Writers Tricks of the Trade VOLUME 10 ISSUE 1 | Page 8

K EEPING Y OUR R EADERS E NGAGED
F RED R AYWORTH
I RECENTLY POSTED A SARCASTIC PIECE ON F ACEBOOK ABOUT HOW THEY CONSTANTLY
BADGER ME THAT I HAVEN ’ T POSTED ANYTHING RECENTLY . W ELL , IT ISN ’ T TRUE . I POST
SOMETHING ON EACH OF MY TWO DEDICATED BOOK F ACEBOOK PAGES ONCE A WEEK ,
AS A MINIMUM , UNLESS UNFORESEEN CIRCUMSTANCES GET IN THE WAY .
THEY WANT ME TO PAY
What Facebook is trying to do is
badger me into PAYING for their pretty
much useless advertising, which is
something I’ve talked about before here
at Fred
Central.
Facebook advertising is all about them
taking your money and trying to engage
NEW FANS. The return on your
investment is almost always ZERO.
However, I do have fans already. What
about them?
TIME BETWEEN BOOKS
It doesn’t matter that you still haven’t
come out with your first, are writing your
second, or are well off on your journey
with several in the hopper.
You need to keep
your fans engaged and let
them know you haven’t
“fergotted” about them.
To do this, you keep
them
engaged
with
periodic posts about
something.
The old trend was to have a web site
and post things to do with whatever your
platform is. That’s something I do with
these articles here at Fred Central. My
web site also contains stuff about my
W INTER 2020
other interests for those so inclined.
However, book-wise, there are sections
dedicated to those aspects in-particular.
There can be long stretches between
books. No matter what kind of impression
your first or second or whatever book
made on your audience, you need to let
them know your still
around
and
still
working on the next
one.
There’s
nothing
wrong with throwing
them a bone once in a
while.
WHAT DO YOU DO?
Some authors have a barely functional
website, no social media presence, and
become those media hermits that readers
never hear from until BAM! A new book
shows up on the shelf.
The reader just has to forget all about
them and be surprised when a new story
appears one day.
That method works just fine for some,
but when you’re not exactly a number one
best-selling author, it’s a lot better to
expand your horizons and engage your
small fan base. It’s better to be more
approachable and do a bit more
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W RITERS ’ T RICKS OF THE T RADE