177 Search Results for thursdays with amanda
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Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: Success with Writing Articles"Thursdays with Amanda: Success with Writing Articles
NOTE: Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent.
We’re on week three of tackling the Platform Monster. Week one we talked about numbers as in how big an author platform should be, and week two we took the first step toward achieving those numbers by acknowledging that growing a platform should be like playing with dominos. You move forward, tile by tile, focusing on one thing at a time until the big payoff when everything falls into place and you have your platform.
So now let’s dig deeper. Each week, we’ll take a look at one of those platform components (Facebook, Twitter, Blogging, Speaking) and I’ll give insight into how to do them right and reap the biggest reward.
This week, we’re talking about WRITING ARTICLES.
I chose this one to start us off, because aside from blogging, it comes more naturally to most writers than, say, YouTube vlogging and public speaking. It also is one of the easiest ways to ensure your name gets in front of lots and lots of people.
Here’s my thinking…you Tweet something or write a blog post or throw something up onto the Internet, and unless you happen to be talking about a trending or searchable topic, it only gets read by your immediate audience. But with articles (especially print articles), your words will be read by a majority of that publication’s readership. And 99.9% of those readers are people that you haven’t met before. So while pitching articles and columns may be a bit outdated, it’s one of the best ways to get your words in front of NEW readers.
So how do you see success with articles? Here’s what I recommend:
1. Take a look at what you write and identify the topics you specialize
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Continue Reading "Thursdays with Amanda: How Big Should a Writer's Platform Be?"
Thursdays with Amanda: How Big Should a Writer's Platform Be?
NOTE: Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent.
You've heard it before…if you really want to impress an agent, make sure you have three things: a great idea, supported by great writing and a great platform.
But let's be honest, either you're born with a knack for words or you're not.
Either a great idea drops into your head one day, or it doesn't.
But platform…platform doesn't happen by chance. Platform is all about hard work.
I think it's funny that we dedicate entire conferences and workshops and critique groups to the very components that we have the least control over (You can't make great writers out of bad writers, and no classic American novels were written by following a novel-writing template), while the the third component–the one that really can be taught into existence–gets ignored.
This really bugs me, because we've turned platform into this mysterious entity that's somehow more difficult to achieve than writing a best seller. Somewhere along the line, we've decided using social media is more nebulous than developing a plot destined for the silver screen and that growing a readership as an unpublished author is more far-fetched than an agent offering on-the-spot representation.
How we became so dillussional is lost on me, but I'd like to begin to set things straight and pull platform out of the doghouse it's been sitting in for so long.
So first things first, what do impressive social media stats look like? (Hold on, it's going to be a bumpy ride…)
The cold, hard truth is that solid author platforms come in the tens or hundreds of thousands.
Let’s get more specific…
If you have a website or blog, your monthly unique visitor count should be at least 30,000
If you have a
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Continue Reading "Thursday with Amanda: Which Comes First? A Book Deal or Platform? (FICTION)"Thursday with Amanda: Which Comes First? A Book Deal or Platform? (FICTION)
Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent. Her author marketing book, The Extroverted Writer, is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.In the journey of publishing, what is the typical order of events? Does an author come out with a book first? Or do they develop a platform first?
I think many of us in the industry see this as an easy question to answer.
For fiction, the book comes first.
For nonfiction, the platform.
But it never fails that I’ll inevitably run into authors who either don’t understand this, don’t agree, or flat out don’t fit the mold. So here is some insight into the fiction side of this topic:
WHAT COMES FIRST FOR FICTION? A BOOK DEAL OR PLATFORM?
If you’ve ever tried to build a platform for your fiction career without actually having a novel, you’ll find it’s near-impossible. I mean, what do you blog about? What do you Tweet? You don’t have characters anyone knows, you don’t have product to push, and you certainly don’t have much reason to share when your next draft is done or when you’ve had a 10k writing marathon.
Marketing your fiction career without a product is HARD. So that’s why the general rule is that the book comes first, then the platform.
BUT! there are always exceptions to the rule. For fiction, a huge exception would be an author who has found an audience not for their fiction writing, but for some other hobby or focus. Let’s say Trina writes fiction. But she also bakes. She has a recipe blog with a decent following. So in a sense, Trina has a platform and this platform will actually help her
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Continue Reading "Thursday with Amanda: 5 Pitfalls of Using Kickstarter…and How to Avoid Them"
Thursday with Amanda: 5 Pitfalls of Using Kickstarter…and How to Avoid Them
Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent. Her author marketing book, The Extroverted Writer, is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.Kickstarter is a popular way for artists and entrepreneurs to get the funding they need to bring a project or idea to fruition. It’s been used by everyone from Reading Rainbow to TLC to Zach Braff. So clearly, some big names (along with plenty of little guys) have adopted the unique platform.
