Tag: author marketing

Your book is riveting, but your author bio is a snooze. If you're afraid this describes you, don't be too hard on yourself; plenty of brilliant authors freeze up when it comes to writing about themselves in sound bites.

See how I did that? I asked you a question you couldn't answer without reading more than just the headline! (And I assume it worked to grab your attention if you're still reading now.) Many authors are trying to engage their audience by asking questions—and that's a good thing—but they're asking the wrong kinds of questions, things like "Do you want to buy my latest book for half-price?" or "Who is your favorite fictional character?" According to marketing guru Bob Baker, you can "hypnotize" people into reading your email newsletters by doing one simple thing with the email subject lines (and look—it works for blog titles as well): ask a question that can't be answered without clicking to read more.  So, instead of "Would you like to read my newest love poem?"— try something like: "Which one of these three beautiful women inspired my latest love poem?" A question like that creates a "mental state of dissonance" which we want to quickly resolve.

If you want journalists, critics, and bloggers to take a serious interest in your book, you have to make things easy for them. It starts with an author website that gives them everything they need.