One True Fan

ACFWAdvice, Authors and writing, Encouragement, Fellowship, Friends of ACFW, marketing, Social Media, writing Leave a Comment

By Sara Ella Target audience. That’s a phrase we hear a lot in this biz, isn’t it? We’re supposed to find our target readers. Gain them as followers. Get their emails so we can add them to the list. Check, check, and check. As if writing a novel wasn’t work enough. I’ve spent hours building platform, ready to pull my …

Author Influencer and Reader Groups: Why Do Readers Join?

ACFWAdvice, Friends of ACFW, marketing, Reviews Leave a Comment

By Carrie Fancett Pagels The writing life isn’t just about sitting in your cave pounding out a stellar book. Writing lifestyles includes book promotion. So what makes a reader want to join an influencer/reviewer group? Terminology: Influencers promote an author or a new release through social media. Readers/reviewers accept a book and read it, determine if it is worthy of …

Three Questions Every Author Must Answer

ACFWAdvice, Authors and writing, Friends of ACFW, marketing, tips, writing Leave a Comment

By Suzanne Kuhn In one of our early coaching sessions, we ask our authors to answer three questions about themselves and their book(s); so what, who cares and why you? Many authors fail to take this self-evaluative journey. As we lead them towards answering these questions, they find their audience, purpose and direction in the marketing of their books. So …

That’s What Friends Are For

ACFWAdvice, Authors and writing, Critiques, Friends of ACFW, marketing, Social Media Leave a Comment

by Sarah Sundin When I started writing, I was alone. I’d never met another novelist, and I had no idea where to start. The first and best advice I received was to join a writers group and attend conferences. Made sense. I needed to learn my craft. I needed to meet editors and agents so I could sell my book. …

Cross Promotion and the Christian Author

ACFWAdvice, Authors and writing, Encouragement, Friends of ACFW, marketing, Social Media, tips Leave a Comment

By Carrie Fancett Pagels RWA’s magazine, RWR, recently featured an excellent article on marketing. One of the points they made, besides the obvious point that you must write the very best book that you can, is to link up with other authors and cross promote. As a blogger for many years, I’ve had the privilege of promoting many bestselling Christian …

Platform Isn’t a Dirty Word

ACFWAdvice, Authors and writing, Friends of ACFW, marketing, Publishing, tips Leave a Comment

By Ane Mulligan Everyone hates the word platform. But stay with me here. If you’re a writer, you need one. These days, only the top 10% or less of writers have people who do all the marketing for them. Let’s face it, the rest of us have to market. And you have to have a sphere of influence to market …

A New Adventure in Publishing: Strength in Numbers

ACFWAdvice, Authors and writing, Encouragement, Friends of ACFW, marketing, Social Media, tips Leave a Comment

By Roxanne Rustand Though I continue to enjoy writing traditionally published novels, I spent part of this past year working on some self-published novels for Kindle, Nook, and other e-formats. It has been both an adventure, and a challenge, for it means finding ways to market to readers who enjoy digitial format–and become visible in that ocean of other indie …

Cross pollinating and the writing industry

ACFWAdvice, Authors and writing, Friends of ACFW, marketing, Social Media, tips, writing Leave a Comment

By Jennie Atkins Marketing and online presence, whether we like it or not, have become a large part of what an author must do to succeed. Our writing time now includes posts to social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, or Pinterest. Instead of adding pages to our work in process, we’re adding posts to our blog. Authors need to …