Tag Archives: social media

My New Favorite Twitter Thing: Buffer

13 Feb

The observant among you may have noticed that in the past week I’ve been uncharacteristically tweeting at all sorts of times, e.g. very early in the GMT morning/very late in the EST night. Have I cut out my beloved sport of regular napping? No. Have I suddenly fell victim to insomnia? Chance would be a fine thing. Has my almost total immunity to caffeine undone itself? I wish. If it did, I might get some actual work done.

Was I tweeting at four am? HARDLY. And also: isn’t the headline all you need to know?

No, it’s none of the above. Instead I’ve taken the advice of Steven Lewis of Taleist and signed up for Buffer, a service that helps you to spread out your tweets. And in doing so, enables you to schedule your tweets. And which makes it super easy to tweet links in the first place. And it’s free, by the way.

I’m a little bit in love with it.

Here’s how it works (click the images for larger versions):

You sign up for Buffer and link it to your Twitter account. Create a schedule for your buffered tweets based on your own time zone. I don’t think there’s a limit on times but for a free account you can only buffer up to 10 tweets at a time.

Then put the snazzy little “Add to Buffer” button to your browser. (It’s the one that looks like a stack of three square things.)

Click it whenever you’re on a page you want to tweet a link to and then sit back and relax while Buffer sends out your tweets as per your schedule. Every time you add a tweet it’ll show you by way of a progress bar how many tweets you have waiting to go out, and if you want to tweet it right now instead, you just press the—yes, you’ve guessed it—”Post Now” button.

And you can of course also just write Buffer tweets if tweeting links aren’t your thing. You can do that from your Dashboard.

If you can’t think of anything to say, there’s even an “Inspire Me!” button that throws up all sorts of quotables. And if you use Twitter.com, you’ll see a little “Add to Buffer” button in everyone else’s tweets, so you can add a retweet to your stack of tweets-in-waiting if you’d like.

Scheduling your tweets is not something I ever really worry about, at least not in the “time zone” sense. Yes, it would be nice if someone outside of GMT was around to see one of my 140-character utterances every now and then, but I’ve never stressed about it. Worrying about things like that sounds too much like work to me. BUT my tweeting has really fallen by the wayside recently, and most days I release a clump of tweets mid-morning and then no one hears from me for the rest of the day. I’m just too busy to stop and think about spreading my tweets evenly throughout the day.

Buffer solves this problem, because with it my five minutes of writing tweets or posting links translates into up to ten tweets spread out during the day.

But it also just makes it easier to post links to Twitter, because all I have to do is click twice. Once on the Buffer button in my browser, and then “Add to Buffer” in the window that appears. So the hours of my day set aside for staring out the window and other procrastination activities are safe for now…

Sign-Up for Buffer! (And Help Me!)

I’m not sure if this link will work (I think they intend for you to tweet this link once or twice, not blog it, but anyway…) but if I refer people to Buffer and they sign up, both they and I get extra space for buffered tweets. Try signing up here and see what happens. If it doesn’t work, just sign-up by yourself; I’ll get over it. But whatever you do, do sign-up!

[UPDATE: It's totally working. Woo-hoo!]

Bring Your Book To Market: An Ickle Reminder

12 Dec

I was super busy this weekend what with X-Factor USA, the Strictly Come Dancing semi-final, four hours—FOUR HOURS!—of an X-Factor UK final that would’ve been about 25 minutes if you took any the ad breaks, Westlife and interviews with the screaming mobs of “friends and family” in the audience (but left the Coldplay performance which, thanks to those wristband light thingys and the fact that it was in Wembley Arena, looked AMAZING) and writing. Yes, I’ve my priorities straight. So busy was I that I didn’t have time to write the post I was intending to publish today, so instead here’s an ickle reminder about Bring Your Book to Market, the self-publishing and social media for authors course Ben Johncock and I are running at Faber Academy in February.

