by Connie Berry
One of the first pieces of marketing advice new authors receive is to build a mailing list of followers. Brilliant! After all, these are your fans, your street team—the people who love your writing, care about your characters, can’t wait to find out when your new books will be released. They’re the ones who tell others about your books, who write those coveted reviews, who care about you and want to connect with you and your life.
But when you start at ground zero, as most new authors do, building followers is easier said than done. In fact, it’s downright scary. An online writer friend recently revealed that her mailing list consisted of her mother and twenty of her closest friends. Most authors are self-confessed introverts for whom the idea of self-promotion and “shameless shilling” (as author Ellen Byron puts it) causes them to break out in hives.
Nevertheless, publicity and marketing are necessary.
That’s how we sell books and get contracts to write them. The usual advice begins with getting your name out there on social media and then offering something of value—a free book, swag, a gift certificate—hoping people will buy your book, click on your website, and sign up for your email list. When they do, you follow up with periodic emails or newsletters—as personal as possible—keeping fans in the loop, inviting them to connect with you on social media, and modestly suggesting they might head over to Goodreads or Amazon to leave a positive review on your author page.
Other suggestions for enticing followers include running contests (refer-a-friend, best pet photo, random winner), asking for an opinion (which cover/title do you like best?), or giving away what some call “magnet content”—a short story or a recipe, for example—to those who sign up for further communication.
All these methods work if you’re diligent and creative, but all authors know the best way to gain followers—real followers, as opposed to anonymous email addresses—is to make yourself available in person at book launches, library events, bookstore signings, local book clubs, and conferences. You bring along your handy sign-up sheet and names appear with (hopefully) legible emails, and you know those who enlist are really interested. Perfect.
Except nothing is perfect today. The plague has descended, and in-person events are no more—at least for the foreseeable future. So how do you meet potential followers if not in person?
You offer them something they want.
One simple way to do this is with the Rafflecopter Facebook app.
Rafflecopter bills itself as “the world’s easiest way to run a giveaway online.” Quite a claim, but having participated several times, I think I believe it. And the best part? It’s absolutely free. While Rafflecopter does offer paid plans for add-ons like Pinterest entries, email integration, and real-time analytics, the free version is really all you need.
Sign-up takes less than a minute. To begin all you need to know is your purpose (your goal) and what you will offer as a giveaway.
- Maybe you want to increase your newsletter subscriber list, as I did. In that case, you might offer one of your books (paperback or ebook) or—even better—a gift card to entice new people.
- Maybe you want to increase your online visibility. You might give away a branded coffee mug or tote bag. Or pair your book with one or two others in the same genre, a bonanza for the lucky winner.
- If your goal is to create buzz leading up to your book launch, giving away a signed ARC makes readers feel like they’re part of an inner circle.
- Or maybe you just want to reward your current fans with a signed paperback and other fun swag.
In any case, Rafflecopter walks you through all the steps.
One important step is choosing how people will enter the contest. This depends upon your purpose. Popular options include:
- Subscribing to your newsletter
- Commenting on your Facebook page
- Tweeting a message
- Following you on Bookbub
- Pinning an image on your Pinterest board
- Following you on Twitter or Instagram
Rafflecopter also helps ensure your giveaway is in compliance with FTC guidelines—no insignificant matter. Recently on Jane Friedman‘s blog, author Chrys Fey posted some of the pitfalls Rafflecopter helps you navigate.
One important rule I didn’t know is that you’re not allowed to use entrants’ email information for anything other than contacting the winner—unless they enter the contest by willingly signing up for your email newsletter (which is the way I did it). In other words, apart from contacting the randomly selected winner(s), you can’t use their information for other forms of marketing. You also can’t require people to purchase your book to enter—the “No Purchase Necessary” rule made famous by Publishers’ Clearinghouse—and you’re not allowed to require the winner to pay shipping costs. Rafflecopter figured out all this for you in advance. And when it comes to choosing a random winner, they do that for you as well. Easy as pie.
Rafflecopter works well for individual authors, of course, but the impact is magnified when authors pool together for a giveaway. That’s how I’ve participated.
This past March author, speaker, and award-winning librarian Amy Alessio organized a St. Patrick’s Day Sleuths Rafflecopter with fifteen authors. Each author gave away an ebook or an ARC and $5, which funded the prizes, two Amazon gift cards ($30 and $25) plus a St. Pat’s tote bag with Irish cookies. Readers entered by signing up for the authors’ newsletters. To help get the word out, Amy provided eye-catching social media posts like this one for Twitter.
I gave away an ebook copy of my first Kate Hamilton mystery, A Dream of Death.
Then in June, Amy organized a Summer of Mystery Rafflecopter with twelve authors and similar prizes. Here’s the Facebook post.
This time I gave away a signed ARC of my second book, A Legacy of Murder. For fun, I tucked in a personal note, bookmarks, and a few wrapped shortbread cookies.
How well did it work? In March I added 332 readers to my email newsletter list, and in June I added another 197. Of these, only twelve have since unsubscribed.
Gaining followers in the time of the plague isn’t easy, but then nothing is easy these days. Fortunately, authors have apps like Rafflecopter to help ease us through some of the pain and frustration. If we can’t do things the old way for now, the silver lining is the opportunity to try new things, to innovate.
Luckily, some things remain the same.
Even in the time of the plague, authors still write books and people still read them.
Connie Berry writes the Kate Hamilton Mystery series, set in the UK and featuring an American antiques dealer with a gift for solving crimes. Her debut novel, A Dream of Death, won the IPPY gold medal for mystery and was a finalist for both the Silver Falchion and Agatha awards. In her latest book, A Legacy of Murder, the death of a young antiquities curator leads Kate on the trail of an Anglo-Saxon treasure trove, a missing blood-red ruby ring, and a four-hundred-year-old legacy of murder. The third in the series, The Art of Betrayal, will be released in June 2021.