For awhile board games and the like dominated the Kickstarter platform, but more and more I’m seeing authors and even publishers launch their book projects through the site. It’s definitely a tempting idea. The thought of having $5,000 or $10,000 as opposed to the few hundred I used to put together my own indie book The Extroverted Writer, is…mind-blowing. Oh, what I could have done with that kind of money!! My book could have been edited by Stephen King and had a large print edition and a Spanish language edition and a braille edition and an ad in Times Square to boot.
Okay, maybe not, but this is the lure of Kickstarter. It creates this “the sky is the limit” mentality. And it works.
So what are the pitfalls? Oh, there are plenty. Kickstarter is an everyman’s version of Shark Tank, except the people with the ideas tend to be artists and creatives as opposed to MBA grads and business owners, while the backers (or partners) are regular consumers, looking to get in on a new product that fits their needs.
Clearly this is a setup that could have disastrous results. And sometimes it does. But it doesn’t have to! Being aware of the
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Continue Reading "Thursday with Amanda: How to Write a Novel that is Easy to Market"
Thursday with Amanda: How to Write a Novel that is Easy to Market
Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent. You can also check out her marketing skills on Fiverr. Her author marketing book, The Extroverted Writer, is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.Does this sound familiar?
You have a novel that seems to be going nowhere. It’s a romance, after all. And there are a bazillion other romance novels out there, competing for the same readers. So you try to think outside the box. You can’t really promote yourself, because it’s the beginning of your career and you don’t have a massive fanbase yet, so you turn to your book to help you. It’s really all you have to offer.
You blog excerpts of your book and set up character Twitter accounts and pin a ton of pictures that remind you of your novel and you do gift card giveaways and chapter one booklets and you order bookmarks and go to bookstores and … nothing seems to be working.
You’re still a voice among thousands of other voices. And you’re doing your song and dance along with everyone else, while this mass of potential readers watches.
Novels can be next to impossible to promote or market. Unlike nonfiction, they don’t solve problems (in the conventional sense) or help readers out of holes. They don’t impart knowledge and wisdom in the same way that nonfiction books do, and they certainly don’t pretend to have all the answers. Nope. Instead, fiction is viewed as a form of entertainment. A luxury item for those who have the time.
This means that each time a novel is read it’s because that person has chosen to spend their free time not with movies or
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Continue Reading "A Wednesday with Amanda: Finding Your Audience Is as Easy as Watching a Movie"
A Wednesday with Amanda: Finding Your Audience Is as Easy as Watching a Movie
Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent. Her author marketing book, The Extroverted Writer, is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.We’re talking about my book this week on the blog (if you haven’t noticed), and so I wanted to share this excerpt with you.
In The Extroverted Writer, I don’t just talk social media. I talk about truly identifying your audience. Because without a handle on who your readers are (what they look like, what they enjoy doing, what they spend their money on, etc.), you’re bound to enact a bunch of marketing efforts that won’t even come close to reaching them. In other words, you’re bound to waste your time.
In the book, I provide a number of strategies and tips on identifying your audience, and this one is my favorite…
The Theater Test
My parents really wanted to see the movie The Iron Lady, a biopic about Margaret Thatcher. So, the three of us went to the theater and took our seats. I really enjoyed the movie and found it quite moving, so much so that I would probably recommend it to my friends if the subject came up.Right after the movie ended and the lights came back on, I remember standing up and realizing that I was younger than everyone else in the room by at least twenty years (I was twenty-eight at the time). Not only that, but I realized that almost everyone there was with his or her spouse. And they were all white people, probably conservatives (they had that look about them), and they seemed to fall in the middle or upper middle class.
Okay, so basically, they were all
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Continue Reading "A Monday with Amanda: Book Promo Cards"
A Monday with Amanda: Book Promo Cards
Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. Every Thursday, she posts about growing your author platform. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent. Her author marketing book, The Extroverted Writer, is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.Last Thursday, I blogged about why creating STUFF doesn’t work when it comes to marketing and selling books. In the post I talk about a card that I created for my marketing book. Here’s what I said:
I have cards on hand for my marketing ebook. I give these away at conferences. It works like a gem. But the big deal isn’t that I have the cards…it’s that I’m AT the CONFERENCES. I’m pounding the pavement. And then I’m sealing the deal with the card.
Imagine if I sat home. If I had a book to promote and a bunch of cards that I didn’t know what to do with. I’d end up with TWO things to promote. Two items that need marketing plans and Twitter campaigns and Facebook strategies (though I realize the idea of a Facebook strategy for a card is a bit silly…you get my point).
One commenter asked to see an example of the card, and though I still hold firm that it is not the card that matters…it’s my presence at the conference…I figured it may be helpful to show you what info I included (and excluded) on the card.
It’s a business-sized card, and it has a front and a back:
Jam-packed on this card are the following:
1) Cover image
2) A sense of urgency and hype in place of a blurb or endorsement (Available Now!)
