Good morning! It’s Social Media Monday here on the blog, and after a couple of weeks of being absent (read: trying to get my act together!), I’m back with a very cool thing that I only just learned about. (In my defense, it’s apparently fairly new. 😉 )
Did you know that Facebook has an app for authors?
Here’s the scoop:
- You need to have a page rather than a profile in order to use it.
- It installs as a big red tab alongside your other tabs such as photos, events, etc.
- It’s free.
- It’s super simple to set up.
Here’s how to get it:
- Go to Author Marketing App and click on “Let’s Get Started.”
- Connect the Facebook page you want to use.
- Your Facebook personal profile will pop up — don’t worry, this is supposed to happen. Open your author page, and you should see the red tab installed (if it’s not immediately visible, it will be in the second row of tabs…just click on the number at the side, and that second row will open up for you).
- Click on the shiny new red tab and it will open up to this:
- Edit your profile information.
- To add a book, you have the choice of filling in the information manually, or if the book is listed on Amazon, you can simply plug in the 10- or 13-digit ISBN and the app will pull the information from Amazon for you. Note: this can be a little glitchy. I had to delete one of mine and re-enter the ISBN a second time before the full information appeared, and I also needed to manually upload one of the covers. In addition, I recommend reading over your book description to make sure all the punctuation transfers correctly (I had some interesting symbols appear in one!).
- Keep adding books until you’re done.
A couple of comments/warnings:
First, the links for your books inside the app take potential readers straight to Amazon. I’m assuming this means that Facebook gets an affiliate fee if someone buys through one of those links. So if you’re an Amazon affiliate yourself, you’ll be missing out on your fee if readers aren’t buying through the links on your website.
Second, you may not be a fan of the whole Amazon-taking-over-the-publishing-world idea. Honestly, neither am I. That said, however, I’m not a big enough author that I can afford to snub a potential retail outlet for my books. At this stage in my career, I need more people to discover my stories, and if I can make it easier for them to do so, I will. Whether or not you agree is entirely up to you (so please let’s not get into a debate on this issue in the comments 😉 ).
Does this big red button work? I honestly don’t know. I’ve had it installed for less than a week, so it’s too soon to say. For now, it’s one more tool in my marketing tool chest, and so it’s worth at least exploring.
So…will you install one on your page? 🙂
P.S. Check out other Social Media Monday posts here, and be sure to subscribe to this blog for future ones (look for the big red button in the sidebar and enter your email).
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