By Graham Dickson

 

You did it, your book is finished!  It’s a moment worthy of celebration. But if you have dreams of finally setting your laptop aside for awhile, it’s time to think again: In today’s book world, the reality is that you’ll be busier than ever, looking for online ways to market your book. This is the next step for the savvy self-publisher.

In this ongoing blog series we offer genre-specific advice on selling your book on social media. Today, we focus on romance titles.

When it comes to romance, there are countless groups online ferociously devoted to the genre. Your task is to find these forums and engage with them. When using social media, it’s important that members feel you are a dedicated participant, not someone solely interested in promoting your book. So you will need to join in the conversations going on in each forum. Once you’ve established yourself, you can let members know of your book, even giving out special offers and so on.

Below are many useful resources. Feel free to share your favorites with us and we will add them to the list.

FACEBOOK

Facebook is invaluable for those marketing on a budget. You’ll want to start by creating a business page devoted to your romance book.  After that, you have to get people to like your page— the hard part. There are numerous webinars, books, and blogs devoted to how to do this.  Facebook has an easy step-by-step guide to help you out with this:  https://www.facebook.com/pages/create/

Keep in mind that Facebook has now become monetized, which means that while you can reach a small segment of your Facebook friends with any post, to reach a larger audience, you’ll have to pay small sums of money. Facebook calls this “boosting” your post.  Once you post something on your page, Facebook will ask you if you’d like to “boost this post?”  If you say “yes,” a box will pop up allowing you to decide how much you would like to spend and telling you how far your reach will go based on how much you spend. Once “boosted,” Facebook will send the item out to like-minded pages, where it will appear on those timelines. It’s a sure way to get your book on the feeds of people interested in your topic and to begin reaching out to those beyond your immediate circle.

One way you can start finding those people yourself is to join the Facebook groups that draw readers of your genre.  Below are a few of our favorite Facebook groups for the romance genre:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/RomanceMacias/  8,600 members. Feel free to post your books, reviews, blogs, and links. Posts that are not related to books will be deleted. Keep posts respectful; share, promote, and have fun.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/mfrwauthors/  6,000 members. For authors and other members of the literary community. You can post promos here, get and give help on questions, and support others.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/romance.publicity/  7,000 members. This group’s page exhorts: “Connecting Romance Authors with their Readers! Introduce us to your Romance Novel here.” The rules are quite specific for such activity, however, so please read carefully; you don’t want to fall out of favor due to misguided postings.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/429922670407471/  13,000 members. The site is focused on “Hot Reads.” This is a place to discuss/promote erotic romance novels.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1394353070814410/ 3,700 members. Paranormal, Romance, and Fantasy. Here, readers, bloggers, and authors come together to talk about their work and what they are currently reading. A great place to reach a diverse fan base.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Bookheaven/  8,000 members. This is a fantastic place to find good books, as well as to promote your own work. The site notes: “Please feel free to promote any of your titles or to post about books you enjoyed!” You can post as much as you like and include links to your books, blogs, websites etc.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/638881882858608/ 8,000 members. This Facebook page is titled “Pimp Your Books.” Visitors are free to promote their books, as well as discuss their favorite books and authors.

 

TWITTER

With posts limited to 280 characters, you’ll have to be clever —and brief— in order to effectively use this medium. And don’t forget that you’ll use up several characters if you want to link to your website. Moral of story: Think small. (Note: If you are linking your post to another site, make sure to use a link-shortening service like bit.ly.  Bit.ly takes a long url address and reduces it to only a few characters, freeing up valuable real estate on your limited character allowance.)

Remember to use hashtags. These can make a huge difference in how many people see your tweet. A hashtag is used to show what the post is about or related to, preceded by the pound sign (#books, #Erotica, etc.). Each hashtag has its own Twitter “address” so people interested in romance, for example, might simply visit #romance and look at all of the posts with this hashtag.  Using multiple relevant hashtags, while not going overboard, is paramount to a successful Twitter presence. If you’re offering a Kindle deal for your book, be sure to add the hashtag #kindledeals, as many readers look there for inexpensive books.

Here are some relevant hashtags:

#Erotica
#ScintilatingSunday
#romance
#historicalromance
#RomanceWriter
#Romantic
#RomanticSuspense,
#indieauthors
#mustread
#kindle
#kindledeals
#BookMarketing

 

REDDIT

Reddit is an actionable community that is divided into convenient “subreddits,” prefaced by the letter “r.” This allows you to promote to a wide audience, such as r/books, or to a more specialized community, such as r/truecrimepodcasts. Each page or “subreddit” is basically a chat space that focuses on a particular subject.  Visitors can initiate a topic or simply respond to comments that others have posted.  The more people who respond, the higher on the page that discussion goes.  Here’s reddit’s description of itself:  https://www.reddit.com/wiki/reddit_101

Make sure to look at the right sidebar on every subreddit you visit, where you’ll find related subreddits as well as the page rules. Some pages allow self-promotion; some strictly forbid it, and others have special times or threads for self-promotion.