These are the details in a nutshell:

On Friday 17th-Sunday 19th February 2012, Faber Academy, London, are running a 3-day course called BRING YOUR BOOK TO MARKET, and I’m delighted to say that none other than yours truly will be leading the self-publishing session.

About Bring Your Book to Market:

The digital publishing revolution has transformed self-publishing from a last resort into an ever-expanding world of opportunity that writers at all stages of their career can take advantage of. This hands-on, three-day course is aimed at writers who want to take the first step towards finding their readership through digital self-publishing, and then market their work online. First you’ll learn how to prepare your manuscript for publication, to a professional standard, and decide which of the many options out there is best for you. Successfully self-published author Catherine Ryan Howard will explain – in practical terms – the steps to self-publishing a finished work through print-on-demand and e-book websites. At the end of day one, a Faber editor will also outline golden rules for authors – and the most common pitfalls to avoid. Then, on days two and three, equip yourself with the skills and confidence to build an author platform across the main social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and so on) with the help of social media consultant Ben Johncock. Ben will cover everything from setting up accounts to building your online profile, showing you how to use your author platform effectively to promote and sell yourself and your work. So if you want to build a readership, showcase your work, publish high quality books and – if you’re pursuing traditional publication – build the kind of online platform, fan base and sales record that will convince an editor to say ‘yes!’, this could be the course for you.

About Faber Academy:

Drawing on Faber’s 80 years of publishing experience, Faber Academy offers the best tuition from hand-picked authors, editors and agents, on focussed, practical writing courses. One of the original publishing houses to be founded in London’s famous literary quarter, Bloomsbury, Faber remains family-owned and fiercely independent. Today it is a thoroughly modern business, still based off Bloomsbury Square, still finding, developing and promoting the best new writing. As one of the great publishers, there is no one better placed to understand what a writer needs. We know that what writers want to do is to write. They want support and they want structure, but all to one end: to write more, and write better. That’s why, on a Faber Academy course, you will always be focused on your own work. Because you have your own voice and your own stories, your own aims and experiences.

(And remember a while back I reviewed the fantastic Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson? Well, Faber Academy helped him write that by way of their Write a Novel course.)

A self-publisher, an editor who works for Faber & Faber and a social media expert – this course is really everything you need to self-publish professionally and build a readership using social media, and in doing so lay the foundations for a great writing career. Whether you intend to focus solely on releasing your own books or have it as a sideline to traditional publishing, this weekend is going to give you all the knowledge, tools and advice that you’ll need to move forward confidently and successfully.

And if you’re anything like me, i.e. if you think one of the biggest bonuses of being a traditionally published author is that you get to hang around publishing houses every once in a while, you might like to know that the course takes place in Bloomsbury House, London, the offices of Faber & Faber.

And if all that wasn’t enough to convince you, like, hello? It has me!

So now you know what to ask Santa for.

Click here to read more about BRING YOUR BOOK TO MARKET.

(Or, HINT HINT, book your place – there’s only 15* of them!)

*There was 15 of them when this post was first published, back in the week the course was announced. There’s fewer places available than that now, so get booking! 

Bring Your Book To Market: 3 Day Course at Faber Academy, London (featuring ME!)

4 Nov

So….

[clears throat loudly]

This is happening:

On Friday 17th-Sunday 19th February 2012, Faber Academy, London, are running a 3-day course called BRING YOUR BOOK TO MARKET, and I’m delighted to say that none other than yours truly will be leading the self-publishing session.