3) A hook that answers a NEED authors have. I mean who doesn’t want to take control and build their platform starting
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Continue Reading "From Amanda: How to Format Your Manuscript for Submission and Kindle Upload"
From Amanda: How to Format Your Manuscript for Submission and Kindle Upload
Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent.
First, I'd like to say I'm sorry for missing my post yesterday. I had some personal things come up and just didn't get around to it. So, we're going to take a slight detour this week, since I know there are a number of people who tune in specifically on Thursdays to hear about building author platform. And, well, we don't want them missing the next installment, now, do we?!
So for today, I'd like to share links to a batch of really helpful tutorial videos my author, the fabulous Jill Williamson, put together. They cover everything you need to know to format your manuscript for submission.
Formatting a Manuscript, Part 1: Page Set Up and Text– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boP5po6aMDk&feature=relatedFormatting a Manuscript, Part 2: Page Breaks– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nU1iv2v95s&feature=relatedFormatting a Manuscript, Part 3: Paragraphs– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TwqvmdWDJto&feature=relatedFormatting a Manuscript, Part 4: Cleaning things up– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNOj9ZR88E8&feature=relatedFormatting a Manuscript, Part 5: Page Numbers– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UOuihsC7SyY&feature=relatedIn addition to this, Jill put together a series of videos for formatting your manuscript for upload on Amazon as a Kindle ebook.Formatting Your Manuscript for Amazon Kindle–PART 1– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RU2kprKRrGY&feature=relatedUsing Mobipocket to Format Your Book For Kindle–PART 2– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e4szEhEhHy4&feature=relatedThey're short and to the point…excellent references for anyone getting ready to do something with that polished, perfected manuscript.Do you know of any tutorials to add to this list? Tell us about them!And tune in next Thursday when we get back to our discussion on building platforms…the topic? Platform-building blogging. See you next week! -
Continue Reading "Thursday with Amanda: Growing a Platform Is Like Dominos"
Thursday with Amanda: Growing a Platform Is Like Dominos
NOTE: Amanda Luedeke is a literary agent with MacGregor Literary. You can follow her on Twitter @amandaluedeke or join her Facebook group to stay current with her wheelings and dealings as an agent.
So now you know what to shoot for in terms of numbers (if you missed it, last Thursday we talked about how big an author platform should be). But as many of you pointed out, those numbers seem impossible. The time and effort required to grow such a following had some of you envisioning yourself with an impressive platform sometime in the year 2030. While others flat out admitted that they didn’t have a single sales bone in their body. You’re artists, after all. And artists don’t always make the most sociable, friendly, outgoing, spin doctoring bunch.
So what’s the secret? How can these numbers be achieved?
Let me explain it like this…most authors, when embarking on a quest to tackle the platform demon, treat it like spaghetti. They throw everything against the wall to see what sticks. They start a Facebook group, a Twitter account, a blog, a website, a Goodreads account, a newsletter and on and on and on until they feel they have all of the possible platform-building areas covered.
And then they’re surprised when nothing happens. When their Facebook group hovers around 50 followers—most of which are personal or family friends. When their Twitter account has more spam followers than real followers and their website stats don’t climb above 30 visits a day. They’re surprised by this, because they’re doing everything they’re supposed to do and nothing is working. And more than anything, they’re exhausted. They’ve spread themselves so thin, they can barely keep track of what was said where. At this point, most give up. They tried their best, and it didn’t work.
But platform is nothing like spaghetti. It’s more like a game of dominos (as in the game in
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Continue Reading "Thursday with Amanda: Growing a Platform Is Like Dominos"
Thursday with Amanda: Growing a Platform Is Like Dominos
So now you know what to shoot for in terms of numbers (if you missed it, last Thursday we talked about how big an author platform should be). But as many of you pointed out, those numbers seem impossible. The time and effort required to grow such a following had some of you envisioning yourself with an impressive platform sometime in the year 2030. While others flat out admitted that they didn’t have a single sales bone in their body. You’re artists, after all. And artists don’t always make the most sociable, friendly, outgoing, spin doctoring bunch.
So what’s the secret? How can these numbers be achieved?
Let me explain it like this…most authors, when embarking on a quest to tackle the platform demon, treat it like spaghetti. They throw everything against the wall to see what sticks. They start a Facebook group, a Twitter account, a blog, a website, a Goodreads account, a newsletter and on and on and on until they feel they have all of the possible platform-building areas covered.
And then they’re surprised when nothing happens. When their Facebook group hovers around 50 followers—most of which are personal or family friends. When their Twitter account has more spam followers than real followers and their website stats don’t climb above 30 visits a day. They’re surprised by this, because they’re doing everything they’re supposed to do and nothing is working. And more than anything, they’re exhausted. They’ve spread themselves so thin, they can barely keep track of what was said where. At this point, most give up. They tried their best, and it didn’t work.
But platform is nothing like spaghetti. It’s more like a game of dominos (as in the game in
