All authors need two brains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The first (the lovely one) is the writing brain. This gives you your purpose, your depth, your flow, your joy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In any really well-written book, any bit you care to pick will have multiple jobs to do. It\u2019ll set the scene, show a glimpse of character, raise a laugh, allude to theme, move the story on a notch, and so on. The biggest task in writing, in a way, is not to do any of those things \u2013 they\u2019re all, individually, easy enough to do. The biggest challenge is to do them all at the same time \u2026 and make it look easy as you do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But that\u2019s writing-brain. It\u2019s not the brain we\u2019re talking about now. Because you also need to deploy selling-brain, and that one works very differently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
For one thing, you don\u2019t get to write lovely, lovely stories. And you have to engage in tech things and explore dashboards and (yuk!) Live in the Real World.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But selling-brain does help you shift some books and make some money and create the space in your life to let writing-brain do what it does the best. So we need to help it do just that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And one of the big, big rules when you\u2019re in selling-brain mode is that (nearly always) you need to ask: what is the one single point of this thing<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Some examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The welcome email<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Someone has just read your (paid-for) book. They loved it. They want more from you. They sign up to your mailing list because you offer them a nice free story if they do. You send them an automated email which has a download link for the free story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What is the purpose of that email?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most writers think they\u2019re meant to pitch something. So they start selling<\/u><\/em>. They try to sell the novel that the reader has in fact just read and enjoyed. Or they try to sell the future series. Or they try to push that reader to follow them on Instabook, or Facetok, or something like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All that misses the point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The point of the email is to welcome that reader to your club<\/em>. That\u2019s it. It\u2019s called a welcome email for a reason. Don\u2019t sell. Just welcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that means that you shouldn\u2019t talk like some brochure for dodgy Floridian timeshares. You need to talk like you. (In welcome-mode, obvs, not shouting-at-a-broken-vacuum-cleaner mode.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n The point of the welcome email is the welcome. Achieve that, forget about everything else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your cover design<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s the point of your cover design?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Most writers, if they start to design their covers (either solo, or with a designer), are worried about honouring the book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s a key scene in a cave, right, where Elida comes face to face with a dragon that represents her past self? That\u2019s key. So we need Elida (long red hair) and a cave and a dragon and obviously Elida\u2019s serpent-sash, because that\u2019s the key to the Elidian prophecy \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that whole line of thinking is just rubbish. Sorry, but it is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you were designing a cover for yourself \u2013 ie: someone who knows your book intimately and adores it \u2013 then that would be the perfect cover. But the total audience for that specific cover is just one \u2013 namely you \u2013 and you\u2019re not going to buy the book, because you\u2019re the flipping author.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So again: what\u2019s the point of your cover design?<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s to get \u201cwarm\u201d readers interested in buying your book<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n (A warm reader is anyone looking to buy a book in your approximate genre, but who hasn\u2019t come to this bookstore specifically to buy your book.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The point of the cover is NOT to sell the book. It can\u2019t do that. It can induce someone to pick the book up (if they\u2019re in a physical shop) or to click through to the specific book-page (if they\u2019re on Amazon.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once the reader is at that level of exploration, then it\u2019s down to blurb, and price and reviews, and the text itself to make the sale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The job of your cover is to get warm readers interested in your book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those readers don\u2019t know who Elida is; they don\u2019t know what the dragon represents; they don\u2019t give two flying hoots about that serpent sash. They don\u2019t know and they don\u2019t care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So a good cover is one that says, \u201cI look like an exciting dragon-n-sword type fantasy novel. You\u2019d better pick me up and find out more.\u201d The cover needs to advertise mood and genre and entice more exploration. (It\u2019s extra good, if there\u2019s some useful reverberation with the title.) But it does not need to speak especially about the content of the novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now of course, you can\u2019t totally disregard the novel content. My second Fiona book (in the US, not the UK) had an image of a frozen landscape because a couple of the key sequences in the book involved the cold. But the allusion wasn\u2019t very specific at all. The cover had a solitary tree in a snowy landscape. There was no solitary tree mentioned anywhere in the book and, in fact, the image on the front cover did not match anything referred to in the book. That didn\u2019t matter. It was a great image. It invited exploration. It didn\u2019t totally betray the content of the book. Job done.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here’s one more example before I finish:<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Facebook Ad<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s the point of a Facebook ad?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pretty obviously, it\u2019s there to sell books<\/em>. Except that on FB\u2019s choice of options, you have to click the thing that says \u201cwebsite traffic\u201d, where the website in question is Amazon. (You can\u2019t click an option which says \u201cmake sales\u201d because you can\u2019t force Amazon to share sales data with Facebook.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n OK, so Facebook thinks you want to increase traffic to Amazon, and if you really want to do that, here\u2019s a failsafe tip:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Don\u2019t put a book cover in your ad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That way when you have a brilliant image for your dragon-n-sword trilogy, you\u2019ll attract readers \u2026 and people hoping for a movie \u2026 and people wondering if you\u2019re offering a video game, or a T-shirt, or a set of fancy candles. The number of clicks through to Amazon will be impressive \u2013 and your sales will stink.<\/p>\n\n\n\n So you need to put a book cover in your ad to deter the clicks you don\u2019t want<\/em>. Facebook will make sad faces at you and your total clicks will go down and your cost-per-click will go up. And that\u2019s fine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The point of the ad is to make sales, not to maximise clicks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that\u2019s always true when you\u2019re selling (especially digitally.) You need to know what the point of any particular element in your selling chain is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The point of a welcome email is to welcome.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The point of a book cover is to invite more exploration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The point of a Facebook ad is to make sales, and to hell with what Facebook might think the point of the ad is.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At every single touchpoint in your selling chain, you need to ask \u201cwhat\u2019s the point of this<\/em>?\u201d. Then deliver that objective to the absolute maximum of your capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The more you load additional objectives onto a given link in the chain, the less well it will achieve its one true purpose. Forget omni-layered writing-brain. Go with uni-purpose selling brain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You\u2019ll achieve a load more. There\u2019s some really good content in Feedback Friday this week, so don\u2019t stop reading here \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Feedback Friday: Tools Season – Author Brand<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n OK, we\u2019ve got some really brilliant content for you this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n