In How I Sold 1 Million Books in 5 Months! by John Locke, he talks about targeting your reader audience and reaching them with blog articles. I know someone who’s gone beyond blogs and is using Amazon and Yahoo forums to reach her reader audience. Trish McCallan isn’t even published but she’s already getting emails from readers who want to buy her books.
Trish was my guest at Magical Musings two weeks ago with a post on how J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood series changed the direction of her writing and led to her soon-to-be-published paranormal romantic suspense, Forged in FIRE, the first book of her Forged series. I was amazed when she got so many comments for a book that’s not out yet. (If you’re wondering why I invited her to be my guest, she’s a friend. Plus, I’d read an excerpt of her book. It’s gripping, with great writing and characters.)
At first I thought these must be aspiring writer friends of hers. Then I realized a lot of the comments weren’t from writers, but from readers. I emailed her later and said that I’ve had guests who were best-selling authors whose posts didn’t get as many comments. That’s when she told me how she’s using Amazon and Yahoo forums to reach readers.
“It’s the Black Dagger Brotherhood reference that brought all the people over. The BDB fans are rabid readers, and Ward’s fan base is huge. Plus, these gals toss book and author reccomendations around like they are Halloween candy. I knew from the moment I started writing Zane’s story that this series would be a huge hit with them. They love hot alpha males, steamy h/h interaction and a really tight brotherhood. It doesn’t matter to them if the book is paranormal or contemporary as long as it has those elements.
These women…are my target audience. My intention from the moment I started writing the Forged Series was to try tap into the BDB fan base when the book was available. I’ve been a member of the BDB yahoo group since I discovered the series. I even pulled my Beta readers from the girls there. My plan is to contact a few other girls off list and offer the book to them free, and ask them to review and recommend it if they like it. If I can get a couple to recommend the book on the group along with my Beta readers…I think word of mouth will spread fast. The BDB had hundreds of participating readers. But thousands who lurk, without participating.”
After that she decided to check out Amazon forums. She lurked first and saw that authors who mentioned their books got smacked down. Some of the offending authors were put on a Don’t Read list. But Trish loves talking about books, so she decided to participate in book discussions without mentioning that she was an author. Her profile shows she’s a writer and has links to her website, but she’s never directed anyone there. She said “everyone in the forums was very friendly, but nobody sent me any emails or anything through Amazon asking about my book. I actually kind of gave up on Amazon as a marketing tool.”
But in response to an author angry at being reprimanded, several participants mentioned Trish as an author who doesn’t promote herself or her friends, but joins in for an honest love of books and an “interest in other peoples’ reading experience.” One said “most of us here will BUY her book when it comes out, because we respect her.” During this discussion, Trish discovered that a lot of forum users had looked at her profile and found her cover and website.
She plans on doing this on the RT forums and Goodreads, too. When I asked if I could share this on my How To Write Shop post, she sent this:
“I’m lucky in that Zane’s audience is comprised of the type of readers who are described as ‘rabid fan girls.’ It does make a book much easier to market if you can tap into that kind of a fan base. But I also realized as I was writing Zane, what I had and who the market was. So in several respects I tailored it for that market. Luckily, the very things they love so much about the BDB books and the Midnight Breed series and Banks KGI series, are the same things I loved. So I was able to remain true to my vision and try to hit all the points these readers loved.
You know the other thing you might mention in your article, is to realize that your book doesn’t need to fit every aspect of that author’s books. That it’s smart to give your books a twist that makes them different from the targeted authors books, just make sure the integral elements that the readers love about those books are in yours as well. But giving it a twist will probably help it stand on its own. For example. The Black Dagger Books and the Midnight Breed books are dark paranormals featuring vampires.
But if you listen to the readers, it isn’t the fact they are vampires and live for thousands of years that they love. It’s the sexual chemistry between the h/h. It’s the sexy alpha males. It’s this deep love and loyalty between the warriors of the brotherhood (which they never express or even admit, but you see in every scene between them). And it’s their totally self-less courage. They put their lives on the line every day. Face death every day for a population that doesn’t seem to appreciate it. They are taken for granted, unappreciated, yet they never hesitate. They do it without thought.
It isn’t the fact they are vampires, or even that the book is a paranormal that those readers love them so much. It’s because of those deeper, underlying elements. So as long as you tie into those elements, it doesn’t really matter what sub-genre you are writing in, you’ll still attract that reader base.”
Here’s Trish’s blurb and cover, so you can see what she means about her books:
Release Date September First
Beth Brown doesn’t believe in soul mates, premonitions, or psychic connections. Until she dreams a sexy stranger is gunned down during the brutal hijacking of a company plane. When events in her dream start coming true, she heads to the flight’s departure gate. To her shock, she recognizes the passengers waiting to board, including the man she’d watched die the night before. With the departure clock ticking, Beth needs to ground that plane—and warn a man she’s never met that he’s about to die.