About Bring Your Book to Market:

The digital publishing revolution has transformed self-publishing from a last resort into an ever-expanding world of opportunity that writers at all stages of their career can take advantage of. This hands-on, three-day course is aimed at writers who want to take the first step towards finding their readership through digital self-publishing, and then market their work online. First you’ll learn how to prepare your manuscript for publication, to a professional standard, and decide which of the many options out there is best for you. Successfully self-published author Catherine Ryan Howard will explain – in practical terms – the steps to self-publishing a finished work through print-on-demand and e-book websites. At the end of day one, a Faber editor will also outline golden rules for authors – and the most common pitfalls to avoid. Then, on days two and three, equip yourself with the skills and confidence to build an author platform across the main social networks (Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and so on) with the help of social media consultant Ben Johncock. Ben will cover everything from setting up accounts to building your online profile, showing you how to use your author platform effectively to promote and sell yourself and your work. So if you want to build a readership, showcase your work, publish high quality books and – if you’re pursuing traditional publication – build the kind of online platform, fan base and sales record that will convince an editor to say ‘yes!’, this could be the course for you.

About Faber Academy:

Drawing on Faber’s 80 years of publishing experience, Faber Academy offers the best tuition from hand-picked authors, editors and agents, on focussed, practical writing courses. One of the original publishing houses to be founded in London’s famous literary quarter, Bloomsbury, Faber remains family-owned and fiercely independent. Today it is a thoroughly modern business, still based off Bloomsbury Square, still finding, developing and promoting the best new writing. As one of the great publishers, there is no one better placed to understand what a writer needs. We know that what writers want to do is to write. They want support and they want structure, but all to one end: to write more, and write better. That’s why, on a Faber Academy course, you will always be focused on your own work. Because you have your own voice and your own stories, your own aims and experiences.

(And remember a while back I reviewed the fantastic Before I Go to Sleep by S.J. Watson? Well, Faber Academy helped him write that by way of their Write a Novel course.)

A self-publisher, an editor who works for Faber & Faber and a social media expert – this course is really everything you need to self-publish professionally and build a readership using social media, and in doing so lay the foundations for a great writing career. Whether you intend to focus solely on releasing your own books or have it as a sideline to traditional publishing, this weekend is going to give you all the knowledge, tools and advice that you’ll need to move forward confidently and successfully.

And if you’re anything like me, i.e. if you think one of the biggest bonuses of being a traditionally published author is that you get to hang around publishing houses every once in a while, you might like to know that the course takes place in Bloomsbury House, London, the offices of Faber & Faber.

And if all that wasn’t enough to convince you, like, hello? It has me!

So now you know what to ask Santa for.

Click here to read more about BRING YOUR BOOK TO MARKET.

(Or, HINT HINT, book your place – there’s only 15 of them!)

Self-Printing: 3 Things I’m Not Doing Anymore

20 Jun

In the last few months, self-publishing has kept me very busy. Up until, say, February, I was only busy, but with a goal of having nine self-published titles out by the end of this year – more on that another fine day – I’ve had to spend more and more time on the hard bits (like, say, actually writing the damn things) and less time on the fun stuff (like blogging about it). As a result I’ve had to streamline my time online, and say bye-bye to some things I was once spending absolutely ages on every day.

But what I’ve found is that I don’t miss them at all – in fact, I think I’m better off without them. Sticking with what’s important and diverting my attention away from the day-to-day gritty stuff has really helped me stay focused on the big picture, and made this whole self-publishing thing a whole lot more fun.

So what have I bade goodbye to? Well, among others:

1. Novel Rank

If I sell a book from the CreateSpace eStore, it shows up immediately on my CreateSpace dashboard. If I sell a book from Amazon.com, it shows up on the same day, generally, on my CreateSpace dashboard. If I sell a book from anywhere else, I’ll see it on my CreateSpace dashboard at some point in the future, although when I do I won’t be able to tell when it happened or which online retailer it happened on. Novel Rank uses my Amazon sale rank to clock how many books I sell in as close to real time as you could expect, but you can only use it on Amazon sites. Moreover, I only sell a handful of paperbacks every month – the bulk of my sales come from e-books, and the bulk of them are Kindle editions, and you can check them on your Amazon KDP dashboard at any time.

In short, there’s really no point in me using Novel Rank. I think it must be fascinating reading for a traditionally published writer who might only get whiffs of their sales data a few times a year or on their royalty cheques, but for a self-published writer who can check their sales at any time, I don’t see the attraction anymore.

