes of it. But on the Internet? You wouldn't BELIEVE how many people search for them when they are in this mood or that mood--same reason why so many love songs on the radio become greatest hits. At first, Julie just started a simple free blog to post her poetry. She tagged it properly so it would show up in search engines and after only a month or two she had thousands of people viewing her work.

                That's not even remotely close to where it ends though. People started writing to her in response to her poetry--some people started showing her poetry of their own. So she decided to open submissions for some poetry that she would post on her blog--the submissions came pouring in. It was around this time that she signed up for google adsense--in case you haven't heard of it yet, it's a program that bloggers and website owners can use to place advertisements on the sidebars of their websites--for every click a reader gives on one of the ads, the owner of the blog/website makes a few cents. And google adsense is just one of many that can do this. For the first couple months, the adsense only came out to be a little bit--but it was still some extra money.

                It was around this time that Julie noticed Feb was only a short period away--we all know whats in Feb--Valentine's day--the time when love poetry is most desired. Julie went to a free printing service called lulu--put together a collection of her own poetry that she poised to set up for sale during valentines day. Beyond that--she set up a contest offering a modest prize in the form of a gift card to the winner for those who would send poems for her blog and she used a free polling service to post the finalist poems she selected and have her readers vote on it--the voting would only be open the week before valentines day and the winner would be announced on Feb 14th itself. She also assembled an anthology of love poetry based on the poetry she had published on her blog from other writers (with their permission of course) and posted dozens of her own poems and their poems on the blog as free samples.

                It gets even better. Flowers are very popular during valentines day--arrangements, stuffed bears, etc are all the rave and people want to send them to their loved ones. Julie found out that some websites that offer delivery service also offer affiliate marketing--that is, she signs up for their program and posts direct links to specific packages on her blog in the sidebars--and if anyone who orders the products through her site she gets a portion of the proceeds. Knowing just how many people would be coming to her blog, and knowing that the poetry would put people into lovey dovey moods, she set it up so that it would only take one or two clicks for them to purchase her book, the anthology and any of a number of arrangements.

                The bottom line? Her website had over 35,000 hits in the two weeks before Valentine's day and the combination of sales from the two books and the affiliate marketing from the flowering websites brought her in over 7500 dollars. Not bad for one month's work. Now I know one could argue that it took her at least 6 months to set up the blog in a position in which it could drive this home--but the key to remember here is that it was only the month leading up to Valentine's day that Julie even put all that much work into what she was doing. The rest of the time she was just doing what she always did best--writing her poetry and sharing it via a well positioned blog with the rest of the world.

                And here is the point to remember--lots and lots of people have similar set-ups like this. It's far more common than one would think. There’s no giant hidden mystery for the formula—in fact it’s very straight forward. I’m not going to say that anyone can do it—because we all have different levels of dedication, time, ability, etc etc. But anyone SHOULD be able to do it—if they are motivated enough, write enough and are dedicated enough to getting their work out there—then there are literally no walls up that should prevent them from doing so—and making a profit from it at the same time.