Lieutenant Commander Zane Winters comes from a bloodline of elite warriors with psychic abilities—they are able to see flashes of the future and mentally recognize and bond with their predestined soul mates. When Zane and two of his teammates arrive at Sea-Tac Airport, he has a vision of his friends’ corpses. And then she arrives—a leggy blond who sets off a different kind of alarm. Great. He’s finally found her, his soul mate, booked on a flight bound for destruction.
As Beth teams up with Zane, they discover the hijacking is the first step in a secret cartel’s deadly global agenda and that key personnel within the FBI are compromised. With a small team of Zane’s platoon brothers for support, Beth finds herself neck deep in intrigue. Not the least of which is the sexy SEAL who sets off a flash-fire of unwelcome attraction. To survive the forces mobilizing against them, Beth needs to shed a lifetime of inhibitions and open herself to a psychic connection with the navy warrior who claims to be her soul mate.
Trish gave me a lot of think about. I don’t have a ‘rabid fangirl” base. But neither does John Locke, and he’s sold over a million books. My Galaxy Girls series is more of a girl/women power books. I call Galaxy Girls my homage to Gilmore Girls – if they came from another planet and used pheromones as weapons. I can’t think of books to fit that, but besides Gilmore Girls, perhaps Buffy and Veronica Mars fans.
If anyone can think of popular books like this that aren’t young adult, please let me know. I have joined the Paranormal Romance and Sci Fi Romance groups on Goodreads. Though I mentioned in my intro on SFR that I’m an author and I recently published Galaxy Girls, I’m not spamming either group with promo. Unlike the forums, these groups have places for you to mention giveaways and new books.
How can you use this information for your books?
[author] [author_image timthumb=’on’]https://howtowriteshop.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/EdieColumn.jpg[/author_image] [author_info]Edie Ramer is funnier on the page than in real life. A multiple award-winning writer, she writes paranormal romance about cats, dead people, dragons and aliens with attitude. CATTITUDE, DEAD PEOPLE, DRAGON BLUES, GALAXY GIRLS and her short story THE SEVENTH DIMENSION are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords.[/author_info] [/author]
Great post, Edie. I’ve wondered about those forums. I even signed up, but hesitated to post. Now I know what to do! Thanks! lol
Melanie, let me know how it works for you! I’m going to check for groups that might fit my books, too.
Edie, thanks for the great info! (and Trish, too)
Stacey, my pleasure. I like the idea of targeting our readers instead of sending out random tweets.
Melanie,
If you end up joining the Amazon Forums make sure you get a picture of your covers in your profile, as well as links to your books and website. But never mention that you are a writer, don’t talk about your books or even characters you have written. Don’t give them any indication ever that you are a write. The readers there are deadly serious about wanting reader discussions only. They will jump on anyone, who mentions anything about writing. They consider even mentioning it, as self promo. However, they do check out profiles and if they share your tastes about various books/authors they’ll check you out and may end up buying your book.
Great information. But I think my brain is swelling with all the information about promotion. It will be ugly when it explodes, so stand back from the computer screen. LOL
Thanks Edie and Trish.
Trish, good advice. I’d avoided Yahoo forums but now I might give it a shot. First I have to decide where I belong.
Pepper, brain explosions are part of being an author. We leave gore all around us. And dust balls.
The hardest part of this for me is finding the time. I am going to do this though. I think it’s a brilliant way to reach readers.
Edie,
I’ve been meaning to ask you if you were on the RomanceRus yahoo forum. This one is a mix of readers and writers. Tons of promo going on through this yahoo loop. Promo is actually encouraged, the readers that are on the loop are on it to find free books and stuff.
When I first got Zane’s cover, I posted the url to my website so people could see the cover. A couple of readers replied that they’d read the blurb and would snap it up when it came out. (have no idea if this is true-lol)
Not sure how this loop equates to sales. But posting is risk free and can’t hurt.
Trish, no I’m not, but I’ll sign up for it. Thanks!
Thanks, Edie. This is very worthwhile info. I won’t make a peep about being writer. lol
Edie, this is great post! Trish, you had me at Black Dagger Brotherhood…LOL I’m a huge fan of both JR Ward & Lara Adrian, so I very much look forward to reading Forged In Fire and the rest of your series. 🙂
I post on the Kindle boards (are they different from the Amazon boards?), and I only post promo at Book Bazaar & Writers Cafe. I haven’t had a chance to browse around the boards lately, but I think I’ll head over there later today. I love to talk about the BDB and MB series. 😉
Oh, and I forgot to mention, Edie, I read and loved John Locke’s book. 🙂
Sandy, let me know how it works out.
