February fancies from The Dawnflier of author @KimHeadlee #MFRWOrg #ASMSG

Valentine's Day Marriage Proposal,
(c)2011 by Subbotina, Depositphotos ID 10605111.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I selected this photo because my then-boyfriend proposed to me on Valentine's Day more than three decades ago. Since I wanted a June wedding—which was the only "traditional" aspect to our ceremony—we set a date for the following year, and we have been together ever since. It's been quite the ride. :)


Book news:

• I’m hoping to land a BookBub feature of Liberty within the next 30 days; please keep your fingers crossed. Would you like to know when my next big sale will be? Follow me on BookBub so you don't miss out!
• In spite of the fact that I’m smack in the middle of tax season—and trying to get a new computer up to speed with the latest accounting and tax software (and thank heaven I found my data backups)—I’m making progress on Angusel’s story in  Raging Sea. Part 1 (Raging Sea: Reckonings) and part 2 (Raging Sea: Enemies and Allies) are now on sale.

Upcoming:

• I will be signing and selling my books all weekend at Farpoint (Timonium, MD), February 17–19. The dealers will be set up in a public area, so you do not have to register for the convention to visit my table!
• I am slated as an author-guest at MystiCon (Roanoke, VA), February 24–26. My program participation includes: reading from Raging Sea: Reckonings (9:30 p.m. Friday), signing my books (2 p.m. Saturday), and panels about honor in science fiction/fantasy (11 a.m. Sat.), film adaptations (3 p.m. Sat.), fuzzy logic (4 p.m. Sat.), creating a system in fiction (9 a.m. Sun.), and collaborations (2 p.m. Sun.).
• March 4th I will present part one of my Business of Writing workshop at the Wytheville Public Library, 11 a.m – 1 p.m. I have been given permission to sell my books before and after the event, so I plan to be at the library during the full run of their operating hours that day, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. My presentation of part two is scheduled for March 18th.

Stay cozy; spring is coming!

***

I'm running a giveaway for an e-copy of my first novel, Dawnflight!

To enter, click HERE.

MailChimp subscribers to The Dawnflier receive exclusive giveaway opportunities.
Subscribe today so you don't miss out!

***

*** Special announcement: I need your help! ***

Twitter has unjustly blacklisted this blog as a "spam or malicious" website. As you can see by its content, it is neither spam nor malicious. If you enjoy this site, please consider performing the following steps:

1. Visit the Twitter website reporting page (https://support.twitter.com/forms/spam).
2. Select the button that reads "I can't tweet a link because Twitter thinks it's spam."
3. Specify https://kimiversonheadlee.blogspot.com/ as the "Problematic link."
4. Fill out the rest of the pertinent details and click "Submit."
5. (Optional but greatly appreciated) Tweet this blog post but in the link replace ".com" with ".ca", ".co.uk",".ie", or any other Blogspot mirror site so that Twitter won't block your tweet from being posted.

Thank you so very much and have a blessed day.

***

All this month, you are invited to…

— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Follow Kim on Pinterest
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow

… and each action this month is good for one chance to win a copy of any of Kim's e-books.
Please enter often, and good luck!

The Business of Writing: Free Email Marketing for Authors #MFRWOrg #ASMSG

Smiling girl with dandelions
c2015 by AndrOleksiienko
Depositphotos ID 74345911.

Welcome to Part 5 of my Business of Writing series, Marketing for Authors 101!

In previous installments I covered:

• Dos and don'ts of Twitter marketing,
• Giveaways,
• "99c is the new Free", and
• The BookBub "Roller Coaster."

For an excellent overview about book marketing, I commend to your attention this article posted on the BTSEMag blog by DP Denman. My favorite bit: 

"Marketing isn’t about sales. Weird, eh? Think about it. When you see a commercial on television, how often are you in a position to buy what they’re selling at the same time? Unless they’re talking about pizza and wings, not very often.

Marketing is about building name recognition that eventually leads to sales." (emphasis mine)

Email is yet another form of getting the word out about your books, and there are many ways to go about it, free as well as paid. In Part 6 of Marketing 101 for Authors, currently planned for next week, I will share my experiences with paid email book marketing venues other than BookBub. Today I'm here to discuss:

Free Email Marketing

A publicist I had hired a decade ago to help promote my second NY-published novel, Liberty, had a saying that went something like this:

Marketing requires three elements:
skill, money, and time.

What you lack in one element,
you must make up for by exercising the other two.

Jo-Ann is no longer in the PR business, but her words continue to guide me, and I hope they resonate with you too.

If you lack the money to hire folks to market your book, you cannot just ignore the promoting and hope for the best. That's how I found myself having to rebuild my audience from scratch in 2013 when I decided to dive into the shark tank that is Independent Publishing.

Trust me on this point: you need to pour your own time into self-promotion, and become adept at using the requisite software tools, if necessary.

The most obvious form of free email marketing is for you to distribute your own newsletter. Rather than reinventing that particular wheel, I direct your attention to my earlier blog post about The Author Newsletter.

I still email my monthly newsletter, The Dawnflier, via Mail Chimp (the free version) as well as to a list of several hundred contacts who have not yet elected to switch over. In it I usually share exclusive content with my subscribers, as well as giving them updates about my books, upcoming tours, giveaways, and personal appearances. If you would like to join them, I would be delighted, thanks! The signup link is HERE.

