Elena is out this week, so Darcy Pattison and Marti talk with Jessi Suire, organizer of the Jambalaya Writers’ Conference, to find out what it takes to be invited to writing conferences and festivals as a speaker or workshop facilitator.
Jessi Suire is the public relations and adult services coordinator for the Terrebonne Parish Library System. She has survived two years as the head organizer for the Jambalaya Writers’ Conference, a day-long literary celebration hosted each year by the library system. Jessi also leads several creative writing workshops throughout the year, including Writers Unite!, a once-a-month writing group for teens, and the Southern Writers’ Workshop, a twice-a-month writing group for adults. A lover of short stories, her work can be found in Pembroke Magazine, Belle Journal, and Dirty Rice Magazine—an adult literary journal recently established through the Southern Writers’ Workshop at the Main library.
Today’s interview is with children’s book blogger and podcaster Tracy Babler.
On Tracy’s website, she boils herself down into a few essential titles: writer, fundraiser, grammar nerd, and most importantly, storyteller. Tracy spends a lot of her day helping organizations create and improve writing so that it gets to the heart of the story. It’s not surprising then, that when you add another one of her titles-MOM- into the mix, what is born is a popular blog and podcast called Lu and Bean Read, which highlights the stories she and her girls are enjoying together and helps connect other parents and young readers to amazing new books and the authors that made them.
Tracy talked to us all about her podcast Lu & Bean Read, and how authors can connect with book podcasters and bloggers, to boost their reach:
Tracy’s journey to being a book blogger and podcaster began when she was hunting for books with good values for her own children. And then found herself recommending good books to her family and friends.
Lu and Bean Read was born, when her children “Lu” and Bean” wanted to interview authors themselves. A kids podcast, by kids, for kids, about kids books! Lu and Bean (who are now 6 and 8 years old) invite authors and illustrators on to their podcast and ask questions they genuinely want to know the answers to. The kids pick the books they love reading and lead the show.
The sort of books they look for include good illustrations, often have strong female leads, are racially diverse, and have themes and values that fit into their family. Plus they love funny books. Who doesn’t?
Instagram is a great way to connect with book reviewers and bloggers by producing beautiful images of your books, and through supporting other authors and illustrators by re-graming their posts, or interacting and connecting with them.
In order to be part of Tracy’s podcast or to contact any other blogger, email them politely, professionally and send them a copy of your book. Do not reach out and ask them to buy your book or to guarantee other people buy the book if they blog or podcast about it.
When working with kids, be it on a podcast or even in a classroom, treat them like they’re smart, and share your backstory as kids love to know how an author came up with their book idea and their writing process.
Bloggers can also go to their local library and request your books, which can help get them into libraries. Overall, book bloggers and podcasters are another way to gain exposure and make wonderful connections with readers.
Welcome to Episode 34 of the Indie Kidlit Podcast. On this episode Elena and Marti discuss their recent interviews (29 to 34), and what they’ve learned from the advice and experience provided.
Here is a quick reminder of the last six interviews that Marti and Helen discuss in today’s show:
Marti and Elena on setting SMART goals for 2018
Bryan Cohen on crafting a best-selling book blurb
Darcy Pattison on formatting picture books
Clark Chamberlain on working with editors to create a book readers love
Charnaie Gordon on what authors need to know about Instagram
Pip Reid on using Pinterest to attract readers to your website
Pip Reid is the co-founder of Bible Pathway Adventures and author of the Bible Pathway Adventures series. Always game for an adventure herself, Pip traveled through Africa, Asia, Europe and the Americas before settling back in New Zealand to complete a ‘Writing for Children’ diploma and embark on a writing career. Here are some of the many books that form part of the series:
Pip has been building her brand over a four and a half year period. Pinterest has been particularly effective at attracting new readers to her website and increasing sales. Here are her top suggestions for how to use Pinterest as an author:
Pinterest isn’t just a place to post great images. It’s a search engine. People use it to search for things they are interested in. It’s a visual collection of ideas and resources. Women in particular love using Pinterest.
Pinterest is very good at sending traffic to your website because you can add a URL to each image.
Use vertical images rather than horizontal ones (US letter dimensions: 8.5 x 11 inches).
Create more boards – one for each of your stories/books.
Ideas for what to post include:
coloring pages
word searches
puzzles
quizzes
These sort of posts add value to people. Teachers and parents will want to download these resources. Once they click on your image they can then go to your website to download their resource. This also increases the likelihood of them buying from you. On the FREE RESOURCE page of your website, you can also feature the book related to the downloads, for people to buy.
