How a fellow blogger solved the mystery of my lagging Euro sales.

http://www.eileenslovak.com

We all need a little help now and again especially at book marketing. I freely admit to being a novice. I literally learn everything the hard way because it just suits my personality. My novel SECRET AGENT OF GOD has only been ‘out on the street’ since the end of January, but since then, I have learned an enormous amount about book marketing ─ mostly the hard way. If you are like me, you know how difficult it is to know where to invest your energy and marketing efforts. There are so many avenues promising to promote your book. I find it yet another mountain I now need to climb.

On the upside, every road I take leads to another discovery, so as with the writing journey and the publishing journey, I remain optimistic about this one.

I go with my old standby of reading what all of you have to say and then finding the consistencies there. Then again, what works for me may not work for someone else. I am extremely fortunate that some successful writers, marketers, tweeters and bloggers have discovered me and for whatever reason, have not given up on me when I certainly would have. I am simply not that techno savvy.

• What is working so far? I added an Amazon Author page: http://www.amazon.com/author/eileenslovak
• I joined AuthorsDen.com: http://www.authorsden.com/visit/author.asp?authorid=181819
• I have put more effort into LinkedIn, http://www.linkedin.com/pub/eileen-slovak/70/7ab/abb/ but could still use some tips on navigating the site. I don’t find it as user-friendly as other sites. I did discover the “The Writers Network” there and found some great new contacts.
• I have put more effort into content on my Facebook Author page https://www.facebook.com/authoreileenslovak and I try to learn from those who do the job way better than I do like https://www.facebook.com/MelissaFosterAuthor and https://www.facebook.com/blakely.bennett.
• Recently, I was fortunate enough to stumble into the Facebook of Shah Fazli who interviews people on his site, http://shahsight.blogspot.de/2014/04/eileen-mcguire-slovak.html . We had a date set and I was promoting the event or so I thought. I failed to understand the ‘invite’ button is there for a reason. I get it NOW. It was still a great experience and if you are an author or an artist, I recommend you get on Shah’s calendar and look for other sites like his. Those of you who grew up with Facebook, and to whom social media is second nature, are laughing your butts off at people like me who only joined for the first time in 2009. I had to ask my niece “What’s a status?” Since then, I have come a long way.
• I have also found some terrific groups within Facebook, like “Writers Group” and “Review Seekers” among others. Balancing all of it and narrowing it down time wise is the greatest challenge. You have to decide where to focus your efforts.
• I registered for a few Book Fairs for this May and June: www.gaithersburgbookfestival.org and http://frederickbookfestival.com/ and http://t.co/3HWSen2nye
• Despite my raging commitment issues, I have continued to blog, somewhat sporadically but with a measure of consistency. Blogging helps me feel as though I have some control over my destiny and some voice out there in the blog-o-sphere. Through blogging, I have discovered some amazing writers and supporters and it is where I feel the most present in my marketing efforts. It took some time to get to a point where I did not fear it. I still hide a bit. The quality blogs and the effort the writers put into them is so tremendous that I am always amazed when someone follows mine. One such superior blogger was the person who solved this Euro sales dilemma of mine, which I promise I am getting around to explaining.
• I have become obsessed with twitter thanks to folks like @seumasgallacher, @DaniseCodekas, @ProofreadJulia, @SinnaptixEdits and so many more.
• I have also tested out twitter and Facebook ads. Both seem to bring new followers but do they really add any book sales? It is hard to say. I do like the great reporting that each site offers once the ad has run. Maybe this is just because I am an ex-sales, marketing and inventory management geek. Charts, graphs and data thrill me to no end.
• As I was perusing all of this wonderful charted information from twitter, I made a few discoveries. I have a great European following but sad Euro sales. I had a chat with an ad exec from twitter about it and he mentioned that it might be a good idea for me to focus my ads on English-speaking countries since my book is only available in English. I actually laughed aloud at what an idiot I was, marketing my book to whole world when it was only available in English. I still like to tweet the links to the e-book with the idea that kindle converts to other languages but one I must become more aware of my audience.

Now here is where it all comes together…I was fortunate enough to stumble upon a blogger who posts articles about authors. In truth, he found me. I printed out the article requirements over a month ago, and have had it in my “to do” pile on my desk since then. As much as I wanted to do it, I had too many other things to do. That and I get self-conscious talking about myself as the article required. The page finally made it to the top of the pile and I followed all the directions for how to create the post, pictures links, etc. I sent it off certain I had done everything correctly.

The blog is by a UK blogger. I forgot to send the UK link to my book. Go ahead and say it, “Duh!” I really loathe that expression but it is fitting sometimes.

This was when the light bulb finally flicked on. I have completely neglected promoting that UK book link or any of the other links. Sales 101.

So I would like to thank http://thestoryreadingapeblog.com/ first for following me, second for not giving up on me while I stumbled around with social media, third, for helping me discover the answer to my UK sales problem and finally, for the post that will run tomorrow on his blog.

Thanks everyone for reading and Cheers!