How to Write a 'Buy my Book' Post in a Facebook Group

Actual 'buy my book' post.

For many of us who use Facebook groups, forums, Yahoo groups and such, this post title probably makes you cringe. "Someone's encouraging people to post more bookspam in our groups!" you are exclaiming. "Awful! More spammed-to-death groups are sure to result!"

Don't worry, folks. Bookspam in groups is a pet peeve of mine, too. Not to mention a moral issue since our host, Facebook, also sells advertising at quite reasonable rates. Trying to get free advertising in the Facebook groups feels a bit like swiping a candy bar from the mini-mart.

But the one thing that strikes me about most bookspam self-promotion of books in groups and forums is how ineffective they are. If people would only take the time to learn how to be more effective before they post those self-promos, they would have a skill that they could use in more ethical self-promotion.

Here are some of the common flaws in buy-my-book posts:

1. Bare links, with no comment or intro. They are demanding that their potential book-buyer follow the link to discover what the book is about. Fix: always post a tagline--- a one-sentence summary of the book--- along with the link.
2. Abstract tagline. You know, as in 'This book is about the struggle of man vs nature.' What man? What nature? The tagline should read more like this: An accountant wakes up to discover he's been transformed into a cockroach, making it more difficult to get to work on time.'
3. Blatantly ignoring posted rules. If the group that is being exposed to the book promo has a sticky post at the top of the group's page stating no self-promotion allowed, or no off-topic posts, and the buy-my-booker self-promotes anyway, it shows contempt for the group and its members.
4. Promo and run. This is when a person joins the group, posts his promo, and then doesn't participate in the group until he feels it's time for his next promo. Fix: follow the rule of thumb by posting ten comments or posts on stuff that ISN'T related to you or your book before you even mention your book.
5. Miss Speling. If you misspell words in your self-promo, everyone who catches your mistake will presume you are a hopelessly bad amateur writer and warn their friends against buying your book. Fix: Learn. To. Spell. Spellcheck is not enough. If you want to call yourself a writer, you need to at least learn the most basic tools of the craft.
6. The Christian obligation ploy. Found in Christian fiction groups, this is when a writer insists that if group members are REAL Christians, they will show their Christian charity by allowing him to promote his book as often and as clumsily as he wants. Similar guilt trips can be inflicted by Amway or Avon sellers. The extreme is when it is insisted that the group members must show their Christian charity by actually making a purchase. Other groups, both religious and other, may suffer from similar unfair appeals to group loyalty. Fix: Never, ever do this. 
7. The hundred-group campaign. This is when the misguided would-be author joins and promos in a hundred or more different Facebook groups. With such large numbers it is impossible to participate in these groups in any meaningful way. So the buy-my-booker is essentially a stranger to the group who visits only to 'advertise'.
8. The aggressive group member. This is the person who makes a point of saying sarcastic or harsh things to other group members to get noticed. And then posts a book promo. Fix: don't alienate group members and then expect to sell them books.

Of course, all misuse of groups and forums is an amateurish mistake. When you read about using social media to build a writer-platform for yourself, this is NOT what they mean. Social media is useful when you use it to build up relationships with people. And the only was to build up a relationship is to take your focus OFF what the other person can do for you--- buy your book, review your book, promote your book--- and focus on what you can do for the other person.

If you participate in a group or forum, let it be because you are interested in the discussions that the group is about. Participate politely--- treat people as you would if you were there with them in person. In many forums, you can put a signature with your blog's link in it. In Facebook, every post leads to your personal Facebook page. In both of these instances, other group members are able to get more closely connected to you if they want to do so. You don't have to do any buy-my-book stuff that will just offend people.




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Will Blogging be Replaced by Facebook and Twitter?

 

Used to be when I posted stuff on my blog, things got pretty lively around here. Sometimes too lively as when a former blog follower got very angry because I, a gay woman, gave my opinion on gay 'marriage' and it didn't coincide with hers.

But as Facebook and Twitter have grown, the blog world, at least around here, has shrunk. I don't know, of course, if that is true for all bloggers, and I suspect the big blogs are doing better than ever.

I have given some thought myself to replacing my blog efforts with work on my Facebook author page (link below). It's a bit livelier even though my follower base is still small. But I think it would be sad if thoughtful blog posts get entirely replaced by tweets and Facebook status updates. It makes for a world that is ever more  trivial and ignorant.

Also, the world of Facebook is dominated by some pretty vicious trolls. When I got opposition here on my blog, I was simply informed that I could not express that opinion since it offended the person complaining. When someone disagreed with essentially the same opinion expressed on Facebook, I was told I was a liar, a fraud, a hater, a moron, retarded and crazy--- pretty much in one sentence.

