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Historical Fiction

Publishing

The Extra Innings Trilogy’s Target Market

The EXTRA INNINGS Trilogy Target Market:

Young Adults (ages 16-28 females and males) who are in High School or are, at least, High School educated in the United States. Primary interests include staying active, family-oriented, social disorganization in communities, social prejudice and environmental racism in America with a particular focus on the United States Deep South.

Secondary Target Market includes family-oriented adults who grew up in the United States during the Cold War period with at least a high school education.

Genre:  Historical Fiction

THE TRILOGY Breakdown:

BOOK 1:     The Diamond Thieves (AVAILABLE NOW on this site or at Barnesandnoble.com, Amazon.com and Kindle.com.   Send you reviews to Goodreads.com PLEASE)

Book 2:       Race of the Gemini

BOOK 3:     A Hero Among Thieves

I will be submitting this along with my marketing plan to Barnes and Noble stores next week!   Bookstores are usually supportive of local artists.  My goal is to get this into stores nationwide.  Currently, The Diamond Thieves is available via their website (see above).

July 16, 2014 by
Publishing

3 Key Qualities to a Successful Blogger

First, let me begin by saying that I would not (yet) consider myself a successful blogger in terms of a following or any sort of fanfare.  However, I do have 15 years marketing experience along with a degree in marketing from Sonoma State University.  (NOTE: I also took a marketing and advertising semester-long course at the UMASS Amherst.  This foundation has gained me the ability to recognize effective qualities executed by a blogger.  Below, I’ve bulleted the top three qualities that I believe are critical to an effective blog.

  • INTEGRITY

Be honest with your readers.  Don’t spew on the screen keystrokes full of b.s. this will turn away readers.  If you are not an expert in the field in which you are writing, at least admit it.  This will actually gain you more respect than trying to be someone you’re not.

I talk a lot about gaining favorable attention by an appeal to pride.  Favorable attention only works if you truly mean it.  Although, it may gain you a short-term boost in reader traffic, these readers will eventually catch on.  If you’re not dishonest or the compliments you’re delivering are just an illusion to gain more followers, your long-term retention percentage will be extremely low.

  • CREATIVITY

This can be broken down into 2 elements:

  1. UNIQUENESS:  What sets you apart from other bloggers in your category?  Do you stand out or do you blend in with the rest of the crowd?  Keep in mind, the crowd I speak of is a rather sizable blogosphere of 152 million (as of July 2014) with more bloggers  adding to this population on a daily basis.  Is the topic of your blog creatively engaging?  One of the best ways to answer this question is by following other bloggers within your targeted market?  Are you repeating the same things they’re saying in their blogs?  Or is your blog teaching them something that they can get nowhere else?  Or if the purpose of your blog is to entertain, does your blog have a uniquely magnetic personality?  Kurt Mortensen is the author of the best selling book “Maximum Influence” where he explores his ’12 Universal Laws of Power Persuasion.’  This is a great book for salespeople and I have learned a tremendous amount by reading Kurt’s work.
  2. WIFFM:    What’s in it for your reader?  To answer this question, you need to step outside of yourself and review your blog from your targeted customer’s point of view.  You should be able to identify at least one WIIFM within each of your blogs.  What are some take aways from your blog?  Is there at least one take away that’s either changed or enhanced there reader’s perspective in a way they’ve never looked at that idea before?  As your blog gains popularity you will know if you’re achieving this based on the comments your followers are leaving.
  • ATTENTION TO DETAIL

