Bright Bold Publishing
Posts Categorised: colouring books for grown ups
If you’re persistent with your press release be prepared for anything to happen
Do press releases work? This is a question I toyed with. A question everyone is asking.
You may be at the stage of wanting someone in the media to notice you and a press release might just do it.
I was lucky to come across a journalist in a writers’ workshop who kindly put together my press release for free. She also gave me a handful of contacts but unfortunately none of them responded. It’s not her fault that it didn’t receive the attention it deserved.
There could have been any number of factors that contributed to the press release not getting seen:
Timing
People on leave or sick
Ending up in a spam folder
Not getting to the right person or department
Not being a good fit
Or they’re just not interested!
Angela, the journalist had done a pretty good job on mine. But I couldn’t help feeling that I was such small fry.
I aimed high. I contacted the Huffington Post not once but twice. Nothing. Nada!
I tried a number of health and fitness websites and a range of national magazines with no result.
Self-doubt wheedled its way into my thoughts. I wasn’t getting an outright rejection I was just being totally ignored. Being overlooked by the media got me wondering about the merits of a press release.
I asked myself why press releases are important to justify the time I was spending posting to all and sundry.
Other questions floated through my brain like:
Why use press releases?
What is the point of a press release?
Why do I need a press release?
How effective are press releases?
Why do a press release?
The ultimate paralysing question, are press releases worth it?
You bet they are and I can tell you why.
The one thing anyone has to remember is that persistence is key to eventually arriving at a desired destination. My objective was to get just one person to acknowledge my press release. So instead of giving up I put more effort into contacting other organisations.
Voila. A result, in under 1 hour!
The Editor of Lancashire Life Magazine responded with – ‘Are you a Lancashire
lass – if so, we might be able to feature you.’ I immediately replied with ‘Aye I am indeed from Lancashire!
I was over the moon and with some prompting from me got a telephone interview as well as photo session. This all took place at the end of 2016.
Lancashire Life is a beautiful magazine; very classy. In 2017 it celebrates its 70th year in circulation. It’s a cultured magazine filled with stunning photography. It was crowned magazine of the year at the north of England's top media awards in 2015.
Lancashire Life editor Roger Borrell said: “We take a tremendous pride in producing a magazine that would not be out of place alongside national titles with much bigger resources. That's down to great flair, enthusiasm and teamwork across every department – they really give their all to make Lancashire Life a success.”
I have to agree with him the magazine has a quality of a Vogue or House and Gardens magazine.
The woman photographer arrived with an excellent plan in mind. She had a pleasant and engaging manner which immediately put me at ease.
She directed me to sit on the floor surrounded by all my colouring pages and some books. It turned out to be a great pose. I had a shot of me in front of my computer and one where I was colouring in a page. Finally, she took shots of the book covers and pages spread out on a table. She was fast, efficient and purposeful.
Roger Borrell, the editor of Lancashire Life, conducted the telephone interview several days later. He prompted me in every way extracting information he could explore for the magazine feature. I was sure that I’d covered a great deal with him. I revealed a few eye-openers to him like men colour too and that there are many Facebook colouring groups.
A day later I was filled with a few reservations. I didn’t after all feel I’d said enough about how therapeutic colouring was and that I was donating some of my earnings from my books to a local community non-profit charity. These I felt were significant pieces of information. I do recall having sent Roger Borrell some preliminary information and hope that he’ll use that as well.
Even after the interview and the photo shoot I was still doubtful about appearing in the magazine. I missed the February issue which would have helped spread the word for Valentines day about my books. Now I’m waiting with baited breath to get into the March issue. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that it all goes ahead.
If there’s any one lesson I’ve learnt from this experience it is this NEVER GIVE UP.
Having got the one interview makes me realise that I should continue to plug the various organisations with my press release.
AN UPDATE AND GREAT NEWS: Since I wrote this blog piece Roger Borrell, the editor, has informed me that I'll be in the April 2017 issue of Lancashire Life Magazine.
My thanks to Angela Kelly for her press release. Freelance Journalist & Media Consultant. www.angelakelly.co.uk
PRESS RELEASE ARTICLES YOU MIGHT WANT TO READ
Is The Press Release Dead Or Alive?
15 surprising reasons why we axed the press release in favor of the blog post
From someone whose done it!
Are you new to book publishing? Not sure what steps to take to ensure that your book has a chance of being seen? Unfortunately there’s no magic bullet. It’s sheer hard work once you know what to do.
After formatting your book you’re probably wondering how to make it visible. Yet long before you’ve created your book you need to have done your homework. What homework you ask? Just producing a book because you want to will not cut it. Uploading a book onto Createspace without any planning will lead to disaster.
When you’ve created your book you need to look at the whole publishing process objectively. Book production after all is a business unless you just view it as a hobby.
If you intend to make publishing your business then you’ll have to create tons of books. Very few authors have become overnight millionaires with one book!
If you’ve a passion for what you do you’re more likely to stick with it. Publishing won’t feel like hard work or a chore because you’ll love what you do.
