Category: Blogs @ How to Self Publish
Social Media Success Summit 2015
I recently finished going through all of the webinar recordings for the 7th annual Social Media Success Summit 2015 presented by SocialMediaExaminer.com, and it was a marathon of online education. A success marathon!
To successfully self publish a book (meaning sell books), an author has to find ways of marketing a self-published book online. Social media marketing seemed to me like the most accessible and effective book marketing for self-published authors, so social media marketing education came to the top of my To Do list in 2015.
Social media – and much of social media marketing – is free, like a puppy is free. I heard that phrase from someone else and immediately adopted it. It was so cute. But as soon as I got home with my social media, I realized that I was going to need resources and advice. I needed to join a club or a group who knew what I needed to know.
I first discovered SocialMediaExaminer.com through Michael Stelzner’s podcast “Social Media Marketing Podcast” which led me to join the Social Media Marketing Society and their monthly series of online social media education webinars. The SMSS15 format of live webinars throughout the month of October 2015, which would then be available as recordings for 18 months from the date I paid for the Summit, was ideal for my schedule. The recordings are supported with an audio file, transcript, and downloadable PDF slide deck. This is exactly how I like to learn; at my own pace, at any time of the day or night. So I did what I almost never do – I signed up and paid $347 for 36 hour-long webinars and it was definitely worth it.
The webinars were centered on social media platforms and analytics, with several devoted to content creation and online tools. Each instructor gave their own take on how to plan and deliver content. I watched and studied every webinar – even the ones that focused on tasks I may not be doing in my upcoming year of self-published book marketing. I went to every presenter’s website and followed, liked, subscribed, bookmarked, and circled him or her. If they had a podcast, I subscribed to that too and listened.
If I had wanted to engage socially, there were places I could have participated, but I did only a small amount of that because I am in my learning phase (and hopelessly introverted). SMSS15 gave me the education level I was looking for. Social Media Examiner hosts a big live conference each year where the big live social part of social media takes center stage. For now, that’s beyond my scope.
If I was already an expert in Facebook advertising, LinkedIn influencing and advertising, Google Analytics, video creation and marketing, Twitter and Google+ and Pintrest and Instagram and Youtube marketing and analytics, then SMSS15 wouldn’t have been as valuable to me as it was. But in addition to education on all of those topics – there was information about the latest online tools. There was mention upon list upon suggestion upon demonstration of free and paid tools to create, curate, measure, schedule, adapt, improve, expand and rocket-launch my self-published book marketing, and not just in social media.
The social media marketing education in SMSS15 is applicable to all of my marketing – including my day job. Being alumni of the summit is an introduction to a long list of industry influencers. Social Media Success Summit 2015 is a key resource for anyone planning on marketing a self-published book online. Publish your own book; market your own book… on social media. Now I am implementing the strategies and working down my long list of online tools – the very long list! Follow Me for more updates and tips for marketing a self-published book.
This was the summer I spent at Llangollen Farm with my grandfather, Colonel C. J. Tippett and Liz Whitney Tippett. These were her prize-winning carriage horses. They were biters.
Congratulations to American Pharoah, winning the Triple Crown for the first time in decades! I’ve been watching the Belmont Stakes for so many years in a row in the hopes of seeing a Triple Crown winner, and today is the day.
Col. C. J. Tippett and Liz Whitney Tippett were all about racing. Liz was a racehorse owner, with high profile horses in the USA and Australia, including “Igloo” in the 1970’s. She bred, trained, and raced horses from her own stable at Llangollen, Virginia, under her own colors – the purple and fuchsia.
As I wrote the biography of Colonel C. J. Tippett, “When No One Else Would Fly”, I was immersed in Liz’s world as well. Her story blends with Tip’s near the end of the book as he left civil aviation and entered joined Liz in the business of thoroughbred racing.
And I went with him – visiting him at the farms and ranches in California and Virginia and spending part of a summer at Llangollen. I joined Liz and Tip at the racecourse and picked a winner. I sat in on an after-dinner foal naming session and contributed a name. I rode as groom with the carriage team to a lawn party and held the bridles as the team snacked on my knuckles.
One day, I’ll write Liz’s story. It is a story of thoroughbred racing history just as Tip’s is a story of aviation history.
Col. C. J. Tippett and Liz Whitney Tippett would have loved the 2015 Belmont stakes and the winning of the Triple Crown for the first time since their own heyday in the racing world.
Email me at talktotheauthor@thewestchesterpress.com with “Liz Book” in the subject, to be added to my Liz book update list.
Check out the book review of “When No One Else Would Fly” in the AAHS Flightline Newsletter, 2nd quarter 2014, No. 187, page 8
This month’s edition of the Flightline newsletter published by the American Aviation Historical Society (AAHS) carries a book review of “When No One Else Would Fly” and I am delighted.
Hayden Hamilton has written a thoughtful and detailed review that highlights what is most important about the book – that it describes the important but little known contribution Col. C. J. Tippett made to aviation during his lifetime.
The review also gives a candid assessment of an aviation expert’s opinion of the way I wrote the book, by interspersing Tip’s own writing with my historical summaries… which he did not hate!
Mr. Hamilton declared the book “an excellent read and reference for those interested in the development of civil aviation in both the U.S. and South America during the 1940s and 1950s.”
The review, and the whole newsletter, are a ten-course meal for aviation enthusiasts – as is the AAHS website, www.aahs-online.org.
Click here to read the review, and I encourage you to click around on the AAHS website as well – it is a rich resource for american aviation history.
The quarterly newsletter is available to anyone clicking through to the site. The organization’s magazine, a full-color beautifully written resource of aviation articles, goes to members. Membership is not expensive and well worth it.
The review appears on page 8 of the 2014 second quarter AAHS newsletter, No. 187.
My thanks to the AAHS!
Writing a book is a commitment. I can’t chicken out a year later!
It is a major commitment to write and self publish a book. More than just the time of writing it, there is the commitment of living with it, working with it, talking about it, marketing it, – up to my elbows in the subject matter of it – for years.
So it’s important to choose the right book from all the books I have within me to write.
Because unless I stay committed to it, or unless I become a blockbuster author-personality whose fan-base will read everything I pen, it won’t continue to sell unless I continue to engage with it.
Is it a subject matter that I will want to stay committed to? Is my own engagement with the story enough to keep my own interest for years to come?
For my first and second books, it was an easy choice. My first was the story of my own family’s homesteading and chicken raising adventures in rural New Mexico. It was a magical time, and continuing to live that book keeps that time close instead of letting it slip away into the past.
My second book was the story of my grandfather’s aviation pioneering life – and I could talk about that all day any day. The story of a man’s life, aviation’s history, world history – endlessly fascinating.
As a self publisher, I retain my ability to write anything I want – answerable only to my own pocketbook to determine the marketability of my manifestos. No contracts drive my choices. I am free to succeed or fail – earn or not. I want to write a book that will sell, but I also need to write a book that I can continue to support. Or better yet, turn into a series that I can continue to expand.
Writing is an art, publishing is a business. My upcoming How To Self Publish Step by Step series gives me a way to move artistically through the business of self publishing – and it is a project that I can support for as long as I am publishing.
I need the book I am writing. I am using it to write the book I am writing. I’ll be immersed in my series for as long as I am writing any series – or any book.
That’s how I know when I’ve chosen the right book to self publish.