And it’s not always accurate. When it comes to Kindle editions, it never seems to be accurate. For example, note in the screenshot below what Novel Rank says I sold in terms of Mousetrapped Kindle editions during the month of May:

It’s 197 copies on Amazon.com and 185 copies on Amazon.co.uk. But here’s what I actually sold – direct from Amazon KDP – on Amazon.com during that period:

385, or 188 more than Novel Rank tracked. On Amazon.co.uk, I actually sold 205, or 20 more than Novel Rank said I did.

Sales figures are a fast-track to obsession anyway, so it can’t hurt to give Novel Rank a rest. As I said it might be useful for a traditionally published author but for someone like me who can check her sales figures whenever she likes, it’s just overkill.

2. Goodreads

I’ve never used Goodreads as a reader and I know plenty of my blogging and Twitter friends who would call it their favorite social media site. But in this post I’m talking purely about using Goodreads as an author, which I’ve found an underwhelming experience and, at times, a bit hurtful too. So I’ve stopped doing it.

I was loving Goodreads in the very beginning because I could set up an author profile, and in the very beginning I got a great kick out of being allowed to do that. They also enabled me to do the easiest book giveaway ever (they hold the giveaway, select the winners and then just give you the postal addresses to send the books to) which exposed Mousetrapped to nearly 600 people who had never heard of it before. But I couldn’t keep up with my reading, let alone updating Goodreads with statuses about it, the recommendations I received seem to be only ever  from other self-published authors pushing their own books and every giveaway was for “US/Canada only.”

But it was the reviews that ultimately got me down, and got me to give Goodreads the chop. It does a writer no good, let me tell you, to spend any time at all on a site where people can rate your book one star out of five without as much as a single word of explanation for why they rated it as they did, and can do so in a fraction of a second. So I’m staying away.

3. Selling My Book To Other Self-Publishers

Okay… so the truth is I was never doing this, but I’ve watched in horror as it became an epidemic of some magnitude and I wish other self-publishers would stop doing it, and stop doing it right now. If they did, not only would they save themselves oodles of time, but the time they do spend on promotion might actually sell more books.

A self-publisher who only sells their book to other self-publishers:

  • Haunts the most popular self-publishing blogs and websites, leaves comments on every post and makes sure these comments include a reference to their book or books, with links if they’re really brazen
  • Is very active on forums dedicated to self-publishing in general, self-publishing e-books and reviewing self-published e-books
  • “Swaps” promotion with other authors, e.g. tag-my-book-on-Amazon-and-I’ll-tag-yours-back, positive review exchanges, etc. and thinks this is okay (usually with an attitude of, “Well, what else am I supposed to do, hmm?”)
  • Sends me and other self-published authors e-mails offering me PDFs or other electronic editions of their books, despite me not reviewing or otherwise appraising self-published books, my (quite publicly declared) contempt for e-books as a reading experience and my status as a self-published author (who is therefore selling, not buying)
  • Makes no effort to sell their book to the world at large.

As a result of this, the following groups of people are finding out about their work:

  • Self-published authors
  • People considering self-publishing their own work.

By doing this, you are wasting your time (because while I can’t speak for other self-publishers, I personally am in the business of selling self-published books, not buying them) and you are limiting your opportunity for sales. For instance, let’s say I only tried to sell Mousetrapped to other self-published authors using the methods listed above. How many people, realistically, are going to be interested in a memoir about working in Walt Disney World? Against the reading population as a whole, not many. So I’m already disadvantaged, a salmon swimming upstream. Now how many of those people are considering self-publishing, or have self-published? I’m guessing not a whole lot and so my potential readership grows ever smaller. But here’s the kicker: how many people are into reading books who are also interested in reading a memoir about working in Walt Disney World who have also self-published or are considering doing so and are prepared to spend their hard-earned money on a book someone else self-published when, thanks to their extensive knowledge of the self-publishing world, has something like a 99.99% chance of being crap?

