by Jill Amadio

How many of us buy site ads to promote our books?

Grinding my teeth at low sales in August I was able to ask a couple of successful authors how they manage to keep their titles before the public. Brenda Novak, who writes the Dr. Evelyn Talbot thrillers, said that one of the publicity tools she uses are book marketing sites. Although her wallet is somewhat fatter than those of many of us with four million copies of her books sold, Brenda still sends some of her personal advertising dollars to these sites.

Among her tactics: Organize your own book group on Facebook. It’s free. Offer inexpensive swag such as commemorative pins in exchange for downloading only your book titles from her web site – not the books themselves.

Add a shopping page to your own website to sell T-shirts, mini-totes, Christmas ornaments, etc. Brenda said that it cost her $2,000 initially to set up her online shop and now it is hugely successful.

Another tactic she uses is to create a Foodie Friday recipe which she cooks and posts on her Facebook and Instagram accounts, including a video.

Book trailers are one of her favorite ways to attract attention although she cautions that changing it regularly is key. To keep costs low (still expensive!!), the video company she contracts with uses stock video for much of the content.

Another tip: offer giveaways – one of her most popular was on Facebook Live in which she read from her books.

Find a company that sells “scrap” advertising which are spots in major magazines discounted at the last minute. But don’t let the “scrap” description fool you. Brenda says that even discounted, it can cost a bundle. Nevertheless, one she found available was in People magazine, and she is always on the lookout for deadline deals with women’s magazines.

“Not all marketing endeavors achieve the same goal. Some are more about brand building,” she told me. “I look at marketing my books like a farmer might his fields – it’s what I put into the soil before planting that makes the biggest difference in the end.”

Away from Brenda’s heady, enterprising and pricey ads are the less expensive and free methods used by some of us Writers in Residence and by our colleague, psychological thriller writer Sheila Lowe. Like Brenda, Sheila subscribes to www.BookBub.com, a web site that sends out daily emails advertising books to millions of readers, although costs can be high.

Here’s how it works: you set a maximum price you’ll pay for the exposure, say $100. When someone clicks on your book cover you get charged a certain amount of money for the impression. After your stated maximum budget, the $100, is reached, BookBub takes down your ad. You can choose which readers and audiences you want to target by genre, interests, retailers, and location, and you can monitor your campaign on the site’s dashboard. Extremely popular, the site has a waiting list of authors eager to sign up.

While Sheila takes advantage of the benefits Facebook offers including its Authors Page, she likes affordable subscription sites such as www.BargainBooksy.com and www.RobinReads.com. The latter is a free author promotion service affiliated with Amazon and you don’t have to be part of Amazon’s Prime/Kindle Unlimited yourself to use it. The site focuses on promoting eBooks which are now enjoying a massive surge. RobinReads buyers pay for discounted books if they choose to buy them only on Amazon. However, the deals are swift, lasting only 24 hours before they are retired for fresh offers.

At BargainBooksy with around 3,000 subscribers, advertising for eBooks is also king along with print books. After a buyer clicks on a link to a specific book they are taken to Amazon’s web site, where the book can cost 0.99 cents or less, while pricing is based on your genre. This, of course, affects your royalties, so unless you are only targeting publicity you might want to reconsider. However, the site also links to your books at Kobo, Apple, and Nook, and to your own web site.

To splurge, you can buy a $50 BargainBooksy Deal of the Day promotion on FreeBooksy, a specialized-genre readers’ site designed to boost your click-through rates and purchases with free books that are not available on the main site.

So, there you have it. A few costly as well as reasonably-priced ideas. Raid your piggy bank!

Jill Amadio is from Cornwall, UK, but unlike her amateur sleuth, Tosca Trevant, she is far less grumpy. Jill began her career as a reporter in London (UK), then Madrid (Spain), Bogota (Colombia), Bangkok (Thailand), Hong Kong, and New York. She is the ghostwriter of 14 memoirs, and wrote the Rudy Valle biography, “My Vagabond Lover,” with his wife, Ellie. Jill writes a column for a British mystery magazine, and is an audio book narrator. She is the author of the award-winning mystery, “Digging Too Deep.” The second book in the series, “Digging Up the Dead,” was released this year. The books are based in Newport http://www.jillamadio.com

Books: Digging Too Deep, Digging Up the Dead

Non-Fiction: My Vagabond Lover: An Intimate Biography of Rudy Vallee; Gunther Rall: A Memoire, Luftwaffe Ace and NATO General

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This article was posted for Jill Amadio by Jackie Houchin

“OUTSIDE THE LINES”

Book Review by Jackie Houchin

Sheila Lowe’s newest Claudia Rose Forensic Handwriting mystery delivers just what you are looking for; murder and mayhem, crime scene investigation, clues and mis-clues, secret assignations, lovers’ spats, blurred lines between right and wrong, escalating suspense, and unique to Lowe’s books, a protagonist who can read a killer’s thoughts and intents from a mere sampling of his handwriting.