I am very inactive on Twitter though I have an account, but I got a taste of that kind of opposition there as well.

The blog world seems to me to have the potential of being more thoughtful and more kind than Facebook or Twitter. As a result I think I must spend more time on this blog and on visiting the blogs of others.

What do you think? How does the blog world compare with social media?

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7 Things Famous Writers Can Do That You Can't

When it comes to the actual writing, it is good to imitate writers well-known for their fiction's quality, or at the least, famous writers of your genre (and others.)

When it comes to blogging and social media, there are many things that the well-known, mainstream-published author is and should be doing that you, a new, unknown, unpublished/self-published writer, must not imitate.

1. Write only about their own books --- authors like Orson Scott Card, Holly Lisle, Jerry B. Jenkins, Charlaine Harris, and Jeff Lindsay (author of the Dexter novels) know that the people that read their blog or follow their tweets and Facebook postings because they are already fans. They want to hear all they can about their author's published and upcoming books. For the rest of us, most of our followers are not familiar with our writing and thus are not fans of it. Writing too much about our work feels like advertising, and no one likes being advertised at.

2. Refer offhand to characters and situations from their books --- when a well-known author does this, it is what his fans want. When we do it, we are making our readers feel like outsiders because they haven't read our book yet. This will not make them run out and buy your self-published book.

3. Forget to proofread --- when a famous author misspells a word in a blog post or tweet or makes some other obvious error, no one thinks a thing about it. He's good enough to get published by a mainstream publisher, so the error is forgiven. When we do it, our readers assume we are bad writers. If the mistake is the misuse of big words, we are pretentious bad writers. Proofread everything down to the shortest tweet.

4. Offer a free ebook --- when bestselling Christian author Jerry B. Jenkins announced on Facebook that his novel 'Riven' would be available as a free ebook for limited time only, folks jumped on the offer. He's an author that's made the bestseller lists many, many times. When we make free offers, folks take it like they take offers of a free kitten. This doesn't mean you shouldn't offer your self-published ebook for free--- it just means that folks won't take it as a precious gift but as a potential waste of their reading time. It is more like they, the readers, are giving you a gift when they take the time to download and read your free ebook. Be thankful when this happens.

5. Be rude to commenters --- when you have a blog or a social media account, comments and replies are your life blood. A nationally known author has floods of commenters and, if the mood strikes him, can afford to call one or two of the most annoying ones idiots. We who are not yet known must cherish all our misspelling, zany, and odd commenters, and only when they are actually uttering death threats or spewing hostile profanity can we afford to scare them off.

6. Ask you to vote up their book on a web site --- while famous authors rarely make these kinds of requests, it would not be off-putting to their readers/followers if they did. If we do something like that, we are imposing on our readers. What if they haven't read our book yet or didn't like it? At best, you might mention in passing if your book is gaining ground on a GoodReads list or something. Leave it up to your readers what to do with that bit of information.

7. Insult a whole political faction or religion --- while this is a stupid thing to do even for the most popular authors in the country, they can get away with this if they do so within the limits of political correctness. Years ago I visited Stephen King's web site and saw a rant in which he proclaimed his opinion that conservatives were stupid. His fame was such at the time that he could probably gotten away with saying liberals were stupid. Maybe. All I know is that before I read that web site, I bought every Stephen King novel out there and read them to pieces, and bought books about Stephen King. Afterwards, I have only once or twice bought the new Stephen King novel, and rarely re-read my Stephen King collection, because aware of his real-life attitudes, I can't write off the intolerance in his books as just part of the fiction. But Stephen King was big enough at the time he didn't need me as a reader.  We, on the other hand, can't afford to actually insult conservatives, liberals, Christians or Jews, even if what we write is political thrillers aimed at those who share our views or religious fiction for those who share our faith. We have to cherish every person who gives us his attention, perhaps especially the ones who do so in spite of political or religious differences.

I think perhaps the best way to sum the whole thing up is that all writers, in social media interactions or blogging, need to come across as humble. For the bestselling author, they do it by humbling themselves to interact with their readers by internet at all. For us, we must never presume that our readers have any abiding interest in our books or book-related news, and must limit our mention of these things. Blogging and social media are about building friendships, not about peddling books or anything else to the uninterested.

To find a blogging role model, look to blogs by indie and small press authors who have won a successful following by NOT talking about their book all the time. Mike Duran's blog, in my sidebar, is one example, Karina Fabian's blog, also in the sidebar, is another.