How To Self Publish A Book » Market

6 Tweets to Promote Your Online Fiction

Bryce Beattie — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 19:47:53 +0000

I’m just going to assume here that you post fiction on your blog, and that you want more exposure for it. With that extra exposure, hopefully you’ll sell more books. Here’s five ways to promote your fiction using Twitter.

Oh, wait, before we get down to brass tacks here, let me just make sure you’re starting from the right spot. You need a Twitter account, and you need to make sure it is public.

One more thing – if you are looking to use your fiction as a way to gain readers and hopefully fans, you are almost always best off writing a serial of some sort. The hope is that readers will come back to find out what happens next.

Tweet #1 – Five Second Fiction

This is where you tell a whole story in a single tweet. And you don’t even have a whole tweet to do it, because you have to put #5secfic in your tweet. I’m pretty sure you get bonus points for working a pun into the story.

So that fans can discover your *ahem* longer pieces, make sure you have a link to your website/blog in your twitter profile.

Examples

#5secfic Bubba put down the wrench and put the baggie in his pants, giving new meaning to the term “Plumber’s Crack.”

#5secfic If only Jim had at least sent flowers he would still have a windshield and all of his left shoes.

Tweet #2 – Pimp My Story

Every Saturday, kira at EpiGuide puts together a digest of recent releases in of web fiction serials. To participate use the hashtag #pimpmystory when tweeting about your latest chapter.

Example

The Journey of St. Laurent: In Chapter 38, it’s finally time for UFOs vs Survivalists. http://bit.ly/dqCuzM #pimpmystory

For the complete skinny on “Pimp My Story”, check out the official rules: http://www.epiguide.com/forums/showthread.php?t=14866

Tweet #3 – Tuesday Serial

This is another way to promote the most recent chapter in your online serial. To participate here, sometime during the week tweet about the latest installment of your epic alien romance story using the hashtag #TuesdaySerial, then on the next Tuesday, go visit http://tuesdayserial.com/?page_id=1527 and submit your entry following the instructions on that page.

Example (of the tweet)

The redone and expanded Chapter 38 of The Journey of St. Laurent is up http://bit.ly/dqCuzM #TuesdaySerial

For complete details, visit: http://tuesdayserial.com/?page_id=7

Tweet #4 – Friday Flash

Here’s what you do. You write & post a piece of flash fiction (about 1,000 words or less) then you tweet about it using #FridayFlash. You can also submit it to the weekly collector: http://www.jmstrother.com/tiki-view_tracker.php?trackerId=2 (just click “insert new item”)

Example:

#FridayFlash A New Year’s Revolution http://bit.ly/9uM7Fo

Tweet #5 – Web Fic Wednesday

This one is a little different. This is one you can’t do yourself. You have to write something good enough for somebody else to tweet about it. They just put the hashtag #WebFicWed and a link to your site or a page with some of your fiction.

Every week, the #WebFicWed links are digested and posted by JanOda on http://www.ergofiction.com

Don’t be lame and start a new twitter account just so you can suggest yourself. Seriously. Although, I think it would be fair to mention somewhere on your blog/website “If you like this fiction, please tweet me for #WebFicWed”. I guess I’m not so awesome, because nobody had ever tweeted me up for this.

Example:

Check out J. Dane Tyler for #WebFicWed. Great short horror stories. http://jdanetyler.wordpress.com

New! Tweet #6 – Very Short Story

Thanks to Anke for pointing this one out.

Just like #5secfic, except you use #vss.

Example:

Jon looked down to see the laundry gnome dancing in his washing machine and burning socks. He closed the lid and went back to bed. #vss

Bonus Tweets.

Here’s another few general use hashtags that readers search for when discovering new fiction. Just sprinkle them in whenever you tweet about your stories.

#webfiction

#weblit

#fiction

#nanofiction, #microfiction, #TwitFic – like unto #vss & #5secfic

Now stop reading this and go write some fiction.

Setting the Browse Categories for Your Book on Amazon

Bryce Beattie — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 12:31:11 +0000

You know how your book is #2,345,654 in Books?

You’ve seen how a lot of books are ranked for something more specific?

Do you want yours to rank for categories other than “Books”? Are you pretty sure you’d be topping the fiction > horror > supernatural > pirate > romance category, if only your book was listed there?

You have two options.

1. Be incredibly popular. Someone at Amazon will sort your book.

2. Ask nicely. When trying to figure out how to do this for my novel, I contacted Amazon Author Central. So the first thing is to get an Amazon Author Central account. After that, just follow the instructions they sent me. (pasted below)

Hello,

The “Browse Subjects” feature is designed to find the best-selling titles in a particular subject area. If you’d like to update the Browse Category for your title, please take a moment to search through the “Browse Subjects” section of our Books store. Click on each main category to see a list of sub-categories. Clicking on one of the sub-categories will bring you another sub-category list and so on.

The browse categories you choose must relate to your title. For instance, if the item in question is a book, only those browse categories that are related to books can be assigned to it. It is not possible to select browse categories related to Office Products for your book.

Once you’ve identified one or two “browse paths” appropriate to your book, write back to us by clicking the link below. In your e-mail, include the ISBN of the book, as well as your desired browse categories.

https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/help/contact-us

We can’t currently add new categories to our browsing lists, but feel free to check back from time to time. These classifications do expand and change as our bookstore grows.

The browse paths will appear on the book’s catalog page once they’ve been assigned. Your title will only appear on the “Browse Subjects” bestseller lists if it is one of the top sellers in that particular category.

Pretty easy stuff, huh? Of course, things won’t get changed overnight, but they’ll get to it.

Places to Put Yourself (& Your Books)

Bryce Beattie — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 18:53:42 +0000

Here’s a list of places where you can get an author page, as well as a listing for your book(s). Getting yourself into as many databases as possible can be a good way to make yourself findable. I may eventually put descriptions and/or instructions for each of these places on the list, but in general it is very easy as long as you look around the site and can follow directions. Always make sure to link back to your website, your book’s website, and to where people can buy your work. I believe that you can list yoursef and books for free on all the listed sites.

FiledBy.com – Just click on the “authors” link at the top to get started. Here’s my author page so you can see what one looks like. I’m just a free member there.
GoodReads.com – It’s like facebook, but for books and reading only. Here’s my GoodReads page.
LibraryThing.com
AuthorsDen.com
Nothing Binding

If you know of any other place to list yourself or your book for free, please let me know in the comments.