This is the area in which my blogging struggles the most.  Interestingly enough, attention to detail is a considerable strength in my Extra Innings trilogy.  Of course, writing in the genre of historical fiction, I better pay close attention to detail for if any of my readers were alive during the period in which this story takes place, they would surely call me out on any oversights.  Granted, the McGee twins are fictional characters so that does give me, as the writer, some wiggle room.  As for blogging, I struggle with attention to detail mostly because I am a new author trying to build a popular reputation and so I feel rushed to produce an eruption of blogs.  My advice is to slow down.  Take your time.  Make sure your spelling and grammar are correct before clicking publish.   Review your blog for rambling.  Are you repeatedly repeating yourself?  Repetitiveness and rambling seem to be common mistakes in many of the blogs I read.  In today’s fast-paced society, ain’t nobody got time for that.   Especially, my YA target market.  I’m lucky if I’m able to capture five minutes of their undivided attention.  I recommend saving your blog as a draft, sleeping on it or walking away for a little while.  Then, go back and review before publishing.  Ask yourself: Are you making your point clear and concise?  There’s nothing worse than having a captivating title to your blog but the body that proceeds it is irrelevant.  The details of your blog must be relevant to it’s title AND to your target market.

Hope this helps boost traffic to your blog!  Please let me know and stay tuned for more marketing tips!

July 13, 2014 by
Publishing

How to Grow Your Customer Network

Let me just start off by saying that growing your customer network takes focus and hard work.  It is not easy.  You must remain loyal to the two bulleted networking best practices I’ve provided below.  I don’t say this to discourage you but rather to prepare you for the reality.  Your first run at this will not produce turnkey results.  If you want to begin driving free organic traffic to your blog’s website you need to education yourself with some long-time expert advice.  I’ve been researching blog networking experts like April Tucker and David Wood.  They’re both great resources for much better advice than a newbie like I can give.  They offer expert advice on how to drive tons of traffic to a blogger’s site fast.

In the meantime, there are a few tactics I can explain to help you get started.  Since I am an author, my blogs are focused on marketing to book readers.  We’ve talked about identifying your target market in previous blogs, so the advice I’m going to give is assuming you’ve already done that.  My novel, Extra Innings: The Diamond Thieves, is a young adult, historical fiction and also it’s important to note that it’s a trilogy.

  • NETWORKING with BLOGGERS:

Use Google to search for blogs within your book’s genre.  Find a blog that truly interests you.  Read it from beginning to end.  If you like it, then post a comment on that blogger’s page below the blog you liked.  However, be a critical thinker, if you didn’t like it, don’t try and make false friends with a fake comment.  It’s just not worth it unless your comment is sincere – believe me that blogger with know the difference.  I recommend posting on at least 1 relevant blog per day.  Your comments should be professionally written.  They should begin with a positive compliment.  Remember what I’ve told you before, it’s always smart to gain favorable attention first by appealing to an artist’s pride.  Just because you feel a kinship to the blogger doesn’t mean your response should include: What’s up!  Hey there, or dude – great advice!  Save these blogs in your favorites so you can continue to revisit them.  A productive relationship with a blogger takes multiple comments on multiple blogs and if they respond to your comment then you may invite them to visit your blog’s site.

NOTE:  Commenting on a bloggers site should be FREE.  If they are asking you to sign up or pay a fee, click out of that page and find a different blog to comment on.

  • NETWORKING with TWITTER USERS:

Use hashtags to search for Tweets that are relevant to your book’s genre.  For example: #historicalfiction or #youngadult.  I also recommend searching for #newauthor.   Thousands of Tweets will generate from this these searches.  Focus only on recent Tweets.  If a Tweet was posted more than 2 days ago, don’t bother.  You may feel tempted to start firing off Likes or Retweets or Comments but I really advise only responding or liking Tweets that you sincerely found interesting or had a link to a site or blog that was educational or beneficial to you.  If you find a Twitter user who truly is in sync with your scope of writing then Follow them.  Send them a comment introducing yourself and use hashtags relevant to your book and/or writing mission.  You only get 140 characters in a Twitter post so it’s important to craft an impactful comment.   You want to be positive, professional and unique.  If the Twitter user responds then I always explain that I am a new author, I provide the title of my book and I invite them to visit my website.

The fruits of your labor will begin when start to develop online relationships with a host of authors, literary agents and publishers within your target market.  The overall objective of persevering in this targeted effort is to make a fruitful connection.  I anything, you will at least gain a tremendous amount of free advice.

July 9, 2014 by
Publishing

Top 2 Mistakes Authors Make with their Target Market

I am pumped to be able to talk about a topic that is so important to the success of a writer’s novel. Defining your target market is the most important first step for an author. It’s also one of the most difficult. It involves an understanding of who is your ideal reader (notice I have not puralized ‘reader’).

