Tanya Lisle

Creative on a health break

Category: Marketing

  • Guided Character Development Workbook is out!

    I’m very happy to announce that I’ve managed to make something! After some feedback on the workbooks, I’ve heard you and I’ve put together something that is much more guided!

    (Also, I now understand that my understanding of a workbook is different than others, and I should have been more clear that those were more guided and structured workbooks, my bad!)

    Guided Character Development Workbook is designed to walk you through my process of developing a character, as well as give you everything you need to integrate their character traits into your writing, helping you show who your character is rather than telling.

    I hope you enjoy it! Do let me know what you think and if there’s any other things you are interested in. This was a lot of fun and I’m starting to think of some other processes that might be helpful.

    Twisted Eden
  • Things I have learned from the romance author community

    Things I have learned from the romance author community

    It’s Valentines season and I am not a romance person whatsoever. Still, I thought I should do something in the spirit of the season and to capitalize on the keywords, so I offer you this. I have been saying for years to anyone who asks that if you want to be a successful author, you should follow the romance author community because they have the business down. So here’s some takeaways I’ve gotten from following the community from afar.

    Networking with other authors

    Watching the majority of the community come together to lift up one another has been amazing over the years. This community was the one to introduce me to the idea of newsletter swaps, book boxes, and also inviting other people to Facebook launch parties in order to network and share audiences rather than compete over them. There’s a lot of this understanding that audiences are vast and there is no real competition—If someone gets one book, they are likely to get many books and you are not going to lose that reader if you showcase someone else once in a while.

    The power of branding

    Many of the authors in the community have such a solid, clear brand that it’s almost like they are able to step into being this completely different persona. I’ve seen successful authors exist on mostly a name and tagline without much social media presence, but their audience is still able to recognize their works at a glance. There’s a consistency that exists in some of these authors to be able to be their brand, whatever that brand is, and make that accessible to their audience in a way that still allows them to not have to share as much of their personal lives in order to promote themselves.

    It’s totally okay to be repetitive if that’s what the audience wants

    This is obviously not something that I am good at, but romance authors as a community understand that their audience wants to read those same, feel good stories over and over again. The way some of these authors have niched down so specifically and have made their whole career on what from the outside as someone who is not reading these books looks like the exact same story over and over again is fantastic. I have heard from other authors outside of the genre that they are worried about boring their audience, but romance authors know how to give their audience exactly what they are looking for.

    Just a lot of legal and PR stuff

    There is something about a community this large and public that brings to light some very interesting conflict, and I have learned a lot about things like what can and cannot be copywritten, how lawsuits around copyright work, and probably more than I needed to know about some of the darker sides of the community.

    There’s also how to handle various PR issues, such as unclear marketing, or how to handle taking a leave from social media and the community.

    Also, don’t write a character murdering their husband and then murder your husband.

  • How to ask your audience about themselves

    How to ask your audience about themselves

    Like most authors with a newsletter, you want more information about the people reading your books and check your newsletters out. You want to know about what other books they like so you know how to position your own books in the market, or you want more information about the demographics to know if that young adult novel is being read by young adults!

    Or, you know, if they’re actually reading your books at all.

    Here are some other questions you can ask that will help you get answers to your questions that people might actually answer without feeling like you’re being overly invasive. And also get some great recommendations from your audience in the process!

    Question: Have you actually read any of my books?

    • Which is your favourite book of mine?
    • How do you feel about [Plot point from the 1/3 point of your book]?
    • Which character do you want to see more of?
    • Tell me what you think happened after the end of [Book title]!

    Question: What some comparative titles or authors to me or my books?

    • What’s your favourite book?
    • Recommend me an author!
    • Recommend me a book!
    • Recommend me a movie or TV show!

    Question: General demographic information such as age, location, etc.

    • What was your favourite book growing up?
    • What shows did you love growing up?
    • When is your favourite time to read?
    • Where is your favourite reading spot?

    Question: How should I position or market my book?

    • What’s your go to social media platform?
    • How do you find new books?
    • On a scale from 1 – 10, how much do you hate spoilers?
    • What kind of behind the scenes content do you love seeing?

    Question: What do you want of my books?

    • Do you prefer paperback or ebook? (Or whatever you have available, such as audiobook)
    • What are your favourite tropes?
    • What disappointed you about the last book you read?
    • What was the best thing about the last book you read?
    • What makes you put a book down?
  • My novel project template for Notion

    My novel project template for Notion

    As many of you are likely aware by now, I’m a touch obsessed with Notion. As such, I have obviously made a template for how I do my writing projects now! It’s something that works really well for me so far, and here it is!