There are plenty of platitudes and clichés when it comes to publishing but these are certainly worth considering:
Don’t reinvent the wheel.
Copy what’s already being done but do it better.
Copy what’s working
You might say ‘but I want to be original’. Go ahead, but you might not get eyeballs on your book.
So let’s not waste any more time over the pros and cons of publishing.
As you go through the five strategies you will begin to see the common sense to implementing them.
1. Niche Research and Sub-Genres
Before you do anything check out the top 100 Amazon bestsellers for fiction or non-fiction.
There are many genres and sub-genres to explore. This is the largest database of books. If you’re going to discover what works this is the place where you need to do the necessary niche research.
As an example colouring books for grown-ups peaked pre-Christmas 2015. At one point the top hundred bestsellers had over 20+ adult colouring books. It covered a variety of subjects anything from florals, gardens and animals to patterns, fashion and celebrities. An offshoot of that was the production of colouring journals referred to as zero content books. These are mostly books containing blank pages with a small area to colour.
If you’ve chosen children’s books look at the bestsellers on the first page. See the top twenty books. On 23rd July 2016 there were 10 Harry Potter books and one Harry Potter boxset. This reveals a surge in the story of Wizards. At this time it could be a skewed result as it’s the kids summer holidays. There’s no way you could beat the Harry Potter series but there are other books. David Walliams is hugely popular as is Tom Gates and Roald Dahl. Again these books have many reviews and are going to be hard to beat.
The trick is to drill down into the sub-genres where there are fewer books. If there are thousands of books it’s going to be too competitive. If it’s under 500 then the competition will be a lot lower and more accessible. A competitor’s book should ideally have few reviews which may help you to outrank theirs assuming you follow the five strategies. You’re only looking for the books in the top 100 bestsellers in any genre.
Your aim is to find books that have entered the bestsellers market with very few reviews. Explore genres and their themes. Once you’ve found a book model it.
As you research your genres take screenshots of the books and put them into a folder. Collect information on the book’s cover, title, number of pages, size of book, description, ranking in different categories. By compiling this information you will begin to familiarise yourself with the popular topics and current themes.
2. Keyword Research/Categories
You can search on keywords which will show you what other people are searching for. This can be very helpful when deciding what genre to compete in. This technique is better for non-fiction books but can also work for fiction.
In the example above the keyword beginning with colouring comes up with keyword suggestions. The first in the list is most popular and a frequently searched for keyword phrase.
Choose another category and drill down to the sub-genres. You can see how many books are printed to the right of the category in brackets. When you get to the smaller numbers you have an opportunity to compete with the bestsellers. Once in the bestsellers you can start moving your book into other categories and testing the market.
When you upload your physical book you can have 5 keywords/Keyword phrases. Make sure that you have the appropriate keywords/keyword phrases that people search for so that your book will be picked up by the Amazon search engines. Use these keywords in your book description
Check out the authors you’ve selected to model and take note of which categories they’ve placed their books in. You’ll find this under Product Details. You can then send an email to Createspace asking them to put your books in to those categories. You are only allowed two categories.
3. Produce a Series
Putting together a series is self-explanatory you’ll produce more than one book and set it up so that the covers appear to be part of a series. It’s a good idea to publish them all at the same time. This may contribute to getting you into the bestsellers.
4. Using Keywords/Keyword Phrases in Your Description
Check out descriptions your competitors are writing for their books. It’s best to find several keywords/keyword phrases that you can scatter in your text. Use them wisely so that it reads naturally. They should be in your heading, subheadings and text paragraphs.
Use simple formatting for headings and paragraphs you can apply bold, italics and bullet points. Then convert this text to html. Here’s a website you can use:
5. Brand Your Book Covers
It’s really important to copy/model book covers that are already doing well in a genre. Customers’ do expect to see similar styles within their chosen genres. So to produce something totally out of character may not work.
Covers do trend in genres. What’s fashionable today might not be the case next year. So pay particular attention to the current bestseller covers. Use them as templates and adjust them slightly to produce your own brand.
Not everyone is a designer or illustrator. Today there are very cheap ways of getting covers done. You can try the following:
Final Thoughts
There are no miracles to becoming a bestseller. Here’s a reminder of the 5 strategies that may help you reach bestseller status for the short term only.
- Niche Research and Sub-Genres
- Keyword Research/Categories
- Produce a Series
- Using Keywords/Keyword Phrases in Your Description
- Brand Your Book Covers
Whilst the above strategies worked for Mia Harper’s books there are no guarantees they’ll work for you. However, with the right amount of research and work it could help boost your book rankings.
This is not the end of your book journey though. Once you’ve achieved getting bestseller status the hard work really begins. A bestseller is unsustainable without heavy promotion and plenty of reviews.
Finally, once your book drops out of the Amazon bestsellers a way to keep earning royalties is to produce more books as well as selling them on other platforms.
If you’re just starting out I hope you found these strategies useful.
If you’re already producing books do you use the 5 basic strategies outlined above?
It would be great to hear what other strategies you’re using to get your books into Amazon’s Bestsellers.
Please leave a comment that you think will help other self-publishers.
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