Author Marketing Website
All my books have a thread of Catholicism running through them.
Ryan Mallardi Private Investigations
Jack Nolan Detective Series
Newport Vampire Stories Series
When new writers think about a book cover, they tend to want to tell the whole story on the cover. I still have this problem myself! This often turns out to be a block to great design. The main mission of a great cover is to tell the reader WHO the book is about, WHERE the story will take place, and WHAT the story is about. Here are some examples:
The purpose of the cover is to lure in readers who already read in your genre or find something about your cover that triggers their interest and they decide to give your book a try.
(Video of best seller lists showing which books catch the eye)
When a person holds your book in their hand, they will be able to see every detail on the cover. If they look at the cover after reading your book, they may see many things that foreshadowed the story. However, if there is too much going on on the book cover, when the size of the cover is reduced into the size millions of readers see the cover — during a scroll at Amazon.com — then all of that same foreshadowing and complex design is being seen at a size where not much besides the color scheme and the title — if you’re lucky — can be seen.
Show the different sizes that people will see your books in. Point out how simple design is often more effective.
The sci-fi and fantasy realm is an area where the covers can quite elaborate, very fancy, so to speak. Elaborate embossed titles, with dark backgrounds, smoke of glowing light, a sole figure who is reduced in order to get all the fancy background in, etc. In my humble opinion, there is such a thing as being too fancy.
It is possible to keep things simple even in the sci-fi and fantasy genres. Famous authors sell books to an already-established readership, so they can have book covers that are barely readable. They won’t sell one less book. However, if you are new and self-published, you will be relying more heavily on appealing to the tastes of book scrollers. eBook shoppers are not browsers who will see your book up close in a bookstore. They are Amazon scrollers which is a completely different experience.
This is a genre that sometimes less is more. Before you settle on a design, create the cover into the size that will be seen in the different scrolls on Amazon that I’ll demonstrate below. Make sure you can read the cover title, author title, and that the genre is clear. Those are the basics.
If you have no creative talent in the area of graphic design, here is a tip that will help you. First and foremost, find the subgenre you will be choosing. Below are examples of sub-genres and how far they are from the top genre selection. This sub-genre is your reader pond. This is where you initial readers will be swimming and scrolling.
Pull up the Best Seller pages in that subgenre and record the amazon link address to that very page. Then go to fiverr.com and find the brand new cover designers, the ones who are really looking to establish themselves and they are willing to make a cover for $5 or $10. Hire three of them and give them the link to the best seller list with a brief synopsis of what your book is about. That’s all the information you should give them.
When they all deliver an eBook, this should give you at least a direction to go in. This is usually enough to give even a non-creative person an area to go in. Then once you are ready to have a real cover done, you can hire a book cover designer with more experience, either from a recommendation from a self-publishing group or by looking at all the portfolios at Fiverr.com.
Don’t use white as a background for your book. It creates problems with Amazon. First of all, Amazon wants you to put a border of a light gray onto your book cover which most beginners don’t think about until after their purchase. But it gets washed out against the white background at Amazon.
If you need a whitish cover for some unknown reason, choose a different white color so at least there is a difference between Amazon and your cover.
All my books have a thread of Catholicism running through them.
Ryan Mallardi Private Investigations
Jack Nolan Detective Series
Newport Vampire Stories Series
All my books have a thread of Catholicism running through them.
Ryan Mallardi Private Investigations
Jack Nolan Detective Series
Newport Vampire Stories Series
Click here or above and you can download a PDF of the pretty cat and bird bookmarks. Passing a simple bookmark is a way to let someone special know you are thinking of them. Use them as giveaways at craft shows. Insert them into your giveaway books. Let one hang from the bow on a birthday gift. They are the perfect Tiny Gift for All Occasions.
Click here to download a high resolution digital copy with everything backwards so you can iron on the design to a T-shirt or other fabric item. Downloads are kept on Google Drive. This is the perfect gift from a young child.
The first marketing strategy is to use your short story as a giveaway. In order to get the free eBook, the reader will need to sign up for your newsletter. This is the most common strategy that is used by self-published authors as well as seasoned authors who are promoted by the publishing houses.
It's common knowledge in the book industry that in today's world, every writer, new or seasoned, needs to continually build their reader list. Readers who sign up to your newsletter have tried your books and know they like them. They are your first line of marketing. They are the most likely customers for any new books you release. That being said, the best way to keep contact with your readership is to send a weekly or monthly newsletter.
Everyone loves freebies and adding a free short story or novelette into your newsletter will keep your readers coming back and new readers wanting to sign up. It will also keep your readership from pressing the unsubscribe button!
Writing short stories in your genre is also a good way to always have a few freebies to giveaway. Many authors write short stories or novelettes around the holidays specifically for this reason: Mystery romance around Christmas time, or a beach romance or mystery for summertime. There are many seasonal strategies to bring extra traffic to your Amazon Author page or your author website.
A second strategy for marketing with short stories is to write a prequel to your present book series as a giveaway. You can use this book to swap with other authors on platforms such as Bookfunnel and Story Origin. Plenty of authors with lots of newsletter readers will want to swap with new authors as they already know they need to continually work on building their readership. The more books you have to swap, the quicker you will build your own readership.
A third strategy for short stories is to offer them for free on your author website. Like I said above, everyone loves a freebie. This is a good way to get readers to try you as an author without investing in you financially. If they like your style and writing voice, the chances are good that you will become someone they keep an eye out for.
You can post social media posts about the book, using several different graphics and link them to your website that has a download link to your short story eBook. By giving away a Novelette, which is only a little longer than a short story, you can get traffic to your new author website. Amazon even has categories for short reads now. This means there is a market, a sizeable one, who have readers who have limited time but want to read a good story. Be sure to cash in on this!