When promoting your book, try to make your potential audience as broad as possible. As a very general rule of thumb, ask yourself, If I was traditionally published, could I use this as a promotional method? Or, If I was traditionally published, could I adapt this in some way and still use it as a promotional method? For instance, if I was traditionally published, I couldn’t blog about self-publishing (obviously) but I could still blog about my book, the process, how to get an agent, etc. If I was traditionally published, my story wouldn’t have an angle about getting rejected and then selling thousands of self-published copies, but I could still find one and use it to get interviewed, written about, etc. But would I  join forums to befriend other authors, and then suggest to them that we swap positive reviews, or send e-mails to every traditionally-published author I could find and offer them copies of my book?

Um… NO.

Now let’s be clear: I’m not saying don’t use the fact that you self-published to sell your work – I couldn’t possibly say that, because that’s 95% of my entire book-selling MO. I’m saying stop trying to sell your work exclusively to people who are trying to sell your theirs. Think of it as two opposing forces of equal strength colliding: both of them end up going nowhere. If you’re making and selling handmade greeting cards, do you actively seek out other makers and sellers of handmade greeting cards, and then try to sell them your creations? No. So why do it because you’re selling books?

Just so you know, tomorrow I’m going to counter-balance today’s negativity with 3 Things I Started Doing, including my new obsession. It’s, like, the best thing ever!

(I’m anticipating the counter arguments, namely that unlike a card-maker, a self-published author is also a reader and therefore will seek out other people’s products, i.e. books. Yeah, I know. It’s not the best analogy. But my point is that a self-published author is NOT a suitable target for your promotional efforts, because the reason they themselves are on all those sites and forums is not to look for reading material, but to sell their own.)

Announcing: New SELF-PRINTED Shorts (And a Story About an E-mail)

13 Jun

Two things about Self-Printed that happened over the weekend: (i) I got the most amazing e-mail ever and (ii) I released three new 99c e-books, called Self-Printed Shorts.

The e-mail was from Nicola Morgan, who I’m sure many of you know from her blog, Help! I Need a Publisher!, her Twitter feed and her staggering number of (traditionally) published books. When I think of common sense and the publishing world, her name is the first one that comes to mind, and I am in total awe of all her accomplishments, including a novel, Wasted, that was nominated for a Carnegie Medal, one of the highest accolades – if not the highest – a children’s book can get. So when I saw her name pop up in my inbox, I assumed it had to be a different Nicola Morgan. But no, it was her, and the message was about Self-Printed which unbeknownst to me, Nicola had been reading. To cut a slightly longer than that story short, I am ecstatic (and slightly giddy) to now have this glowing endorsement for my book:

“An exceptional breath of realism, real knowledge and hard experience – don’t dream of self-publishing your book without it. This is the self-publishing guide to read if you actually care about the quality of your writing and your readers.”

–Nicola Morgan, award-winning author of 90 books – including the Carnegie-nominated WASTED and WRITE TO BE PUBLISHED – and the blog Help! I Need a Publisher!

How fantastic is that?! Thank you so much, Nicola!

So now onto Self-Printed Shorts. The idea is that instead of buying Self-Printed for $2.99 and paying for everything I’ve learned about self-publishing, you can just hand over 99c (or 69p)* for the information that you need. For instance, if you’ve already self-published, you don’t need the sections about how to use CreateSpace, Amazon KDP or Smashwords, but you might want to read the bits about how I promoted my book. Or maybe you already have a paperback and you just want the e-book bits. Or you already have an e-book and you just want the paperback bits. Or maybe-

Well, you get the idea.

They are three Self-Printed Shorts. They are:

Publish a Print On Demand Paperback

It includes the following sections from Self-Printed:

  • Why Self-Printing?
  • Preparation
  • Publishing a POD Paperback with CreateSpace.

It’s just 99c for Kindle on Amazon.com and 69p for Kindle on Amazon.co.uk.

