Barb Drozdowich - Facebook For Authors

Many authors start on Facebook with the personal account they use to share information with friends and family. They might share pictures of cute kitties or pithy statements, and consider the creation of a business page or author page unnecessary if they are not published yet. As the number of friends linked to their personal account increases in number, it then seems too much work to create a business page and switch everyone over.

However, according to Facebooks Rules and Regulations, you are not allowed to promote your book on your personal profile. Although Im not sure how closely this is monitored on Facebook, you dont want to find yourself in contravention of this. Claiming ignorance might not protect you from whatever sanctions are handed out.

Facebook business pages became popular when authors and other public figures realized they could only be friends with 5,000 people through their personal profile. Although Facebooks rules require a business page be used when promoting a business (in your case,your books), this cap of 5,000 served as the motivating factor for many people. It is easy to set up a business page as we will call it, an an Author Page.

Your author page will offer a place for readers to come and discover you, and learn all the news you have to share. Often, one of the first things someone will do when reading a book by a new author is to look them up online. You will want to have a place on Facebook for them to find you. As we mentioned before, with 1.15 billion users worldwide, we assume everyone is on this website.

To start your author page, you will need to go to the home page of your personal profile/account.

In the graphic above, you will see the 'Pages section on the left-hand side below Favorites.(see arrow) Click on the word Pagesand it will bring up the screen shown below.

Click on Create a Page in the top right-hand corner (see screenshot above). This will give you the six options below.

From the six options above you really only have two choices. You can either click on the Artist, Band or Public Figure square and choose Author, or you can click on Entertainment and choose Book. A valid argument can be made for either selection.

Just as a side note, many writers have an author page as well as a page for each of their books. However, it is a lot of work to keep these pages active and interactive. So, what might sound like a good plan when you only have one or two books can be overwhelming when you publish your twentieth! To take the opposite viewpoint, in creating pages for each of your books, you will reserve the names and prevent anyone else from doing the same.

It is not suggested you name your only Facebook page after the book or series you are writing. Regardless of the social media platform, we always suggest you brand your name and not a book. This allows you to brand once. If you choose a book title as your brand, you will have to start again when your next one is released.

The graphic below show you the process when choosing the Entertainment option. The first task being to choose a category.

Once you have chosen a category, the Name field needs to be filled in. Use your author name for the name. If your author name has already been taken by someone else, consider adding the word Author before or after it. Click on I agree to Facebook Pages Terms and then on Get Started and you will be led to the next screen shown below. If you are using a Pen name, fill in the Name Field with your Pen Name.

In the next step, you will need to add a 'description; your basic biography will do nicely here. This will give readers a snippet of information about you and what you write, while also allowing them to check that they have the person they were looking for. In order to create a recognizable URL for your Facebook page, you should enter your author name (or some version of ) in the next box. Lastly, you need to confirm that your author name is a real person. Even if you are using your pen name, you are a real person.

After you have filled in these details, click on Save Info to be taken to the screen shown below. We will discuss how to upload your profile picture next.

The photograph you add in the above screen should be your official author picture. You can upload straight away or skip this step and add it later. We will discuss profile picture and cover picture later on in more depth.

The last step in creating your author page is to add it to your favorite pages. Clicking Add to Favorites will place your author page in the uppermost section of the sidebar on your Facebook page, making it easy to find. We recommend you do this.

Now your page is up and running, invite your friends to like it to gain some attention. Your page will require a minimum of 30 likes in order for it to be visible to the average public.

Welcome to Facebook for Authors. With so much information floating around the internet we aim to bring you a comprehensive guide on using this social network to your advantage, to not only promote your book but to gain more readers.

Barb Drozdowich is a multi-book published author who works with other writers on a daily basis. She coaches them on using WordPress, blogging and integrating their various social media.

Babs Hightower is the publicity director at World Castle Publishing and she also does freelance PR work for several clients helping them to promote and sell their books. Her knowledge of Facebook is vast and she manages the pages for World Castle Publishing and several private clients, as well as her own.

Barb and Babs met through blogging. Barb owns Sugarbeats Books; Babs runs Babs Book Bistro . Both blogs have romance in common, although Barb prefers Regency, and Babs likes Western.

Please Note: This book has almost 100 graphics in it to help you understand our instructions. These graphics are not very clear on the tiny screens of most ereaders. Although ereaders allow you to increase font size, you can't increase the size of graphics. For that reason, please read this book on a computer using the advantage of a full screen to see the graphics. If this is not possible, drop by either http://barbdrozdowich.com or http://bakerviewconsulting.com and download a pdf of all of the graphics found in this book. This pdf can be viewed on any computer, or printed and studied.