First start with asking yourself: What is the genre of the story you wish to tell? This is should be simple as most stories typically fall into one bucket. For example, the Extra Innings trilogy is Historical Fiction. Other book genres include:

  • Science Fiction
  • Fantasy
  • Drama
  • Romance
  • Mystery
  • Horror
  • Children’s
  • Biographies
  • Poetry
  • How To/Self-Help
  • Cookbooks
  • Comic Books (which is what I grew up mostly reading)
  • Travel
  • Religion
  • Art History
  • Science (I think you get the point)

On an interesting side note, publishing houses consider trilogies to be a genre of their own. I, however, disagree. It’s sort of like a journal or diary where an author’s fictional or non-fictional work is told with a certain style or platform. Styles would be first person, second or third person narrative style. Platform is the mode in which the story is packaged (ie. journal entries, a single novel, a series or a trilogy).

So anyway, let’s get back to defining your story’s target market.   Among the authors I have researched, are are the Top 2 Mistakes being made with their Target Market:

#1 Mistake is NOT defining a target market.

#2 Mistake is not defining a CLEAR target market

Believe, this occurs quite often with new authors. They have an interesting concept for a story and they may have even completed storyboards or an outline of each chapter and the may have created all their characters and even given them al names. But if you don’t know specifically who you are targeting this story, these chapters and these characters to you will run into a multiple difficulties when it comes to fine-tuning the details of the story and even more difficulties when it comes to marketing your finished product.

So we are going to solve the #1 problem now by accepting that you MUST define your target market. Now that we’ve gotten that out o the way, let’s move onto #2.

Defining a clear target market can quite frankly be a real pain. I, personally, really struggled with this because, like most new authors, I was in love with my book and truly believed that EVERYONE would love it too. However, that is simply not the case. Sorry fellow authors! But your ideal reader (meaning the customers that help you the most to get the word spread with positive feedback) is a specific niche of individuals that you need to identify. Focusing on them will not only save you time but also save you money instead of marketing to groups of people with other interests. I also want to point out that when you are trying to define this target market, disregard “friends and family” as a target group. Your friends and family will (most likely) support you.

When deciding your target market there are two general families of consumer groups you want to research.

  1.  Demographics
  2.  Psychographics

In order to answer what group your readers fall into, you must identify 3 or 4 books similar to yours and identify the specific groups that are interested in that genre.

DEMOGRAPHIC GROUP: Age, Gender, Education, Social Class, Geographic Location and Occupation

PSYCHOGRAPHIC GROUPS: Special Interests, Activities/Hobbies, Occupation (I believe falls in both categories as some people are stuck working a job they have no interest in), Social Factors, Cultural Associations and Philosophical Beliefs.

For example, your research may show that your Target Market is Young Adults (which are people between the ages of 16 and 28), primarily females, who are in high school or at least high school educated in the United States. Primary interests include staying active, family-oriented, social disorganization in communities, social prejudice and environmental racism in America with a particular focus on the US Deep South.

Secondary Target Market could include family-oriented adults who grew up in the United States during the Cold War period with at least a high school education.

Identifying the demographic and psychographic groups in which a typical fan of your book’s genre will gain you faster and more productive results when you go to market your book.

Once you have mastered this, I also advise tracking all feedback you receive on Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Goodreads.com as well as your own website. Reach out to your first batch of responding, liking and sharing with your followers via Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, Google+, or email and conduct some deeper research.

Collect this data and then get out your microscope. This is where you are truly going to be able to define your customer. This is called consumer segmentation. We can get more into this in future blogs, but I will say that understanding your consumer segments will help you to fine-tune your next book. It’s that fine-tuning that produce a story that appeals directly to your existing fans and that’s when they will really start to spread the word and your legacy will begin.

Best of Luck to you all!

B.W. Gibson

Author of Extra Innings: The Diamond Thieves (Book 1 of the Extra Innings trilogy)

July 4, 2014 by