Make it easy for other people to post your images/resources to their boards on Pinterest by having a pin it button on your website images.
Niche down and get more specific. The description of your image is important. Make sure you include keywords. You can find common search terms when you start typing in the search engine on Pinterest.
Follows are also important on Pinterest. When people follow you they’ll see what you post.
You can also join Group Boards and pin to them. You can find groups to join at www.pingroupie.com and you can also start your own group boards.
You can pin every Blog Post to Pinterest and make sure you have a great image. This sort of content marketing drives traffic back to your website.
You can use Tailwind App to schedule posts in advance, and you can re-pin the same post to multiple boards.
You can download the Free Guide written by Pip, for Mark Dawson’s Self Publishing Formula,HERE for more great tips and information on using Pinterest effectively.
Today’s interview is with Instagram children’s book blogger, Charnaie Gordon (@HereWeeRead) about the #bookstagram community.
Charnaie talks to us about how she developed her Instagram following of more than 23,000 readers who are hungry for children’s books, and how to best find and approach book bloggers.
Charnaie started book blogging in order to keep track of what she was reading and to help other people find great books. HereWeeRead was born on Instagram.
Instagram has a huge community of book lovers and is a great place for authors to be online. Check out #bookstagram.
When reaching out to book bloggers make sure they like the kind of books you write, and that they are connected to YOUR readers, not just any readers. Charnaie, for example, mentions in the interview, that she loves sharing picture books that have great covers, gorgeous illustrations, have positive themes and are about characters from diverse backgrounds. Find bloggers that love your kind of books for the right age group.
When approaching a book reviewer on Instagram:
Read their Book Review Policy.
Make sure you know the name of the reviewer and spell their name correctly.
Don’t just ask for your book to be reviewed. Instead introduce yourself professionally, summarise your book and provide a clear link to a free copy of the book.
When posting to Instagram you can include a great photo of your book and an enticing caption. You can also feature photos of the inside of your book, showcasing the illustrations. You can also include short videos. All these things can help to gain the attention of book bloggers and readers.
Authors can also use Instagram by keeping their backlist fresh through celebrating what’s currently happening with it now, ie did you win an award for this book, do a school visit etc. Use your Instagram posts to get people excited about your upcoming new release. You could also share coloring pages.
Build relationships on Instagram by reaching out to other authors and reviewers, introducing yourself and build on your commonalities. Build a community, support others and engage genuinely.
Finally, remember to use those hashtags. Charnaie recommended this tool for finding great hashtags and she uses up to 30 hashtags in her posts. Hashtag generator: http://displaypurposes.com
Today’s interview is with author and editor Clark Chamberlain.
Clark Chamberlain is an author and professional editor who works with authors at all levels and across multiple genres. Clark helps transform any manuscript into a novel that is both commercially viable and entertains readers. Clark is the creator of the Advanced Novel Writing with Harry Potter course and is known as The Story Engineer.
Clark talked to us all about how to work with editors to make your books the best they can be.
Clark gives amazing advice about how important it is to keep your inner editor and critic at bay during the writing process. Keep your self-stories positive and focus on writing consistently and ignoring that little inner voice that keeps telling you- “you’re not good enough.”
A developmental editor helps make your book the best it can be by improving your story structure and meeting reader expectations. Ask yourself “What do I want my reader to feel when they get to the end of my story?” That’s what you want your story to deliver. A line editor, on the other hand, edits grammar and sentence structure.
Questions to ask a developmental editor to make sure you are the right fit for each other include:
What the cost will be and exactly what you will receive for that fee. Be clear upfront what you’re getting.
Agree on how you will communicate with each other and how often.
How will story changes be suggested to you so you know what to change?
Editors can vary from each other, so make sure you understand how many rounds of edits you will receive and exactly what the process will be.
We dig into Clark’s incredible course: Advanced Novel Writing with Harry Potter, where Clark breaks down what made the Harry Potter series so successful and what ALL authors can learn from the process to make their own books engaging for readers. The course includes 17 lessons and breaks down good storytelling technique. Clark also guides us through how to meet reader expectations, how a novel is constructed and what its working parts are, as well as how to get those small elements in a story right so that you connect emotionally with your reader.
This and so much more in this interview that will help you become a better storyteller….