Donna, that’s funny, because the BDB books don’t match what you write. At least not your books that I’ve read.
I really like John Locke’s book, too. But I don’t know if I agree with him about tweeting and blogs. It worked for him, but when I tried to do it with Gilmore Girls, I felt uncomfortable. As if it were wrong for me.
Edie, what an informative post! I’m a part of a number of loops, but most of those are for writers and (since we’re all writers) I would feel uncomfortable doing much promo there since we all have books to promote. I do think you and Trish hit upon something important with other groups, though — ones where readers gather and author promo would be frowned upon. We really do need to join groups like that only if we genuinely enjoy the topics the group discusses. Then we’re there not as “an author” but as a contributor to the conversation and someone who loves learning and talking about whatever is at hand. Finding added readers would be a great bonus, but it’s just as much about simply connecting…
Donna,
Thank you for the kind words on my series. If you’re interested I’ll send you a download coupon for Forged in Fire when the book is available. In return, if you like it, I would appreciate you recommending it to any of your friends you think would like it. If you don’t like it, feel free to pretend you never read it. *bg
The Kindle Boards are different than the Amazon forums. The one you’d want to visit is the Amazon romance forum. You know there is a funny side effect to participating in the discussions as a reader too. One I hadn’t thought about at the time. But you rediscover old favorites among books and authors, you discover new favorites and it resparks your love of reading.
I used to read a book a day. I loved reading. Reading is what led to my writing. But the deeper I got into the writing, the more the reading fell to the side. I’m finding reader boards and book discussions are resparking my creativity.
If you love the BDB and the Midnight breed. You should really join the BDB loop. Just be prepared for hundreds of emails. lol These girls love talking books and series. Right now we have discussions going on the Ward’s Fallen Angel series, on Hunter’s book in Midnight Breed, on the Outlander Books, on the Dark Hunter books and on The True blood series. If you are interested in joining, let me know, I will send you the url.
Marilyn,
You are exactly right. It is about connecting. And you need to go into the discussions with honest appreciation for the sub-genre/author/books under discussion.
Plus- you are sure to find new authors who you will end up loving. The Amazon romance forum has a thread about Christy Reece right now. I’ve never heard of her before. But I’ll pick her first book up because of what these readers are saying about it.
Marilyn, I avoided the Kindle forums. I belong to so many writers groups already, and the few times I was there it seemed as if there was a lot of promo. I do like the idea of the readers forums better. I’ll check to see if they have a sci fi romance forum. That’s my main category.
Trish, thanks for the advice about the Amazon Romance forum. I’ll give that a shot.
Great post! Love the blurb. I really love how Trish tapped into what makes BDB appeal, and how you both share a love of *readers*. There’s a lot of talk about writing but where’s any of it without the reader?
Great article and useful information. Now I have to figure out how to tailor it to fit me.
Once again, you are a cache of information. 🙂
Mary, before I self-pubbed my fist book last summer, we added more bloggers on my group blog and we changed the focus from other writes to readers as well as writers. But I never honed it down to groups like Trish has done.
MJ, we can brainstorm. That would be fun. And useful, I hope.
Edie never disappoints me. Thanks for the excellent information. I can see I need to get busy! Must take a page from Trish’s book.
MJ, I need to follow Trish’s advice, too, as soon as my life gets less crazy.
The marketing of a book is very important but it will get you on top only if the book has quality content. The top 10 marketing books by Yury Mintskovsky is very useful for young authors that want to promote their first book and hope that someone will read it.
Great article, and I have to concur that Trish is a great example of authors using reader forums to gain notoriety. I am a frequent contributor on the Amazon forum and at GR, so I recognized her name immediately when reading this. In fact, I bought her book last week too. (I too lurked on her website but it didn’t have any release date back them. I just found out it was available!) She has been wonderful and never once pushed her book as a sales pitch. She respects that it is a reader-to-reader forum, and realizes those commercial breaks by authors pimping their latest and greatest does get awfully annoying to the readers. Best yet, once people start reading Trish’s book they (not the author) will start talking about it. Those kind of recommendations can be golden. Many readers there will buy books recommended by other readers, but never by the author who is simply there to self promote. And since we are sharing our thoughts openly on the forums, many others benefit from our recommendations too. Simply put, don’t piss off the readers as you need them.
KarLyn, I admire Trish for all of her forum involvement. The forums scares me. She’s very wise.
Author of The Battle of Ídentity noe of Amazon kindle´for download. Please what shall I do to make great sales on my book. Furnish me with the ABC methordology of´your strategy. Thank you.
Sincerely
Emmanuel.