OUTSIDE THE LINES begins with a bang, literally. A maid attempts to gather her vacationing employer’s mail one morning and dies after a mailbox bomb explodes in her face. LAPD Homicide Detective Joel Jovanic catches the case and quickly discerns the incident to be more than a prank.

Across town in the Los Angeles Criminal Courts building, Claudia Rose testifies as an expert witness in a murder trial involving gang member, Danny Ortiz. Having given her condemning statement, she exits the stand, only to be ferociously attacked and nearly murdered by the unrestrained gangbanger. Worse yet, clips of the incident replay endlessly on the local news channels, exposing not only Ortiz’s rage, but a good deal of Claudia’s brief undergarments.

Traumatized and nursing her wounds, Claudia hides at home, jumping at every noise, seeing shadows where none exist; the classic symptoms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Det. Jovanic is both enraged by the attack on his fiancé and anxious about her emotional state. To relieve the tension at home, he submerges himself in the mailbox bombing investigation.

Relief from her growing paranoia comes in the form of an invitation to speak at the prestigious British Institute of Graphologists Conference in the UK. Claudia gratefully accepts, but before leaving, she helps Jovanic identify the author of the bomb threat from a writing specimen found inside a nearby geo-cache container. Under the “People for Safe Food” moniker, she detects an erased signature, that of a known eco-terrorist.

In London, a surprise interview by a TV journalist puts Claudia in the limelight, and on the spot. Asked her opinion on a handwritten note found in a similar geo-cache container in London after a local bombing, Claudia is reluctant to speak. The two samples were not written by the same person, but this contradicts the resident expert’s opinion, a man Claudia knows to be untrained and biased.

Across the Pond, Jovanic’s investigation leads him to the CEO of Agrichem, a company that produces toxic pesticides. Lab reports from the mailbox bomb confirm the lethal chemical is used in Agrichem’s pesticides. The detective senses something is off, especially after interviewing the company’s reclusive “mad” research scientist.

Meanwhile Claudia meets with members of the People for Safe Food activist group and responds to their grief with compassion, earning her the ire of New Scotland Yard. Jovanic’s interviews produce testimony just as compelling about the need for pesticides in feeding a hungry world. Two sides of the world and two sides of a controversial issue. Which side is responsible for murder?

More cruel attacks and homicides keep Jovanic working at a manic pace, while Claudia is politely asked to leave the UK. At home, she and Jovanic face another more personal issue, which could determine the future of their life together. Finally a truce is called and the pair work together using their specialties to identify a very cold and ruthless murderer. The detective determines to take him down, and now Claudia is the one fearing for her lover’s life.

Part fast-paced police procedural and part Sherlockian puzzle mystery, Lowe’s OUTSIDE THE LINES, delivers food for the intellectual as well as the suspense addict. And for readers like me who are fascinated with the Forensic Handwriting Analysis profession, it’s a treat indeed. The police have sketch artists, Crime Scene Investigators, and DNA testing. Handwriting examiners testify in court, bringing evidence that often brings a guilty verdict. But Sheila Lowe has an unstoppable crime investigating team in Claudia Rose and Detective Joel Jovanic.

OUTSIDE THE LINES Amazon link: https://amzn.com/B01IPKPRNG

sheila-usc OUTSIDE THE LINES is sixth in the popular mystery series. Sheila Lowe has also written a stand-alone thriller in which her Handwriting Specialist appears in a minor role (What She Saw). Like her fictional character Claudia Rose, Lowe is a real-life forensic handwriting expert who testifies in court cases. She has begun work on the 7th book in the series, UNHOLY WRIT.

As the current president of the American Handwriting Analysis Foundation (a 50 yr old non-profit), Lowe is working with their Campaign for Cursive committee to bring attention to the importance of maintaining cursive training in the public school curriculum. A recently published white paper on the topic is available for free download: http://www.ahafhandwriting.org/sites/default/pdf/white-paper.pdf

For a live podcast (and transcript) interview of Sheila Lowe by Laura Brennan of Destination Mystery visit: http://destinationmystery.com/episode-17-sheila-lowe/ In it Lowe reveals more about the two major areas of handwriting analysis, as well as a formerly unrecognized “theme” to her writing that Brennan identifies. As to her writing fiction, Lowe discloses the title of the book that got her started on her mystery writing career… at the young age of 8.

Can you guess what it was? Nope, not Nancy Drew.

Jackie Houchin is a Christian writer, book reviewer, and retired photojournalist. She writes articles and reviews on a variety of topics, and occasionally edits manuscripts. She also dabbles in short fiction. She enjoys creating Bible craft projects for kids; growing fruits, flowers, and veggies; and traveling to other countries. She also loves cats and kittens and mysteries.”