***Clark is so generous he has offered listeners of the Indikidlit Podcast a discount off the ‘Advanced Novel Writing with Harry Potter’ course. It’s now only $97 (normally $149) and you get his course on how to write great DIALOGUE absolutely free as part of it. Listen to me (Elena) – what a fab sales lady I’d make!! I’ve no affiliation with the course whatsoever, and I did buy it myself and I’m super glad I did – it’s honestly worth so much more! And if you don’t buy it, and I end up selling more books than you do, you so know I’m going to say “I told you so!” Haha! All joking aside, you can find the course and the discount at www.thebookeditorshow/com/kidlit.***
Today’s interview is with author and indie publishing expert Darcy Pattison.
Darcy Pattison is a writer of fiction and nonfiction children’s literature, a blogger, writing teacher, and indie publisher. Her books have been translated into nine languages. Although she is best known for her work in children’s literature, she is also a writing teacher traveling across the nation presenting her Novel Revision Retreat. She has been featured as a writer and writing teacher in prestigious publications such as Writing Young Adult Fiction For Dummies, and 2012 Writer’s Market.
This is our third interview with Darcy and to be honest we could interview her every week – she is full of useful information! The main topic we discussed today was how to format your picture book for Kindle in a way that keeps your download fees as low as possible. Doing so means more profit for you and less money lost to Amazon. Here are her tips:
For books that are over 7mb in file size, it may be more worthwhile to choose the 30% royalty rate over the 70% royalty rate, as you don’t pay download costs.
In order to get your book file size down as small as possible (ideally 2mb) Darcy suggests reducing your image size in three ways:
Using a program such as photoshop to get your images to be 1200 x 1800 pixels.
When exporting them as JPG files choose 40-60% quality. Ideally, 40% if you feel the quality is still OK, which it should be.
Use the program ImageOptim to strip the metadata from the image, further reducing the size.
People’s main objections to reducing the image size of their illustrations are that they fear the quality of their book will suffer. But the quality is still very good on device screens. The upside is the reduced file size will reduce the size of your overall file considerable and therefore lower your download fee.
You can read the excellent article explaining book formatting much more thoroughly on Darcy’s Blog HERE.
Elena also asked “What about Vellum? Does it reduce the file size naturally?” Following the interview, she went ahead and experimented with one of her books which she formatted using Vellum. With 17 images that were very high-quality tiff files, the book’s download fee is 31cents. She reduced the file size of all the illustrations as suggested above and the download fee decreased to 29cents. Not much of a difference at all, suggesting Vellum already reduces the file size pretty well. Go Vellum!
Today’s interview is with author and copywriter extraordinaire Bryan Cohen.
Bryan Cohen is an author, a podcaster, and a coach. He’s published over 40 books, which have been downloaded over half a million times. His books include How to Write a Sizzling Synopsis and five novels in The Viral Superhero Series. He’s the co-host of The Sell More Books Show and the head writer at Best Page Forward, a book description writing service.
Bryan is well known among the indie author community as a blurbologist! He gives us some great advice about how to write a fabulous blurb that sells more books.
The first line of the book blurb is critical. Known as the “tagline” it needs to appeal to the people that read your genre of book as well as sound interesting – without having too much information in it! Research shows that eighty percent of people stop reading after the first line of a book blurb. At this point they decide whether they are going to read on, buy the book, or leave your page. So make this line juicy and interesting. Practise makes permanent, so keep writing taglines to get better and better at them.
Read copy to internalise it – it is only through reading lots of different copy for all sorts of different things, from books to advertisements – the more copy you study to see what is good copy the better you will get at crafting your own.
When writing a book blurb for a kids book, keep in mind that parents/teachers/librarians are the ones with the credit cards, so write your copy for them too, not just for kids.
After the Tagline, tell us about your main character, and make them sound compelling so that potential readers can begin to care about the plot.
Finally finish with a selling paragraph, where you remind your potential buyer what book they are buying (eg a middle grade fantasy novel), then use adjectives to describe it (add some educational ones for kids books), followed by “if you and your child like xxx then you’ll love this book.”
Make sure the tone of your book description matches the tone of your book. If your book is a silly funny type book, then make sure your tone matches it.
If your book is non-fiction or has a non-fiction element to it, mention the transformational benefits of reading the book in your description.
It’s always good to study the book descriptions of other books in your genre to discover the appropriate tone and words used in your age group and genre.
Welcome to Episode 28 of the Indie Kidlit Podcast. On this episode Elena and Marti discuss their recent interviews (22 to 27), and what they’ve learned from the advice and experience provided.
Here is a quick reminder of the last six interviews that Marti and Helen discuss in today’s show:
Austin J. Bailey on using facebook advertising to sell middle-grade books
