Ebook authors need some kind of scrapbook system.

Today I was involved in a Facebook discussion with Vincent Zandri, a thriller author who is exploring the frontiers of epublishing and POD. He started by talking about a book signing scheduled for this evening at a local Barnes & Noble.

But here’s a prediction: I will sell more copies of “Innocent” before lunch even, than I will sell of the trade paper edition of “Remains,” during the B&N signing. I’ll also call the store to make sure they’re set for tonight, and I guarantee the response will be, “What’s your name again?…What book???” 🙂

And sadly, he was right. Due to an error in how they had entered his ISBN number, his books arrived and were then shipped back. The book signing is postponed, and the experience didn’t exactly rekindle Vincent’s love of of paper books.

I’m done with traditional book signings.
From now on I will happily sign the reverse side of your NOOK and KINDLE, which seems to be the trend these days.

One thing this discussion made me wonder was if there is a market for some kind of cute scrapbooking system for author autographs, especially as the number of authors appearing only in ebooks grows. If it exists, let me know. If not, someone needs to get on this. Here’s what my ideal system would have.

A binder that allows you to decorate the cover yourself, or has preprinted pages for various genres (romance, mystery, speculative, horror).
Envelopes that hold postcards, so you can send an author a prepaid postcard to sign/dedicate, and then they drop it in the mail to you.
A scrapbook page that includes slots to hold the postcard. Also a promotional bookmark or biz card, if the author provided one.
A page onto which you can print the book’s cover art. It could also have blanks for where/when you bought the book, who recommended it, how much you enjoyed it, where you’ve recommended it (Goodreads, online booksellers).

Authors, you don’t have to wait for this. Why not have a page on your website that allows fans to print postcard designs with your cover art and photo, so they can print it out and send it in for you to sign and send back? Don’t forget to give them your P.O. address.

And now, here’s a poll.

Mystery authors: Why you can’t afford to bypass Twitter.

I don’t know why I’m more of a social-media creature than most of my age peers, but it puts me in a position to see an interesting phenomenon. Traditional and cozy writers are often in the 40+ demographic, and the vast majority are not on Twitter.

One of the most useful things about Twitter is that it allows you to search everyone’s comments for a certain topic of interest…say, cozy mysteries. In June of last year, there were 190 million Twitter users, or tweeps. They generated 65 million tweets a day. Spreading the news of a book release to all their fellow tweeps took one click of the Retweet button.

If you’re promoting your new cozy/traditional mystery releases in bookstores or on blogs, then you may have a problem. People who spend time on Twitter find their book recommendations there. And if you’re thinking, “I target readers who are 40+, so they won’t be on Twitter anyway,” ask yourself this: Do you want to sell your books five, ten, or 15 years from now? Because people who grew up using Twitter and Twitterlike platforms are not going to magically stop using them when they reach a certain age.

How do people find information on Twitter? How do they help others find their stuff? One way is through the use of hashtags.

Let’s say I want to find out what brand-new thrillers are out there. I would get on Twitter and type #thrillers in the search field. Hashtags.org tells me that the high number of tweets about #thrillers so far today is 53, at 8:00 this morning (Bless those unpaid publicity interns). The high point so far today for #cozies is seven. Let’s compare the seven tweets on #cozies to the more general #books. Hashtags.org doesn’t measure that in individual numbers, because it’s too many. Instead, they say that at one point today, .14% of the total Twitter traffic was marked #books. In June of last year’s numbers, that would be over nine million tweets about books. Heck, #cats only made it to .05%. Cozy writers with series about #crafts? #crafts hit .01% at one point today, or 650,000 tweets. Definite sweet spot.

Here are some guidelines for using hashtags, followed by examples.

Standardization. Thus, tweets about this year’s Bouchercon are labeled #Bcon2011. Last year, it was #Bcon2010.
Brevity. Tweets can only be 140 characters long, so #bestmysterybooks, while appealing, takes up too much real estate in your tweet.
You can search on multiple tags. So while #mysterybooks didn’t show up at all today, #mystery #books had three tweets. Someone out there is trying.
Don’t reinvent the wheel. Get on Twitter and search your topic without a hashtag in place. Keep changing your search until you find the most pertinent tweets on your subject, and use whatever hashtag they’re using. That’s how I found out about #Bcon2011.

Twitter isn’t rocket science, and it doesn’t have to take a lot of time. You don’t need to follow people or get into conversations. But when you write a blog post about your cozy’s characters, or interview a fellow author, or announce a book release, get on Twitter and say something like,

Interview with Rhys Bowen, author of Molly Murphy #cozies. #mystery #books http://tinyurl.com/4z5cb3r

[The original URL (the http part) for that blog post made the tweet too long, so I went to TinyUrl.com, cut and pasted it into the field, and clicked the button to make it smaller.]

Here’s another example.

Death in Show now available on #Kindle ! #cozies #books #dogs http://tinyurl.com/4mojnkw

Help me colonize Twitter with the #cozies hashtag. Do it for the children.

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Additional articles:

Twitter for Writers, author Elizabeth Spann Craig

Things I Should Probably Say About Twitter, author Elizabeth Spann Craig

Sources:

http://Twitter.com