Sinclair Books discussion

I have just opened my twitter account. I was wondering do you use twitter and do you think it helps with promotion?

I have Twitter but have never found it to be terribly helpful in promoting. There's so little room for posting - I can't even post links to some of my books because their address is too long. Also, for Twitter to work at all - you'll need to make daily tweets. It keeps your name out there so that readers stay reminded that you're still around. But even then, you'll have to build up quite a large number of Followers for it to do you any good. I think Twitter is cute, and I do try to remember to post daily, but as a promotion tool I think it's a waste of time. Sorry :(

I totally agree with you Missy. I tried it last year and then deleted my account, but a friend of mine has a twitter account that she works on throughout the day and she gets the majority of her sales through twitter. I thought I would give it a go and see what happens. I tried it for the first time last night and had sales increase on all my books, but not sure if that is related or if I just had a good night on the groups/forums. Will keep you posted.

My problem with Twitter is the time it takes to keep up with it. I have a day job where Twitter is blocked anyway, and when I go home I like to write. Keep us informed, please, Alex.

I think I have seen one or two benefits, as sales on all the books are going up. I will do some key promotion and see if the sales go up for the books through twitter.

I have been at twitter for a few days now. I am starting to get my head around it a little. I am going to try a few things, but I am seeing some slight results, as it has been the only form of promotion I have done for a few days. (Took some time off from promotion!) after my little experiment will say how I get on.

I work really hard at promotion, but I think I'm promoting hard and not smart. I have to figure out how to do it smart.

I felt like that recently. I was promoting very smart, but when Under The Midnight Sky & Five Days Notice broke into the Kindle top 100 for Romantic Suspense at the same time. I went a bit crazy. I went over the top and my sales since have dropped. So I have taken some time out for a few days. Reviewed my approach and planned a 200 point promotion plan, which I hope will get the books back into the top 100.

Alex, would you talk more about this promotion plan? or do you have a discussion posted somewhere?
Gunnar

I'd love to hear about that plan too, Alex.

Me too :) I have no idea what I'm doing.

I've bought advertising, collected reviews, guest blogged, done Six Sentence Sunday, did a release party for the ebook, had contests, written articles about the book's theme, shared excerpts, and I still can't get where the book needs to be. So, yeah, I need a smarter plan. By the way, the last review was from Romance Junkies who gave it a 4.5 out of 5. The reviewer loved it.

Great Elaine! yeah, it's been a real challenge time-wise for me. I mean, I have three kids and I still have to write. It's hard being an indie author.

It's hard being any kind of author. I could literally spend and entire day working at the writing, but I have a day job too. It's really exhausting if you get right down to it.

Well, I am very goal driven. I am going to post some tips and techniques. I think I have a good formula. I mean I had two books in the top 100, but then strayed from my plan and they dropped. So I narrowed my plan down. It is like specific blogs, forums topics, hitting certain forums/groups. I am going to do a big blog on it all very soon. Well, lots of blogs, a new feature will be the top 100 feature, where I will post about twitter, facebook, goodreads, kindle forums, yahoo, blogs and how to use them successfully.

Thank you so much, Alex.

I did do a blog on twitter the other day. I think twitter is the weakest form of promotion, but I will be doing one about promoting on blogs next weekened, facebook the following weekend and goodreads the next weekend. I have about 8 more planned over the following months.

http://sinclairbooks.blogspot.com/201...

Thanks, Alex. I'm not too great with Twitter yet, but I can do the things you suggested.

I think it has some effect. The blog benefits from it. When I tweet the hits do go up, but sales wise, I am still not sure it does much good.

I guess it gets your name out there.

I think so. Tonight I have been using the trending topics to promote. So #whatistrending... and I decided to promote, Bitch, my gothic erotica that has been slow for sales, as I haven't done much promo's for it. Tonight it climbed up to 40,000 on Kindle U.S, using only twitter. So maybe jumping on the trends is the way to get the word out to the masses.