Monica Leonelle - Get Your Book Selling with Facebook

To every author who ever asked me about how to release a book. Here is your answer. ~ Russell

To the authors who love marketing experiments,

I hope you enjoy building your audience on Facebook! ~Monica

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Why is Facebook So Important For Authors?

Facebook is awesome .

We, Russell and Monica, have grown our businesses, become USA Today bestselling authors, built our reputations as speakers and industry experts, gotten tons of eyeballs on our fiction, nonfiction, comics, graphic novels, crowdfunding campaigns, and more, and sold a hell of a lot of books thanks to Facebook.

Thats why we wanted to write this book.

We noticed that when authors talk about Facebook marketing, they often talk about it from the context of advertising. But we find that were constantly telling authors at all levels to get plugged into Facebook, not just for the ads, but for the endless opportunities it provides just from participating in the author community.

We also believe that the free tools are the foundation of paid tools via Facebooks advertising platform. All authors need to be using the free tools before diving into the paid ones, which is why we devote half the book to getting the most out of Facebooks many free personal and business features.

To us, the trifecta of Facebook is:

• Meeting and working with authors
• Connecting with readers to share our books
• Advanced advertising to turn up the heat on our book sales, which is covered in detail in a separate book, Get Your Book Selling with Advanced Facebook Advertising (Book Sales Supercharged #18)

This book is about optimizing the first two of the Facebook trifecta.

We believe that if youre not loving Facebook for the business aspects, youre probably doing it wrong. This book is about fixing that.

We Have a Lot to Say About Facebook

Co-writing nonfiction books always brings up questions around how you communicate and speak to the reader. Do we do the, I, Russell and I, Monica to indicate whos who? Do we go with I as if we are one person writing to you?

We landed on using we because the truth is that we think the same way about a lot of topics around Facebook and we also seem to think differently than most of the independent author community. Part of that is because weve studied internet marketing outside of the book realm. Another part of that is weve been aggressively wide at retailers for a long time, and you can just do more with Facebook when you are selling your books wide at retailersmore on the whys and hows of this in a later chapter. The last part is that we are extremely diversified in terms of niches, genres, and products, offering a wide spectrum of types of books (comics, graphic novels, workbooks, printables) and also diversified in how we sell those books (direct sales and crowdfunding to name a few).

To be clear, we are two separate people with two completely separate businesses, aside from our collaborations with this series. Russell has one foot in the comic book industry and the other in fiction, while Monica has several fiction and nonfiction pen names across a diverse set of genres/niches. We also both write books, host podcasts, and offer courses to independent authors and are considered thought leaders in the publishing space.

Despite building two very different businesses, we are like-minded on many topics, including Facebookfrom its personal tools to its free business tools to its advertising platform. Weve also been friends for several years, so weve had the chance to talk about all this stuff. Were pretty much always nodding our heads in agreement when the other is speaking.

In the end, when we say we, it means that at least one of us advises this, but probably both of us. Putting our experiences together, we have personal experience with a ton of the opportunities authors have on Facebook, which well share more about as the book goes on.

Why Facebook is a Critical Tool For Authors

We are career authors and we owe our careers in large part to Facebook. There are six main areas of our author businesses that we use Facebook for:

• Networking and Conferences - We know a lot of authors through connecting on Facebook. Our profiles are geared toward meeting other independent authors and creatives so that we have people to commiserate and cross-promote with. We also find out about lots of in-person networking and conferences through Facebook which helps us deepen those friendships and bonds with important industry people year after year.
• Independent Author Knowledge - We learn a lot about being independent authors from other authors. We work in a complicated industry with dozens of formats, retailers, distributors, and platforms. Its impossible to keep up with it all without the help of a network and key Facebook groups where the author community hangs out and generously shares their knowledge (for free!) for anyone to read.
• Collaboration Opportunities - We find many if not most of our collaborators through Facebook. For example, we got to know each other on Facebook, and now we are writing books and creating courses together. We also put together or participate in anthologies, boxed sets, viral giveaways, masterminds, event and speaking opportunities, and Kickstarter reward bonuses thanks to the connections weve made through Facebook. We share where to find these opportunities, many of which are open to everyone, in the chapter on free business tools.
• Finding Service Providers - We find artists, cover designers, editors, assistants, and more through Facebook. Its far faster to ask around your network for a good recommendation than it is to do an internet search on keywords and hope for the best.
• Connecting With Readers - We have our own groups where we talk to and connect with our readers, along with chatting with them in general groups and through page/group takeovers in other authors audiences.
• Advertising to Readers - We use Facebook ads for all sorts of stuff. Most of the conversation in the author community around Facebook ads is around driving traffic to either retailer product pages or an email signup landing page. This is not how we use Facebook advertising, though, at least not primarily. There is so much to do with Facebook ads that authors are not doing, so we cover this in a separate book, Get Your Book Selling with Advanced Facebook Advertising (Book Sales Supercharged #18).

We want to note that only a third of the reasons we are on Facebook are to reach readers; most of the reason we are there is to reach other industry people, specifically authors. Authors, of course, have access to lots of readers, and one strong connection with an author truly can elevate your careerwe share how in this book.

Facebook For Your Business

Love or hate Facebook, as an author you likely need Facebook to build your business. While TikTok and Clubhouse are shiny new toys in the social media world at the time of this writing, the reality is that most businesses are still built largely through Facebook tools and advertising. This book is about using Facebooks tools to build a foundational platform that is then optimized for Facebook advertising. Heres how we divvy up the chapters:

• Chapter 3-4: Facebooks Personal Social Tools - We believe that every author with no or a low budget should start building their author business with personal social tools. We know people outside of fiction who are building 7-figure businesses just through their Facebook and Instagram profiles, so why cant it work for fiction authors too? This chapter dives into exactly how they are doing that with their personal profile and personal stories.