Back in January, I laid out my goals for my book publishing and marketing efforts for this year. Now that we’re over the halfway mark of the year, it’s time to review–and likely revise–my goals.
By the way, does anyone else feel like we’re living in a completely different world now compared to January? It’s like we stepped into the dark timeline.
2020 somehow feels like it’s already gone by so fast, until I stop and realize it’s only the second week.
Anyway, now that I’ve reviewed the numbers for this site in 2019, it’s time to go back to my book marketing goals for a final check-up. Continue reading “2019 Book Marketing Goals Wrap-Up”
For whatever reason I’ve been thinking a bit about my writing and publishing goals for next year, including my goals for this site. That, of course, leads me into thinking about what I want to do with this site in general.
I’m not going to write my full book marketing goals post for 2020 yet, because it’s 11pm on a Monday, and it’s not quite 2020. However, I’d like to set the stage a bit for how I may approach the coming year, and get some thoughts onto virtual paper. Continue reading “Pre-2020 Goals and Ideas”
Looks like we have a two-fer today! This is a headline and sub-headline combination for the same release. They were collectively so bad that I had to discuss them together.
I’ll examine each part separately and then discuss them together. Here are some tips for writing amazing headlines.
We have entered the final quarter of the year, and since I actually have a few meaningful updates to share, I wanted to check in on my marketing goals for 2019 as we hit the final stretch.
A few months ago, in my mid-year check-in, I revised my book marketing goals based on the (lack of) progress I had made to that point. Continue reading “2019 Marketing Goals: 3rd-Quarter Check-In”
Those dreaded words. Plagiarism. Copyright. Infringement. Fraud.
Plagiarism of online work and exploitation of a person’s online profile and platforms are very real fears. As someone who can be very easily searched and found on Google in various results, I know this all too well. Continue reading “Plagiarism and Copyright: The Dark Side of Publishing in the Digital Age”
This one was a sub-headline, but I still have issues with it.
Want to learn how to write good headlines? Check this out. Perhaps it’s time to write a post about creating good sub-headlines…
History repeats itself, if we ignore history we are doomed to repeat it, etc. This sub-headline is essentially those cliche phrases except worded more poorly.
We can glean from this snippet (and the headline if you saw it), that this is for a historical novel. What type of history? That’s a mystery! (Not even the headline made that clear.) Maybe this book is really a detective caper where we have to guess which historical event it’s actually talking about, giving us clues along the way, but then there’s a big twist at the end!
The sub-headline of a press release is supposed to provide those little extra details that are just too wordy for a short snappy headline.
Here’s the how Google populates the press release I sent announcing that WoEM had been published. See that smaller text beneath the main headline? That’s officially called the meta description, but for a press release, that’s where the sub-headline would populate.
My sub-headline isn’t perfect, but it provides at least a little extra information. Notice how Google truncates it after about 150 characters? That makes it even more important that you front-load that summary with information that potential readers can act on.
Just rewrite the whole thing. Replace it with a description of the book, perhaps an actual piece of advice that could be taken from this mysterious history lesson. Or maybe tell us When and Where the book could be purchased.
As it currently reads, this sub-headline is effectively wasted space.
Steve D
This has been a bit of a slow week, so I thought I’d do another edition of Poorly Written headlines. It’s been a while since I did the first of these, so here’s a refresher on strategies to writing good press release headlines and sub-headlines.
This headline is more of a statement than a news announcement. It reads as if it was pulled from a descriptive paragraph and slapped into the headline.
Why does it matter that this book takes place in a parallel universe? The vast majority of speculative fiction takes place in some form of alternate reality, whether it’s our universe with some weird shit happening, or a completely unique fantasy world.
Try searching for “parallel universe” on Google and you’ll get 500 million results. Add “books” to that search, and the top bar will show works by authors ranging from Pratchett, to Asimov, to Pullman. The book named in this headline is not competing with those names.
Basically, the back half of this headline is fluff; it has no real meaning, and it’s not doing the press release or the book it’s promoting any favors by being so generic.
Instead, the author could hint at why this parallel universe is interesting, or maybe provide a news announcement, such as the release date. Here’s an example without completely butchering the format:
[Author’s] exciting action thriller, [Book’s Title], will be Released this Summer!
It’s not perfect, but it provides some valuable information to the reader–they should check out this book and add it to their summer reading list.
What do you think? How would you make this headline pop more?
Steve D
Yesterday, I discussed how a bad press release headline can kill your book promotion efforts before they’ve begun. But I’d like to provide some actual examples of what headlines do right, and what they do wrong.
So here’s the first in what will be an ongoing series:
What this headline does right:
What this headline does wrong:
What makes a book fabulous? What makes this specific book fabulous? Is it fabulously well-written? Is there fabulous characterization, or fabulous world-building? Is the plot fabulously paced?
Flowery adjectives can make a headline pop, but by leaving the description vague, this headline is effectively meaningless.
The first ten words tell me a lot about the What, which is great. But the final two give me no hint of Why I should care. Young adult sci-fi books are a dime a dozen right now, and this headline fails to stand out from the crowd.
That’s it for now. I’d be happy to hear anyone else’s thoughts on this headline or my critique. I’ll try to do one or two of these each month.
Steve D
Way back in 2017, I wrote about the four basic elements of a good press release. In that post, I discussed how the headline and sub-headline should be used to hook a potential reader into actually reading the rest of your press release.
But I don’t think I emphasized enough one simple truth about press releases:
If your headline and/or sub-headline are not eye-catching, no one will read your release. Continue reading “How Bad Headlines Ruin Your Book Marketing Efforts”
Evening Satellite Publishing 