Publish an E-book

It includes the following sections from Self-Printed:

  • Why Self-Printing?
  • Preparation
  • Publishing an E-book (with Smashwords and Amazon KDP).

It’s just 99c for Kindle on Amazon.com  and 69p for Kindle on Amazon.co.uk.

Sell Your Book With Social Media

It includes the following sections from Self-Printed:

  • Why Self-Printing?
  • Building an Online Platform
  • Launching Your Book (Online).

It’s just 99c for Kindle on Amazon.com  and 69p for Kindle on Amazon.co.uk.

*Thanks to VAT and “international delivery” (cracks me up every time), prices may vary in other Kindle stores. If you’d rather read the full-length book, it’s $2.99 in e-book or $15.95 in paperback (but Amazon are currently selling it at 28% off, or $11.28). Find out more about it and see other buying options on SelfPrintedBook.com.

Guest Post by Talli Roland: Proof Social Media Sells Books

8 Mar

I’ve mentioned Talli Roland, Twitter friend and author of The Hating Game, on this blog before. To celebrate the release of The Hating Game in paperback, I asked Talli if she’d write a guest post for me, as her experiences with e-books and social media are well worth studying. As Talli is published by a small press and took on the mammoth task of establishing an online “author platform” herself, her story should be of interest to both traditionally published and self-published authors alike. So I thought today we’d have a Talli Tuesday!

“Everyone says writers should use social media to sell books. Okay, we get it! But what people don’t tell you is how to build relationships that will help others invest in your book’s success – and how to use your contacts to actually sell books.

As a debut novelist published by a small press with a very low marketing budget, I knew I’d be relying heavily on social media to spread the word about my novel, The Hating Game. Almost a year before the book’s planned release, I started a blog with an aim to get as many followers as I could before launch day. I blogged from Monday to Friday, and I actively sought out other blogs to follow – if someone commented on my blog, I always returned the comment on theirs. To build relationships in the blogging community, it can’t be a one-way thing; you have to consistently participate through blog fests, contests and giveaways. By visiting an average of seventy blogs daily, my follower count grew rapidly. I used the same principles for Twitter and Facebook, and when it came time to think about a launch strategy, I had a small army of around two thousand supporters behind me, as well as a whole new group of wonderful writing friends.

So now the question: how could I use those two thousand people to help my sales? I needed a specific goal to drive towards, something tangible where people could see the results of their assistance: Amazon rankings. If I could get even fifty people out of those two thousand to buy on that day, my Amazon Kindle rank would shoot up, potentially helping my book break into the top 100 Bestsellers on the day of its release.

Loathe to request my online contacts buy my book outright, I asked them all to post about my quest on the same day: December 1. By splashing my news across the Internet in a co-ordinated campaign, not only would I be generating word of mouth but also – hopefully – sales. A steady stream of bloggers, Facebookers and Tweeters signed up to let their contacts know my mission by posting a blog, Facebook status or Twitter status – all linking to my novel on Amazon.

At 6:30 am on release day, I checked my sales rank on Amazon: number 806 on Amazon.co.uk and 7,192 on Amazon.com. Crossing my fingers, I hoped The Hating Game might break into the top 200 in the UK and maybe, if I was lucky, the top 100. Over the next few hours, more and more people began tweeting about my Take On Amazon quest using #TheHatingGame hash tag, posting links to their blogs, reviews and more. People started to retweet, I could barely keep up with the hash tag and blogs being posted, and my Amazon rank began to rise. By 10 a.m., I was at number 149 in the UK Paid Kindle Store. Before 11 a.m., I’d hit number 86. I was now on the Amazon Top 100 Bestseller list!

But it didn’t stop there. The tweets, blog posts and reviews kept coming and my rank continued to rise.  At 11 am, The Hating Game was the top book on Amazon UK’s Movers and Shakers, a whopping 17,829 per cent increase in sales rank from the previous day. By 2:30 pm it reached number 25 in the UK and was starting to creep upwards on Amazon.com, too. On Twitter, one reader was even live tweeting as she read the book.