As mentioned in that post about newsletters, I experienced a bit of a learning curve to develop my HTML-based newsletter design. That curve flattened once I discovered the "save as template" option, however. Now I call up my newsletter's template, replace the text and photo(s) as necessary, and then overwrite the previous month's template. This trick is particularly useful for reporting information about upcoming appearances, and blog tours whose signup periods can span several months.

BookBub offers 98 Book Marketing Tips, of all types and stripes. Tip #10 applies to the topic of the author newsletter:

10. Welcome new subscribers with an email autoresponse. When people subscribe to updates from you via your website, send them a welcome email including either a link to a permafree ebook, sample chapters, or some sort of freebie as a “thank you” for signing up.

This is something I confess I need to get set up, since I do have a permafree title, The Color of Vengeance, that I can offer to new subscribers!

Free Email Marketing Other Than Your Own Newsletter

I am disappointed to report that the list of sites offering free email book marketing is dwindling rapidly.

Many sites have either excruciatingly long (on the order of 6 months) queues for their free email promo opportunities, have converted to paid advertising only, or have disappeared altogether.

One that falls into the latter category deserves special mention here.

HarperCollins did a stellar job of shafting thousands of indie authors by buying the huge mailing list that had been built by The Midlist, which the publishing giant now uses exclusively for promoting their own authors. I was fortunate enough to have discovered—and had several of my books selected for free promotion by—The Midlist last year prior to the buyout. Those free promos netted me dozens of paid downloads and pushed my books to Amazon "bestseller" status for a day or two after their promotion each time. I mourn its loss.

Since the list for "free email book promotions" is an ever-changing one, I invite you to run an Internet search of that phrase. I will list two that don't seem to be going anywhere any time soon, both of which are geared toward romance readers and authors:

• Romance Lives Forever blog run by Kayelle Allen
• Romance Readers Club (if you can schedule your free promo 6 months in advance)

Another option—not technically free, but it entails a one-time cost so it should pay for itself sooner rather than later—is to purchase the "KDROI" (Kindle Direct Return on Investment) browser plugin offered by 5MinutePublishing.com. The direct link to the software is HERE, though the site may require you to sign up for their newsletter (and I do apologize for that annoyance) before you can establish an account with them.

I've found KDROI to be well worth any momentary annoyance, however, since it allows me to schedule free, permafree, and 99-cent promos with around two dozen sites at a clip.

If you have experienced memorable results via free email promotions, please leave a comment; we would all love to hear about them!

***

All this month, you are invited to…

— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Follow Kim on Pinterest
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow

… and each action this month is good for one chance to win a copy of any of Kim's e-books. 

Please enter often, and good luck!

The Business of Writing: The Author Newsletter #ampromoting #ASMSG

Scholar sharpening a quill pen by Gerrit Dou.
Public domain image via Wikimedia Commons.

Years and years ago, when I used to receive authors' newsletters via postal mail, I didn't adopt the tactic because I would have had trouble coming up with something new to report every month.

This was at the close of the millennium when traditional publishing was the norm, with a few small presses struggling to keep their doors open for love of the written word rather than the bottom line. As a traditional-published author, I was tied to my publisher's schedule and whims regarding whether they would reprint my novels, issue them in a different format, or exploit ancillary rights such as audiobook and foreign translations.

Sure, I could have reported news of book signings, lectures, and other personal appearances, but without the Really Big News to announce of another imminent release, I didn't really see the point of wasting all that postage.

With the advent of social media as an inexpensive tool for self promotion, of course, all of that has changed.

Beverly Bateman raises the question of "Do I or Don't I?" publish an author newsletter on Blogging With Beverly: http://beverleybateman.blogspot.com/2015/10/do-i-or-dont-i.html

Beverly's post was inspired by a podcast she had listened to for increasing email signups. The podcaster suggested the publication of weekly newsletters. You can read the comment I left on the article (along with everyone else's comments), but in a nutshell, I cannot envision myself ever sending weekly newsletters -- not due to lack of content because I have a lot more news to report these days with regard to the progress of audiobooks, graphic novels, and new releases -- but because I'd never get any new writing done!

I publish my newsletter The Dawnflier monthly, and thank you kindly for signing up!

If you still need convincing, or if you're convinced you want to start a newsletter but aren't sure where to begin, this article contains many excellent points about content and other considerations: http://www.amarketingexpert.com/how-your-newsletter-can-get-you-more-readers-visibility-and-sales/

One thing that article does not address is the email delivery service. My email server tends to get twitchy and lock me out if it sees me sending huge batches of emails. My original email server for newsletters was hosted by GoDaddy, but I've heard of this happening to Gmail accounts too.

That's why I bit the proverbial bullet a few months ago and started a list via MailChimp, the free version. If I ever get enough subscribers to necessitate paying for pro service, why that'll be a great day! But for now the free version does everything I need. There's a bit of a learning curve to figure out "campaign" (i.e., newsletter) design, but once I got over that hump and discovered the "save as template" option, subsequent newsletter designs have been a snap.

Whether you "Do or Don't" publish a periodic email newsletter is entirely up to you, but I've found that it's an excellent way to connect with members of my readership.

Happy writing--and newsletter-ing! :)

***
Enter this giveaway for an autographed copy of Morning's Journey!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

***

All this month, you are invited to...
— Follow Kim on Twitter
— Follow Kim on Pinterest
— Subscribe to Kim's YouTube channel
— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow
...and each action this month is good for one chance to win an e-book copy of Morning's Journey. Please enter often, and good luck!