Hand holding a mobile phone showing two rows of commonly used apps. First row: Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, and Twitter. Second row: Chrome, Gmail, Spotify, and Messenger.

3 Insights Into Social Media for Authors

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Many debut authors feel overwhelmed and confused by social media. Everyone, including your publisher, tells you that you should be doing it, but social media feels like an unnecessary distraction from the real work of writing. However, social media can be creatively adapted to suit the unique work you do as an author. Used thoughtfully, social media can be a powerful tool to strengthen your writing, readership, and career.

With modern digital marketing tools like social media, it is possible for authors with even a modest marketing budget to expand their reach and connect with enthusiastic readers effectively and in a more targeted manner than ever before. Social media can help authors connect authentically with readers and fans, organically expanding an author’s reach and increasing the visibility of their books.

How does an author use social media to market their books organically? These three ways are based on an approach to social media that book marketing expert Jane Friedman recommends:

1) Use social media as a natural extension of the work that you’re already doing

Social media doesn’t have to be an awkward thing that you do because you have to. It can be a natural outpouring of the creative writing work that you’re already doing day in and day out. For instance, you can actually use social media to share some of your writing work. Enthusiastic fans can help promote your work among their network through organic sharing, expanding your reach as an author.

Author Cassandra Clare recently ran a Twitter poll asking her followers which character “snippet,” or brief excerpt, they wanted to see from her upcoming book, Chain of Thorns. Clare regularly shares snippets of her upcoming books on social media, generating interest and enthusiasm among her fanbase so that they are more likely to purchase her upcoming releases.

Clare also shares art of the characters in her storyverse created by devoted fans. Sharing fan art is a smart way to engage your fan base as fans adore seeing beautiful art pieces of the characters they love while the sharing of fan-created art requires minimal effort on your part.

2) Use social media as a testing ground for your future books

Friedman explains that social media is a form of content and can be thought of as a micro-publishing platform. Often, these tiny pieces of work that you share publicly on social media can be the seeds for a larger work in the future. For instance, illustrators may post quick sketches on Instagram that later become a full-length print comic book.

Yung Pueblo posted brief reflections on love and relationships on Instagram as an unknown writer. Gradually, he gained a following and eventually published two books, one of which hit the NYT Best Sellers list.

You can also use social media to gauge how readers respond to your work. Paying attention to which posts garner more likes and comments will provide valuable insight into what content resonates most with your fans. This incredible intel can inform your work positively, helping to shape it into something people will be interested and excited to read.

3) Use social media as a way to connect with readers directly and authentically

One of the main premises of social media is that it is a tool to communicate with others. For authors, social media is a way to directly communicate with readers in a two-way conversation. Some ways authors can engage with followers include asking questions, expressing gratitude, sharing experiences, and even expressing frustration.

When authors respond to Twitter questions from followers or thank readers for praise of their books, they come across as more authentic to anyone who happens upon the exchange online. They appear less like a distant figure and more like a human being which leaves a more positive impression on followers.

For the author, it can be gratifying to see evidence of readers benefiting from and enjoying your book that you worked so hard on for years. Social media is a way for authors to discover small moments of joyful connection with enthusiastic readers, which can help fuel your excitement for the work that you’re doing today.

illustrated cover art for book showing a car, a moon and city buildings. Text reads "Sleeping in My Jeans" and "Teaching Guide"

Reimagining Marketing with Curriculum-Based Teaching Guides

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Here at Ooligan Press, innovation has been the name of the marketing game in the past couple years. To market a book, you’ve got to market your brand.

This is where extending outreach to new or secondary audiences reimagines a stagnant brand strategy. We’ve taken the hassle away from literary analysis and created an online, self-guided curriculum for teachers, librarians, and independent learners alike.

Marketing to Educators

We all know Ooligan is staffed by Portland State graduate students. It would seem only natural that Ooligan serve educational or academic audiences outside of the typical target consumer. So, why teaching guides? And what titles will be included in this new outreach?

Extending our outreach to educators is really all about brand strategy. Every book has a specific target audience, but teaching guides act as promotional materials that appeal to a singular audience across multiple genres. This outreach attempts to solidify a stable target audience for our press. And a stable consumer means a potential increase in sales.

With creative writing exercises, reflection questions, and interactive activities, Ooligan’s new teaching guides will appeal to educators as well as the homeschooled learner or the not-so-enthusiastic reader. Not only do these guides reinforce Ooligan’s mission of regionality, community, inclusion, and social-emotional awareness, but they also strengthen pre-existing connections with educators and the Multnomah County Library.

In fact, as Ooligan Press’s 2021-22 Marketing Manager, I was shocked to learn that the press actually had dabbled with teaching guides in the past. With curriculum-based teaching guides of backlists like Ricochet River and Sleeping in My Jeans drowning somewhere in the deep, dark Ooligan archives, I took inspiration from the strategies of yesteryear and am seeking innovative ways to reimagine how these strategies may be more consistently and successfully implemented now and in the future.