While Facebook undoubtedly reaches more people, it does not allow for this sort of specialization. We’re offering a few suggestions on the site here, but once you start poking around, you’ll find plenty more threads to get involved with.

https://www.reddit.com/r/books  This community is dedicated to lovers of the written word. It’s a good place to start on reddit in order to get a feel for the world of books on the site.  While there are no direct promotions allowed on this page (remember: you can always see each subreddit’s rules on the right side their homepage), they do have a “new releases” section where you can promote your book. Here’s the link:

https://www.reddit.com/r/books/comments/48fei9/new_releases_march_2016/

There are two rules for this group: 1. The books must have been published within the last three months, and 2. No direct sales links are allowed. You’ll see a number of options on the sidebar, including subreddits for: Authors, Writing, Genres, etc.

/r/erotica: This should only be used to publish the full text of a free story. Links are frowned upon. This is also a good place to read some free erotic stories and get a feel for new kinks and fetishes. Be sure to participate in the conversations going on here to get your name out among others with like interests.

/r/eroticwriting: This subreddit has fewer rules on promotion than some of the other genres. Don’t spam their page with promos, however.  Take part in the discussion.  And, at the bottom of the page there is a great list of similar self-reddits if you’re looking for something more specific in the romance/erotica genres.

 

PINTEREST

Pinterest is a site of virtual bulletin boards. Each board is theme-based. You can find boards on everything from bathroom remodels to Indian recipes to romance and erotica books.

Each board features images of the topic at hand; clicking on an image brings up more information. For example, on a book board, if you click on the image of a book jacket, that might take you to a review of the book or the author’s website, the book’s Amazon page and so on.

The site is used for sharing information, but too much self-promotion is frowned upon.  So, when you set up your Pinterest board, you may want to set up a board devoted to a larger topic, such as self-published romance fiction or favorite classic romantic books, and allow others to share their titles with you. Join in the fun of creating interesting boards that not only will promote sales, but will also be fun and engaging to others.

In addition to creating your own boards, be sure to search out other boards where you can share your pins (your images) and connect with others in the romance community.  Here are a few that we like and share our pins with:

https://www.pinterest.com/explore/romance-novels/

https://www.pinterest.com/gbroussard23/romance-novels-the-best-book-boyfriends-out-there/

https://www.pinterest.com/mfrworg/

https://www.pinterest.com/bayajack/bookaholics-anonymous/

https://www.pinterest.com/bayajack/indie-authors-and-self-published/

 

GOODREADS

One last platform to consider when promoting online is Goodreads. Goodreads is a website owned by Amazon that allows individuals to freely search the extensive user-populated database of books, annotations, and reviews. Users can sign up and register books to generate library catalogs and reading lists. They can also create their own groups of book suggestions, surveys/polls, blogs, and discussions. READ THE RULES BEFORE POSTING! Authors who only post promotions and do not participate in discourse in the community will be ejected.

https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/390-paranormal-romance-urban-fantasy  This group focuses on the discussion and recommendation of paranormal romances and paranormal erotic romance, along with urban fantasy, science fiction, futuristic, and fantasy romance. If you love vampires, werewolves, and hot faerie men, this is the group for you.

https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/18399-erotica This group believes erotica is not vulgar or obscene. “It’s art. It’s beautiful and it has a place. We are adults who can understand and read sexually implicit (not explicit) fictional literature and appreciate it for what it is.” The group allows for limited promotion of books, provided you read and agree to the code of conduct prior to joining.

https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/2344-erotic-enchants  A group for chatting about all types of erotica, “from the tame to the taboo.”  It  discusses erotic reads of all types, so don’t be shy…

We hope you find these links helpful. They will certainly keep you busy for a while, but once you get involved with the social media world, you’ll find this is only the beginning.  Next stop: Instagram, Snapchat, Vine…

Graham Dickson is a student at the University of Colorado Denver majoring in marketing and minoring in German. He is an intern at BlueInk Review.

BlueInk Review is a fee-based book review service devoted to self-published titles exclusively. For more news and writing and marketing tips, sign up for our mailing list. And be sure and visit us at https://www.blueinkreview.com