Facebook Archives » Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey

How to Make an Author Page on Facebook

Ian Lahey — Fri, 12 Feb 2021 15:58:47 +0000

All authors have an author page on Facebook, or so you’ve heard. So you wanna make one too, right? But how?

Yes, I know there’s a “create page” button right there, silly. That is not the problem. The problem is you, or rather your perception of yourself.

Bear with me for a couple of paragraphs.

Have you ever listened to your own recorded voice? It’s a weird experience. Most people will not recognize their own voice and a good majority will outright hate it. That’s because you are not used to hearing your voice with your ears. What you hear is mostly the vibration going directly to your eardrums after traveling around your skull and, in my case, picking up echoes of vast, empty spaces within…

The same happens with more or less everything else about us. We know who we are, but we don’t have the objective, sensory perception others will have of us. That is the main issue when you set off to create yourFacebook page. It should not be a personal page, it should represent your author persona as you wish it to be perceived by others. In order to do so, even before you click that “create page” button, you need to go through a couple of preliminary steps:

Find your brand

What are you all about in your books? Do you feel like you’re continuing the work of a famous author of the past? Are you creating something entirely new? What makes it unique? Do you identify with one of your characters?

The answers to those questions will help you begin to define your brand. The final result can be as simple as getting an author photo dressed as a steampunk vampire or merely adding a tagline, like “Sci-fi, fantasy, fortuitous humor”. I chose the latter after trying the vampire thingy and deciding it sucked.

The more time you dedicate to defining and perfecting your brand, the easier it will be for you to come up with your image, the combination of logo, color palette and message you want to convey through your Facebook page. This step can be a toughie, so it’s recommended that you proceed to step two:

Find successful similar brands and study them.

Unless you’ve invented a whole new genre, you can safely assume there are other author pages out there which you can check out and draw inspiration from. Do you write noir thrillers? Mark Dawson’s FB page might put you on the right track. Maybe you’re into historical fiction with a Christian twist, in which case Author J.B. Richards has a page you may want to explore. Do you write science fiction and fantasy mysteries with unexpected humor? don’t even think of hijacking my style because I will cut you. Nah, just kidding. You can check me out too.

Create your brand material

All right. You’ve figured out what you’re all about. You know how you want to appear before your readers. If you can dabble with computer graphics you can probably conk out a decent logo and a convincing Facebook page banner. It’s best if you get someone else to check your work out and, in case, suggest you hire a professional graphic artist. It shouldn’t be a huge expense but it is definitely a good investment. Also, please have a decent author photograph taken. In the end, your face is part of your image and I assume you’ll be wearing it at book signings and video interviews. You might find a smooth looking mugshot among your selfies, or more probably something taken by your friend or spouse (or both you lucky totterpot). Please don’t settle for “human-looking”. If you need a professional photographer find just the right light to bring out your best, get it done.

me, vs AUTHOR ME!

Set up your FB page

All right! Time to hit that “Create page” button! Go through the steps to create your page. Select the categories which, quite predictably, are “Author” and “Writer”, and upload your pics and produce your first post, then sit back and enjoy the result of your hard work and try not to focus too much on that “Zero followers” detail. Followers will come, because now it’s time to…

Link to and from your author website.

Because you do have an author website right? If you don’t, do not panic, Setting one up with Wix or WordPress is fairly easy and, as a plus, you already have your brand and image figured out. Make sure your website displays the links to all the social media channels in which you wish to appear as author. Start sharing your author page posts around and be patient.

All, right, you’re not patient. You want followers, you CRAVE page follows like some social media intoxicated Gollum. And that’s when Facebook’s wicked little algorithm sidles up to you and asks you if you’d like to promote your page

Do NOT advertise.

Never advertise a Facebook page. You may want to promote a post, if you really want it to get extra visibility, but most of the time, because of how dispersive Facebook is, you’re wasting money which you could have spent on that profile photo.

I warned ya…

Luckily, I have another article where I walk authors through some very effective strategies to get hundreds of engaged, interested followers without spending.

Let me know if you appreciated this article by liking, commenting, retweeting/sharing and generally clicking all the other clickable social thingies for my posts!

The post How to Make an Author Page on Facebook appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.

TOP TEN FACEBOOK GROUPS FOR WRITERS

Ian Lahey — Wed, 23 Dec 2020 21:16:05 +0000

One of the first things I was told when I embarked upon the highly disreputable endeavor of promoting one’s own books was “Join some of the Facebook groups for writers”.

…clueless.

That I did. Joined a writers’ group, posted a book link and got immediately booted from the group.
It turns out self-promotion is frowned upon in most if not all author-oriented FB communities. You’re supposed to tallk about books, discuss ads placement and cover art, but NOT promote your book there. Writers are not readers, when they’re wearing their author hats.

So I turned to a readers’ group and signed up there. Posted a link and nearly got booted again. Reader groups are run by specific pages and will not always tolerate authors self-promoting. Any recommendation must be either filtered by the page authority or come from an actual reader. Some kind soul pointed me in the right direction: “You should post that stuff on an a book promotion group,” they said.