By the end of the day, The Hating Game had reached number 24 on Amazon UK and 460 on Amazon.com, with hundreds of blogs, tweets and shared Facebook links from friends and strangers alike. My debut novel was now an Amazon Kindle Bestseller on the day of its release – with no marketing money spent and masses of social media power.

Social media isn’t something you can turn to every once in awhile, then ask for support when you need it. Like anything in life, it’s a network of relationships. Sure, it takes time. But the result – in terms of friends I’ve made as well as marketing outcomes – is more than worth it.”

Congrats, Talli! And thanks so much for sharing your experience with us.

Talli blogs here, tweets here and The Hating Game is available on Amazon here.

2010: Catherine, Caffeinated in Review

4 Jan

If you use WordPress.com you probably got a lovely little e-mail on Sunday morning containing a summary of your blog stats, etc. for 2010. (Yet another reason to switch to WordPress, Blogger.com folk.) It might seem a bit on the self-congratulatory side to post these on here but as this was the first year of my little blog’s life, I’m unashamedly proud of my stats. And as I’m knee-deep in Novel No.2, it saves me the headache of writing an actual blog post…!

________________________

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

Healthy blog!

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow*

Crunchy numbers

Featured image

About 3 million people visit the Taj Mahal every year. This blog was viewed about 29,000 times in 2010. If it were the Taj Mahal, it would take about 4 days for that many people to see it.

In 2010, there were 192 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 196 posts. There were 494 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 633mb. That’s about 1 pictures per day.

The busiest day of the year was September 1st with 546 views. The most popular post that day was The Big Reveal Part II: How Many Copies of MOUSETRAPPED Have I Sold?.

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were twitter.com, facebook.com, mail.live.com, mail.yahoo.com, and Google Reader.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for catherine ryan howard, penguin submissions, charlie duke, penguin open submissions, and createspace timeline.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

The Big Reveal Part II: How Many Copies of MOUSETRAPPED Have I Sold? September 2010
29 comments and 3 Likes on WordPress.com

2

Penguin Open Their Doors to Unsolicited Submissions: Quick! Or, Wait! August 2010
9 comments

3

POD Self-Publishing with CreateSpace: A Timeline March 2010
7 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com,

4

SELF-PRINTING December 2009
12 comments

5

How To Format Your E-Book (the Non Migraine-Inducing Way) September 2010
14 comments and 1 Like on WordPress.com.

________________________

A Little Analysis…

Taking all this information into account, what would I say has been the most successful ways to blog? Well if you look at my Top 5 most read posts, you’ll see that all of them contain information that is potentially helpful to someone else. Loyal blog readers may love your personal posts and your take on things (book reviews, opinions, etc.) but when you produce a post like How To Format Your E-Book you reach people outside your normal subscribers – and possibly gain a few new ones in the process.

My “break-out” post was The Big Reveal on September 1st, when I outlined all the costs involved in self-publishing Mousetrapped and then went on to share exactly how many copies I’d sold and where from. This was by far my busiest day but daily hits never returned to the levels they’d been before that was posted; you can clearly see in the monthly hits the difference between Before and After.

Then there’s some things which just can’t be explained. A few months back I started blogging occasionally about coffee (putting the caffeine in Catherine, Caffeinated, I said at the time) and one of my posts was about my – now dust covered – Nespresso machine. In the post, I mentioned that George Clooney was in the Nespresso TV commercial. Do you know how many hits I’ve had thanks to people Googling “Clooney Nespresso”? Hundreds.

Looking forward, I’d say share any helpful information you have, post regularly and always tag your posts with suitable search terms. And happy blogging!

*For decorative and cheerleading purposes only. My Mousetrapped site – which gets a tiny fraction of the visits this one does – was “You’re On Fire!” on the Blog-Health-o-Meter™.

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