Last night on UK tv there was a very interesting documentary on Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook. I was particularly interested in the rationale behind Facebook, and the privacy versus advertising issues. If you Like a product, then the product owner can use that link (automatically) to send an advert to the pages of all your friends and possibly their friends if they have that set up as ‘friends of friends can see their wall’. If you don’t like this idea, then delete all the ‘Likes’ of companies or product pages from your account.
Princelings is a brand, the books are the product and both have to be marketed. As I’m an independent author I have to market it myself. The rise of the indie author has been due to electronic media – the ebook to enable publication and the social network to tell people about it. When self-publishing was of printed books that had to be taken round to the local (and not so local) booksellers to get it sold, or sold online through your own website, it was not easy at all. Electronic publishing has changed all that. Read Mark Coker’s excellent books including The Secrets to EPublishing Success to get more background.
I have a Facebook page for Princelings of the East, and when it reached 100 likes last month, Facebook sent me a coupon towards an advert. After checking it out a little more, I decided to dip my toe in the water, set the value of the advertising to the value of the coupon, and target UK parents of 4-12 year-olds, or readers, or pet lovers, with my little advert for the page. The advert will run from 19th May until the coupon value runs out or 13 June, whichever comes first. It’ll be interesting to see if anyone clicks through to the page as a result, and even more interesting to see if they download the books. I hope they become fans and enjoy the books. It will only go to people who are not already fans of the page.
So if you’re reading this having become a fan of the page due to the advert, thank you! Pop over to the official website for more interesting things including previews of future books.