Book promotion groups are BIG, some have nearly 30k members. Some require your posts to be approved while others, like this one let you dish out Amazon links to your heart’s content. And dish out I did.

And nothing happened. Nothing. The post was drowned in the middle of hundreds of other daily book promo links, which I didn’t really bother to check because I was there to promote my books, not to buy them. And I realized that’s what nearly everyone else of those people were doing.

After much searching, I have worked out a decent list of Author-friendly Facebook groups, divided into three color-coded categories:

RED: Groups for writers, usually NO self promotion but useful advice and/or indie author oriented services.

GREEN: Reader groups, usually genre oriented and very responsive, but also heavily guarded against spamming.

BLUE: Book promotion groups, where everything goes. I have come up with a few that have at least some engagement.

The post TOP TEN FACEBOOK GROUPS FOR WRITERS appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.

Paying Facebook for page likes?

Ian Lahey — Tue, 09 Jun 2020 14:21:49 +0000

Yeah I flushed some money down the toilet too. Turns out paying Facebook for page likes is not going to get you many REAL likes.

Look at me, I’m a writer!

You’re an indie author. You heard someone talking about building a reader base and raking in those likes, so off you go and create your author page on Facebook. Facebook, by the way, barely even has a page category for authors. “Writer” and “Author” are there, but there is no way to let people know what genre you write, or even that you write novels and not cookbooks, or road signs.

Anyway.

There you are with your author page, you’ve picked a nice mug shot and, I’m guessing, the cover art from your latest book for page background. A couple memes and a dozen Amazon links.

And of course you invite all your friends and family. And then you sit and stare at your page stats. 38 page likes in one day.

And the number stays the same the next day and the day after that. Damn relatives and friends, betraying you and not inviting the thousands you deserve. So you look at the competition, and see they have followers in the tens of thousands. What do they do that you don’t? Well money, of course! They must be spending shazillions in Facebook ads. You timidly check the promotion options and hey, that’s not so bad…Facebook promises to get your page out to the world and only charges you a few pennies for each actual like!

Ready to start your first page campaign?

Stop.

Don’t even start down that path. I am not saying it won’t work. Believe me it will. I tried it on my first author page and it worked wonders. In a week I had three thousand likes. I felt so famous. Now my posts and especially my Amazon links would reach my trusted readers.

I went on for a few months like that, thinking I would be getting incredible sales anytime now. I didn’t.

None of my posts were getting much engagement. Not even my absolutely hilarious memes. (I have a very high opinion of my sense of humor. The mere thought makes me laugh every time.)

Three thousand followers and maybe five thumbs up for my awesome posts. Not a single link click on “buy my book” posts. Not even when I had a freebie giveaway.

What was happening was that I was not targeting people interested in me as an author or in my books. Despite spending hours refining my audience and reach, I was not reaching the people who click on something they like.

I was reaching a lot of click farms. Click farms are batches of accounts which, through affiliate marketing, get a small portion of money back for liking paid links.

When I realized that, I deleted my page and started from scratch. This time I vowed to never use Facebook page ads again. Instead, I created a second page dedicated to people who like famous authors and genres close to my own writing style. A page dedicated not to buyers, but to fans. I write sci-fi and fantasy humor, so I made a page called “The BookLover’s Guide to the Galaxy” or “BLG2G”. I dedicated some time to that page and watched it grow quickly, from a few dozen to nearly two thousand followers. I never spent a single cent on it.

Oh, and I never invited any of my family members in there either. Those who liked the page simply discovered it because I shared some of the stuff on my personal page.

In the meantime I created my new page, and started sharing some of my material (never buy-me links) to BLG2G. Some followers trickled from there to my author page, where they were able to “discover” my writing style. Just a few dozen, that’s true, but their response to my posts was amazing. Their shares brought a few more likes. I looked at the profiles and saw they were active in many groups dedicated to sci-fi, fantasy and funny stuff.

And here’s the next move: I joined those groups. As my author page where possible.

Whenever I posted something which was in line with the topic of one of those groups, I shared it there. If you are careful and pick the right content, usually a meme, a quote or an interesting link, you have a 99% chance of getting your post approved.

What happens next is better than any Facebook boost: I got likes, hundreds of likes, and next to them, a little button saying “invite”.

That’s right. If you share as your page and someone likes the post, you can invite them to like your page. About 20% – 30% of the people who liked your post will be inclined to accept the invitation. You usually retain 80% of those likes.

I now have about 1,800 page likes on facebook.com/authorlahey, about half of what I originally had with paid likes. But the response is absolutely incredible. Each one of my posts gets hundreds of likes and tens of shares. My average post reach easily hits the thousand mark, and I’ve had a few posts go viral and exceed 300’000 views.

In exchange for this, as a sign of respect for my tribe, I don’t flood them with “buy my book” Amazon links, also because good ‘ole Facebook catches those posts and throttles their visibility. Instead I give insights on my writing, share my absolutely outrageous sense of humor hahahaha, and, of course, some of my free short stories from my author website. As a result, when I’m not reaping invites from the groups I get a steady flow of new followers every day.

