Growing your readership with Bublish

Are you a writer looking for a free, easy and fun way to gain exposure in this ever-crowded world of published authors? These days when it seems everyone is writing and publishing, it has become increasingly difficult for new authors to reach readers. Serendipite Studios launched the live beta of Bublish at Book Expo America in June 2012, to connect readers with writers and their books.

Bublish is a social book discovery platform used by many authors in a variety of genres. With some practice, you’ll be Bublishing in no time. To get started, go to www.bublish.com and set up Your Profile. Be sure your email and bio information is spelled correctly and add a great headshot. Now, you’ll need to upload an EPUB version of your book. Click on Add a Book and submit the file. Add your website and the all-important tags that help identify your book and genre among the others. Best practice advice: include a linked table of contents in your EPUB too; it will make it easier for you to access relevant sections you’d like to post as book bubbles.

Once you’ve saved the title, now it’s time to create your first book bubble. Scroll to the relevant section of the text and click with your mouse where you would like to begin capturing text. Scroll down until you find the end of the section. Press your Shift key and click where you want to stop. Best practice advice: select a section that is clear and meaningful. You want to highlight your best work, a portion of the text that will intrigue would-be readers. 

Once you’ve clicked on Submit Excerpt, it’s time to provide Insight into your book bubble. Why did you choose this particular piece? What themes or message do you touch on in the scene? Is your writing funny, sad or thought provoking? What is it about the piece that you think will resonate? Best practice advice: keep it short and to the point. The insight you provide is limited to 200 words.
  

When you’re done, Publish your book bubble via Twitter or Facebook; I rely exclusively on tweets for my book bubbles. Bublish generates a pre-formatted tweet, which you can modify with one caveat: don’t change the shortened URL that is automatically added to your tweet. If you’re using Twitter too, be sure to include hashtags, e.g. #historicalfiction, keywords to help other Twitter users organize and follow your content that is relevant to their interests. 

Promoting my work through Bublish has been a great learning opportunity and a chance to grow my personal website hits and reach new readers. With each book bubble, I’ve discovered how to focus on aspects of the stories that touch individual readers and make them want to know more. In particular, Kathy Meis at Bublish deserves kudos for her time and talent in working with me at each step to navigate all the features the platform has to offer. 

Some of your fellow authors are already using Bublish:

Author Colin Falconer

Author Lorna Suzuki

Author Melissa McPhail

Buy links, the synopsis / blurb of your title and your author website are included with each book bubble. This fall, Bublish debuted a new set of features for both writers and readers. Writers can now add up to 30 book to one author account as well as change their cover art. Readers (and writers exploring Bublish in reader mode) can now filter the bubble stream by genre, and when they discover an author they like see more by that author. Best of all, Bublish is free to all readers and writers!

Need another incentive to start making your connections with readers? Bublish offers a unique opportunity for bublishers only through its Twitter chats, which always occur on Thursdays at 3pm Eastern. The first with Lorna Suzuki is available here through Storify. I’m also scheduled to participate in my first Twitter chat via Bublish today at 3pm Eastern / 2pm Central / 1pm Mountain / 12pm Pacific. Hope you’ll join the discussion.

Want to schedule for your own live Twitter chat with Bublish? Email info@bublish.com. Happy Bublishing!

Social Media Done Wrong

As if writers needed anything more to occupy our time, the advent of social media has ensured that our days are filled with tweets, Facebook posts and pages. Article after article stresses the importance of good social interaction: we have to be on Google+, Twitter, Linked In AND Facebook, because the days of the invisible author are OVER! Social karma and etiquette demands that we tweet and re-tweet, follow and be interesting in every message.

Here's where I fess up: I'm a social media failure. I rarely use Twitter and post more on my personal Facebook page to catch up with family in Barbados or the UK, than I add anything to my author page. For all the advice which says authors should be actively using social media to promote our work, I give a half-hearted, grudging shrug. Sometimes I try the techniques suggested, but more often than not, it's a failure from the outset because I just don't believe it helps. I do nothing to promote Sultana through the usual social channels, yet it consistently sells well each month. Beyond the occasional monthly promotion on my website or mention of it on this blog, I don't talk about it. Yet people are finding the book, writing me, visiting my web pages and talking about the story in their reading groups. The social media pundits must forgive me for saying so, but the best promotion of an author's work is a good book. It isn't spamming each other every day with our latest reviews and "buy my book" pitches. Good social media usage is the same as conducting ourselves like normal people offline - would you ask someone to marry you one minute after the initial meeting? So, why DM people about buying your book as soon as they follow you on Twitter?  

Stop spamming your friends! If they like your book, they'll buy it.

I don't doubt that social media can be an effective tool when it's used the right way. How's that? Start by letting people get to know YOU. When we look for the best advice, we turn to those whom we trust, our friends. Friendships aren't established overnight - they're earned through time and trust. For an author just starting out, it can feel as we have to rush into everything and use every means at our disposal to get our names out there as quickly as possible. Just as a good friendship takes time to grow, so to does good social interaction and karma take time to produce results. Unfortunately, some of us are going about this the wrong way and alienating the very people we're trying to reach. How many people have you unfollowed on Twitter or deleted as friends as Facebook, just because all they do is promote their work all day?

Go forth and be social! The right way.

Social Media: Don't Like It? Don't Use It

While dining with a friend of mine this past week, the subject of Google+ came up. Her reaction. "Oh God!  Another social media site I have to learn about and join!" As she is my very dear friend who also visits this blog, I didn't roll my eyes and ask, "Who says?" Instead, I told her, "You don't need to. They can't hunt you down and make you join."

Social media can seem overwhelming between all the "twatting" - thanks, my darling cousin and Vince Vaughn. With Facebook, MySpace, Foursquare and Tumblr, even this blog, doesn't it just feel like you have to be connected all the time? Well, no, you don't.

I say this as someone who loves Twitter. It's not intervention level just yet, but pretty darn close. I'm on Facebook, started a Facebook author page, and joined Google+. Still, of all of these social media sites, Twitter is my favorite. Why do I love it so? The connections. It's evened the playing field for me - where else could I chat with my writer gods, like Jeanne Kalogridis and Colin Falconer? I tweet while on my way to work, at work, on the way home, even on vacation. Two applications are always open on my PC: Outlook and Tweetdeck. Yet, when I'm busy with books, family concerns, the 9-5 gig etc. no problems checking out. Two extremes puzzle me - the true Twitter addict, who tweets everything in their life, and the Twitter recluse, who hides from this and other social media as if the bubonic plague went viral on the Internet.

If you do engage in social media, you have to do it well. My example? Be yourself. I share general aspects of my life, my work as an author, and articles that interest me on Twitter, Facebook and Google+. If you're considering social media, remember, just be you. Let others know what you're passionate about, the things that fascinate you. Who knows, they might like them too.

Are you an active or inactive user of social media? Why? What do you love / hate the most about social media?

P.S. For my fellow authors on Twitter: want me to unfollow you? Then, I suggest you tweet about NOTHING except your books, your brand all day, every day. That's you, the author. How about you, the real person behind that Twitter account?