If you, like me, started writing novels right off the bat and don't know how to write a short story or novelette, I am offering a free short story template that will make it fairly easy for you. The template contains the means to keep the story shorter than a novel.
A short story usually revolves around one incident or one particular happenstance, so it is much easier than writing an entire novel. Although, keeping within the confines of a short story can also be tricky. That's why I created this template for myself and I'm offering it to you for free. Click below to download it.
All my books have a thread of Catholicism running through them.
Ryan Mallardi Private Investigations
Jack Nolan Detective Series
Newport Vampire Stories Series
Click here to download a high resolution digital copy with everything backwards so you can iron on the design to a T-shirt or other fabric item. Downloads are kept on Google Drive.
I have been writing novels since about two years before I retired in 2020. You can see them all if you click on the picture of them to the left. My life has been very stable and this, of course, makes writing very easy. Writing novels gave my life a certain structure and routine that can disappear when one retires from the workplace.
I moved to central Florida to get away from the craziness of Broward County, Florida, and had two family members close by. My brother lives in Orlando, which is only an hour away, and my cousin Michael moved up to live in my town and only lived two blocks away. My cousin and I had been close my entire adult life, and had gotten closer in the last five or six years. He was my anchor in this area of Florida. I have always been a "family person".
My other relative living close by is my brother Bill who lives in Orlando. It's only about an hour or so away and we met at least monthly for lunch and to catch up.
In the first week of April, my cousin Michael showed signs of not being able to finish his sentences. This happened overnight. I was with him the week before this and he was fine; better than fine. His speech was perfect and his memory was still 10 times better than mine.
After having to wrestle with him to go to the emergency room, he was diagnosed with brain cancer, and had 5 tumors that were inside his head. The prognosis was not good. My heart was broken for him, but I had to jump into caretaking mode, and that is a physically and mentally demanding role. In other words, there's no time for crying or falling to bits and pieces. I was raised as an Irish stoic of the highest order, and we don't collapse into tears until the mission, whatever that is, is completed.
So I and Michael's sister -- who immediately flew down from the northeast -- started preparing his house to have in-home hospice. His house had fallen to bits and pieces over time. A few weeks before this diagnosis, he had banned me from coming inside. He said it was because it was messy and he didn't want me to see. I am a bit of a neat freak, so I said I understood. However, the house showed signs that it wasn't just a mess; he had lost the ability to take care of himself and his cat. He just hid it well.
Living two blocks away from where Michael would be with hospice, my house filled up with cousins and spouse-helpers. We ran all over town preparing to have Michael discharged and brought home for in-house hospital.
While signing up my cousin for county services, he fell while walking with us and hit his head. This fall suddenly changed everything. He was taken by the paramedics and arrangements were made to have him go to a hospice facility. Instead of needing in-house hospital, he would spend the next two and a half weeks in the hospice facility before he passed away.
The hospice he was in was beautiful, clean, and everyone who worked there was wonderful. We found it through Marion County Services, E.W. & Lucille Cates House, and it was wonderful. The people who worked in the hospice system were all compassionate people who had been called to this type of work -- which is not easy. I am eternally grateful to them for how lovingly they took care of Michael in his last weeks.
During this time, my creative mind shut off. I don't think this is unique to me. I assume this would occur with anyone, especially when you are dealing with caretaking and/or grief. Writing was put not only on the back burner, but the pot was set off on a resting pad for an unknown time in the future.
I did continue my marketing, as my marketing is on semi-autopilot and it is as easy as copying and pasting onto the sites and takes less than 30 minutes. This routine at least kept me tethered to the book author in me.
Raised Catholic and having embraced the faith myself many years ago, this has given me a softer view of death because I know it's not the end. My cousin, as well as the other family members who went before him and who I still miss, are with the Lord and I believe that I will see them all again. I liken it to being in the world, which is like Disney World, and they got tired and went back to the hotel room. I'm still in the park but I know they are not that far away and I will see them again.
We had our priest come and pray with Michael before he passed, and my cousin and I said a Rosary at his bedside the night before he died. So I take great comfort knowing that we were with him until the end. He drifted off to Heaven without any pain. I consider this, even in spite of the shocking and sudden diagnosis and loss, the blessing of a painless death.
About a week after Michael's passing and cremation, my brother announced he will be moving down to Hollywood, Florida to be closer to his children. That's about five or six hours from where I live. Suddenly, my second family anchor is disappearing. This made me feel more unanchored than I felt losing my best buddy and cousin, Michael.
I know from past losses that there will always be a new normal. I also know I have to be willing to go through the painful and scary feelings of being lost and untethered before I can find that new normal.
I spent two weeks after Michael passed away running around and taking care of the 'business side of death' which involves lots of calls and running around.
During this time, I opened my last book, and wasn't even sure where I was with things. I write in Scrivener, so it didn't take long to find my place and figure out where I was in the story. I managed to pick up where I last was and wrote a few chapters on the same story. This restored my faith in being able to continue on with my writing.
As an author I am plugging along, but things are still slow and I'm still quite distracted by the grief and losses. Losing my two family members, one to death and one to Hollywood, Florida, led me to buying a minivan to build out as a camper van. I am intending to become a part time campervan traveler. This way, I can visit my other family members who reside in different places all up and down the east coast.
I'm still in the planning and layout stages, but I want to build a minivan where I can continue writing and visiting family. I still feel heavy with grief, but I feel hopeful for the future. I can see the glimmer of a new normal. I'll keep you all posted!