In conclusion, fewer is better, get engaged followers, not paid clicks, but make sure your content is worth their attention. Your tribe will reward by liking, sharing and, yes, actually buying your books.

If, while doing all this, you actually remembered to write some.

hahahahahaha.

The basis for this article comes from the Rule 300 concept. You can find more about Rule 300 here.

Don’t forget you can get a free short story just by signing up to my newsletter. You will also be invited to virtual book fairs and get the opportunity to promote your book for FREE and even win a $25 Amazon gift card.

The post Paying Facebook for page likes? appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.

Are you ready to Face the Bookocalipse?

Ian Lahey — Thu, 01 Aug 2019 19:58:05 +0000

Facebook is coming down hard on Amazon links. I know because Jeff Bezos came to me in a dream…

Maybe I have my Alexa too close to my head when I sleep. And lately it’s been making some whispering noises. The fact is, the other night, Jeff Bezos came to me in a dream.

“I was trying to connect with Kyle Jenner.” – Jeff Bezos

“Ian,” he said, “you’re an indie author, right?
“Yes,” I replied, “I have many projects, about sixteen, one of which is a funny speculative scifi where the protagonist has Tourette’s and-“
“Ok, fine, and how do you promote your work?” he said, cutting me short.
“Amazon ads and Facebook,” I said. That’s what everyone else does too, I thought, so I didn’t worry much.
Jeff nodded. “I bet you use Facebook more than Amazon, don’t you?” He had that look on his face which said ‘I’m Jeff Bezos, and I know what you do. Alexa’s been telling me’. I couldn’t lie.
“Yes, you’re right.”
“Well you shouldn’t rely on Facebook so much.”
“Are you trying to sell me Amazon ads in my dreams? Is this some new kind of annoying ad system, like the ones that show up in videos exactly when the action’s getting interesting?” I said.
“No,” he said, “you just shouldn’t put my Amazon links on your Facebook page.
That seemed unreasonable. “Why not? That’s where all the people are. Amazon is hardly social you know, apart from the few comedians who write those priceless mock reviews. And Goodreads is slow and unengaging. You wanna know why?”
“Why?” he asked.
“Because all the Goodreads users are busy checking out Facebook!”

He paced around in what I realized looked like an office. One of the walls had a shelf with my books, while the other walls had picture frames. Each picture frame held one of my Facebook posts.

“This is your Facebook office,” he said.
“Not bad, right?” I replied, quite satisfied with the overall looks of the place.
“No, but something is happening. Look at the shelf.”
I looked. The shelf was getting thinner. “My books. They’re gonna fall!” I said.
“Yes. Facebook is restricting Amazon links.”
I heard some crashing noises behind me. Some of the frames had fallen off the nails. They were the posts with my book links in them. “But why?” I asked.

“Simple,” Jeff replied, “Facebook does not own Amazon, and does not profit from Amazon sales. You can work your ass off to bring together people who like your genre. You can create a group of thousands of followers interested in reading sci-fi and fantasy books. Facebook makes that very easy.”

Alexa

“That’s what I’m doing, in fact.”
“I know. Alexa’s been telling me.”
“Oh.”
“But dropping your own book link in those groups? Believe me: Facebook is less than thrilled when you do that. They have already started limiting the range of those posts. If you insist you will be flagged for spam and your account may be blocked. It’s your books, but it’s Facebook’s members, and shameless self-promotion will be stopped.”

I was beginning to get worried. That shelf was getting thinner by the second. “What can I do?” I asked.
“Get your own office, with your own shelf, and invite your readers over.”
“You mean my author website?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, that. I’ve got that.” I was feeling much relieved.
“And what’s in it that will get people to leave Facebook and visit your site?” Jeff asked. He had that ‘I already know’ look on his face again.
“Well, my books, my bio, a picture of my cat… hmm. I see what you mean.”
“Then you know what to do.” And he flew away like Superman, although I think I saw some cables and heard the buzzing of a drone.

Now go! Fetch me Kyle!

So I realized I’d only done half the work. My reader groups and Facebook ads were giving me the illusion of reach, but my books would never sell because there is an ever tightening choke on them. So I needed a much more attractive website, one where instead of placing a dry, soulless link to buy my book, I could create a page where I explain how it came to be with an extended blurb, but not just that. I can also provide my readers with some free short stories, to give them a taste of my style.
WordPress was my go-to choice, thanks to the good advice from other (brighter and quicker) fellow indie authors. I avoided the commercial wordpress and went for the self-hosted version, because otherwise it’s the same old story again. My work in someone else’s office. Any self-hosted solution is fine, if you do your research and ask around.
In my case Host Author is an author-oriented hosting solution which provided me with the solution I needed, together with amazing tech support and specific tools for indie authors.

The result is right here. Welcome to my website. Please browse around and see what kind of content I’ve been putting online to give my readers (and fellow authors) relevant and useful information, rather than pictures of cats.
It is by all means a work in progress, and any comments from you is as useful as I hope my site is to you, as an example of a working author ‘office’.

Now I want to sleep again. I heard Neil Gaiman’s Alexa is also near his bed…

The post Are you ready to Face the Bookocalipse? appeared first on Sci-fi humor Author Ian Lahey.