    To start with, the set up to do list. I think I could have a lot of this auto-populated for each story, but I find it is useful to intentionally create each item just so that I am thinking about all of these things.
    Underneath that, of course, is the pitch! This is intended to be the elevator pitch of the story. ((Which is something that I struggle with immensely))

    Next we have the board! I have a few other tabs for the calendar and any key documents that also pull out of the same list of things, but I work mostly out of the Kanban board. This is where I’ll put all of those checklist items and continue to add things as I need them.

    And, of course, I’m starting to think a lot more about marketing for upcoming projects. Trying. I’ll try to put together three comp titles for each project, as well as trying to think about who the ideal readers might be. This helps to figure out how to write things like the Listing information and also helps to determine what the marketing strategy might also be.

    I also have a table for Audience groups. This is relatively new, but I’m using it to try and determine if I could direct people who liked one series to another when they are done!

    Lastly, we have finances! Not only am I trying to keep track of the products that will come out of this series ((The books and anything else that might be related!)) but also what the expenses might be. Expenses are things like editing or art assets.

    And that’s basically how I keep track of it! Do you have a method to keep track of your projects?

  • 4 ideas for bonus content for authors

    Bonus content has become almost a requirement for authors these days. It’s one of the easiest and lowest cost ways to promote a book. It can also be very daunting if you get to the point where you are trying to promote your book and you didn’t think of this beforehand!

    I am personally a big proponent for the idea that your bonus content should be something that is created alongside the process of creating the book, not before or after, and here are a few ideas that I’ve used before, and some that have worked for other authors.

    Sketches

    Does your creation process involve doodling or drawing sketches of anything involved with the story? Keep all of those! It’s a great insight into the behind the scenes process and, if your audience likes them, you can always clean then up or hire someone to create a nicer version of them to release as art.

    Mood boards

    If you need to put together a mood board or collect images for inspiration for your stories, that would be a fantastic thing to share with your audience. You can turn it into collages and give a little explanation on what about it inspires you. It doesn’t have to be long, it just needs to be something that reflects your process and give some insight into the story to draw the audience in.

    Deleted scenes

    The things that could have been! Deleted scenes are a fantastic way to thank your audience for checking out your work by giving them a look at the things that didn’t make it. This could be an alternate ending that you decided didn’t work, a scene that was just unnecessary, or something that you threw in because you just really wanted to throw a fridge at something. Audiences like to see the things that could have been and it’s good to keep anything you may want to get rid of. Just in case.

    Stuff that didn’t make it in

    If you do a lot of worldbuilding or if you have a lot of ideas that just never seemed to make it to the final story, tell your audience about it! Even if it’s just notes, it’s an interesting thing to put into a newsletter, a blog post, or something that is just for your audience that can give them a bit more insight into the wider world of the story beyond the fiction that they already enjoy.

    What are some kinds of bonus content that you enjoy?

    Write Your Story: Unlock Your Creative Potential

    Are you ready to embark on a journey into the world of storytelling? Look no further! Introducing Write Your Story, a comprehensive resource designed to fuel your imagination, enhance your storytelling skills, and bring your characters to life. Whether you’re an aspiring writer, a seasoned author, or simply someone who loves crafting stories, this workbook is your ultimate companion.

    This Workbook Contains:

    • Story planning spreads
    • Setting and location spreads
    • Character spreads
    • Writing session tracker

  • 6 secondary income streams for authors

    It’s important for most people to make sure they are not reliant on only one income stream, and authors are no different. If any of the retailers you rely on decides to shut down or change their policies in any way that’s not ideal, it is good to have another source of income to fall back on.

    Merchandise

    Creating merchandise around your books has a few benefits. First, it means that you are giving your fans something that they can get to show off their favourite books and author. It also means that you, as the author, have something that you can use in giveaways and to promote your books! And, of course, having all of this available in an online shop can create another income stream for authors.

    You can use something like Redbubble, Art of Where, or Society6, which will handle creating and shipping the products if you don’t want to keep those items yourself.

    Beta/Editing/Proofing services

    If you’ve been writing and managing a lot of your own editing for a while, you could start offering your services helping other authors refine their books. This does depend on where you think your skills are the strongest, but you could offer your services as a paid beta reader, an editor, or a proof reader that helps other authors get their books ready for publication.

    Coaching or teaching

    Self publishing is very overwhelming for people who are just getting into it. Many successful ((As well as not so successful)) authors offer services that help new authors walk through the process of publishing and marketing their first book. If you can spare the time, you could sell your expertise to authors who are early in their process and help them get their career started on the right track.

    If you don’t want to offer one on one sessions, there is always the option of creating classes! You can create and sell a course where you can teach a group of people, or even pre-record several classes that you can then give to anyone who is looking for help.

