Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Why I 'Like' the Facebook Author Page



As usual, I'm late to the party. I've seen that several authors have created a Facebook page, but I thought why have two? In between writing and trying to get a marketing plan down for my book, when would I ever have time to update another page? And why would I?

Well, I think I figured it out. At least I figured out how I want to use it.

1. I am not about spam. I refuse to inundate my friends with 'buy my book, buy my book, hey, have you bought my book?' So let me first say, that will not happen on my author page. When my cover art is ready (soon) that's where it will be displayed. If I get a good review, that's where I will tell people about it. If Oprah calls, it will go there.
2. It keeps my personal life and my professional life separate. I know this is difficult for writers because most of us are open books, excuse the pun. But, I don't think those that care about my book or my writing particularly care about how cute my cat was today. I may be wrong, he is a cute cat, but I still want it to be separate.
3. I want to give 'stuff' away. I have a bunch of Amazon gift cards that I intend to give away between now and Christmas. Of course, I would love for people to use them to buy my book, but, I'd be happy just to see people buying books. There are a lot of good ones out there! So since it is about books, I think the best place to give this 'stuff' away is from an Author page. Fair enough?
4. Ads, promotions, oh, marketing, how I hate/love thee! You know those lovely little things on the right hand side of your Facebook page? I do want to buy ads, and in order to do that, at least in the way I want to use them, I need a business page, in my case, an Author page. But, there is a catch:

I NEED 400 LIKES ON MY PAGE IN ORDER TO UNLOCK ALL THE WONDERS OF FACEBOOK MARKETING.

Yes, always a catch.

So, how do you get 400 likes? Well, it would be lovely if my 400+ Facebook friends would all like it, but it just doesn't happen that way. So, I ask you to like it, promise to randomly give-away some gift cards for Christmas, and then ask you, my likers, to ask your friends to like it also. Sounds simple enough. We'll see what happens!

Here's a link to my Facebook Author page. I would appreciate your 'like'.