    Alternate formats

    If you have already published a book in ebook format, you can expand into other formats with the same content. Paperbacks and audiobooks are very popular, and will reach a different audience than just the ebooks. If you have artistic skills, you could also look into creating comics or other visual mediums as well!

    Articles

    If you are knowledgeable in a topic, you can write articles for sites like Medium, where you can get paid for your work. You can use this as a way to direct people to other ways to find you and to your books if the articles are related as well! It’s better to do this on a site that will offer you a payment structure rather than your own blog, since it will be more discoverable.

    Copywriting/Ghostwriting

    Writing text for other people can be a great way to earn some extra money, and give you a chance to write something else. Whether this is a whole other book for someone else, or just a few articles about a topic that you have some knowledge on, writing for someone else on contract can be a nice, stable way to generate more income.

  • How NOT to make a cover that sells

    Let’s play a game. Look at this cover. 

    Upon looking at this cover, can you tell me:

    1. What genre is the book?
    2. What is the age category?
    3. What is the book about?

    It’s very difficult to do, isn’t it? That’s because this is a bad cover. 

    I personally really like this cover. It feels right for the book and, to me, it portrays one of the narrative elements that permeate the story. It’s clean, it’s very strongly branded to match the rest of the series, and it stands out from other books in the same genre and for the same age category. 

    But this cover does not sell books. 

    But why is it bad?

    Those questions I just asked? A cover should be able to answer all of those immediately. 

    The cover of a book is essentially packaging. It’s something that is intended to catch the eye of a consumer when they are browsing for their next read and tell them immediately that this is the kind of book they will like. 

    Look at the books that are similar to yours and follow the same art style and patterns that those popular books are using for your cover. Are books like yours using hand-drawn covers? Shirtless men and calligraphy fonts? Typography with solid colour backgrounds? Take that look and feel and apply it to the cover for your book. 

    But my cover stands out! It’s unique!

    It also doesn’t look like anything readers are expecting. People tend to be much more risk-averse than we give them credit for. If the packaging looks like something they already like, they are more comfortable taking a chance on it. 

    It should absolutely be branded uniquely to your style so that readers can tell that it is your work, but the cover should look like the other books in the genre and category that are already selling well.

    Can it still work?

    There are two ways that I’ve seen to make this work:

    1. Don’t use the cover as part of the marketing strategy and sell the book entirely on the content of the narrative. 
    2. Have a cover that looks so beautiful that people will make the purchase based on the artwork regardless of the content. ((This appears to work primarily with printed books))

    The important thing about the cover is that it is intended to entice an audience to stop and find out more. If your cover isn’t doing that, then you are not likely to get a lot of readers unless they are actively looking for your books in particular.

  • Cloned Evil release dates

    In case you didn’t know yet, I have a trilogy coming out! It’s all coming out this summer and I’ve decided to put one out a month so that you can get it all even sooner. Initially, the final book was coming out in October, but I don’t really want to wait that long either, so the release dates for the series is now:

    • Fredrika comes out June 21, 2021
    • Georgina comes out July 19, 2021
    • Beatrice comes out August 23, 2021
  • Which Path You Take is out!

    Which Path You Take is out!

    Which Path You Take, book 7 of The Looking Glass Saga, is out! Digital for now, I’ll let you know as soon as the paperback is ready!

    Alice might have won, but she was far from finished.

    The Bandersnatch is gone and Alice is free of the bet they made. Adrianna is awake. Wonderland may be spiraling further into madness but at least with school back in session Alice can try to get her life back to some semblance of normal. 

    Adrianna, however, is not the same girl she was before. Since she woke up, she is much more aware of the truth behind Alice’s lies and more determined help free Alice of Wonderland’s grasp, whether Alice wants it or not. 

    Get Which Path You Take now!

  • I have a comp title for Looking Glass Saga!

    I’ve always been really bad at figuring out what other books my books are like. I tend to want things to match too closely in order to keep people from being disappointed that the story isn’t enough like the one that they originally read. But I finally have a comp title!

    You can see my actual thoughts on Every Heart a Doorway here, but the thing that are alike here:

    • Young adult book
    • Asexual female protagonist
    • Children who are not over the other worlds that they went to
    • Parents who are not happy that their children are not over the other worlds they went to and want them to go back to normal dammit
    • A character with personal space and boundaries issues that talks in riddles
    • Oh hey look, there’s horror in this!

    I’m just happy that I finally have at least one answer to that question. If you liked these elements of Every Heart a Doorway, check out Return to Wonderland! I suppose I should probably also mention Alice in Wonderland as another title that goes well too, but somehow that

    Honestly, though, this whole post is an excuse to show that picture of my cat.