In particular, we will be focusing this effort on YA titles. They may be fiction or nonfiction, but must teach valuable social-emotional lessons or spread awareness about key regional, historical, social, or political spheres. Think of it this way: if one of our YA titles can contribute to meaningful discussion in either a high school classroom or library setting, it is probably a worthy candidate for a teaching guide.

So, what does the process actually look like? Well, it’s taken some trial and error. First, the 2017 teaching guides from Ricochet River and Sleeping in My Jeans had to be redesigned. While the curriculum the 2017 Oolies had created is smart and interactive, the design was not much more than a PDF-converted Google Doc with some on-brand fonts. To ensure each guide seamlessly adhered to its respective title’s branding aesthetics, one volunteer crafts a beautifully designed guide. The sparkly new Ricochet River and Sleeping in My Jeans teaching guides are live on the Ooligan website’s Educator Portal, where access is just a simple click and download away for educators and independent learners.

The tricky bit? Creating the actual curriculum for new titles. Each teaching guide must have a particular set of interactive activities, discussions, and additional materials like comparative readings, teaching slideshows, and K-W-L curriculum worksheets.

Whew! Oolies are multi-talented, absolutely. But it’s not like all book publishers are versed in the art of curriculum building, so how the heck do we do it? With the assistance of fellow educators, our curriculum will be reviewed and given the green light. Once this happens and the curriculum has been created, a callout goes live for yet another designer to conceptualize and design the curriculum into a brand new teaching guide.

What’s Next?

Promotion, promotion, promotion.

With all this hard work, it’s crucial that we ensure these standards are incorporated into future production schedules. Project Managers now have access to a Teaching Guide Checklist to assess their title’s appropriateness for a teaching guide. In the Marketing Plan stage, project teams will begin planning for teaching guides in their Marketing and Publicity Highlights, and will begin production after blurb requests—before publication.

Oh, but that’s not all. We’ve got to spread the word. Social media promotion and community connections will be important here. So, get to work on those social media collateral callouts and continue to reach out to educators and libraries for some awesome deals on class sets. This year at Ooligan we’re all about innovation. If all is implemented successfully, teaching guides can set a precedent for a stable target audience within our little independent graduate press.

a bookshelf full of closely spaced books, with text reading "Inside Ooligan Press", the Ooligan Press fishhook logo, and text "Proposals"

What’s in a Proper (Book) Proposal?

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Note: This is part of the blog series “Inside Ooligan Press”, about how we take a manuscript from an idea to a professionally published book.

So, you wrote a killer query letter and we requested a proposal package, but what does that mean? Before you go and resubmit the same query letter and call it your proposal (as MANY have done) think again!

The proposal package consists of two crucial items, submitted together on our Submittable page. They are your cover letter and your full manuscript, but let’s break it down even further. If you followed our directions with your query, you only sent us the first ten pages of your manuscript. When we request a proposal package, this is your invitation to submit the full manuscript—you got a full read request. Go you! Submit the most up-to-date, most polished version of your manuscript, preferably in a Word document.

The how and why of the cover letter are a little more complex. With your query, you provided just enough to get us interested in reading your full manuscript. With your cover letter, you are trying to convince us that you and your book are the right fit for our press, for our mission, and for our reach. You’ll want to help us envision the future for your book and provide pertinent details about how to best present it to the world—and how you plan to participate in that presentation if we publish it.

Your proposal cover letter can be a beautifully designed document organized into sections and contain striking headings, images, and mock-ups of the cover, or it can be a bunch of words on a page. While a stylized document certainly helps us envision your book and its potential future more readily, it is not required, and words alone will suffice. Just be sure to include the words we’re looking for.

First up is the content warning. This means letting us know if there is anything in your manuscript that may be triggering to a reader. Triggers vary, but the most common ones include self-harm, suicide, sexual assault, graphic violence, substance abuse, and disordered eating. If you are unsure whether something you’ve written may be a trigger, err on the side of caution and warn us. Do note that this warning will not prevent your manuscript from being read and considered: it simply ensures that the right person will be reading and evaluating it (the right person being an editor to whom the content will not cause mental or emotional harm).

The rest of your letter should include a synopsis of your book, the projected page count, a table of contents if appropriate, the genre and intended audience, comp titles, marketing ideas, and any connections or platforms you have that may be utilized for marketing and promotion purposes. If your query letter did not contain an author bio written in the third-person detailing your pertinent background information, include that here as well. Yes, this requires a little effort, but there is a reason for it, I promise.

Once the Managing Acquisitions Editors decide yours is The One, we still have to pitch your manuscript to the entire press before voting to accept or reject the project. We must convince them to see what we see, that there is potential for a successful collaboration with you and your book. We do this with a pitch presentation, which contains the information from your cover letter, along with our own in-depth market research guided by our expertise in the publishing industry. We set it to music and a little light choreography. That last bit is not true. But we do have to make a strong case for why we should publish this book and be convincing in its presentation: a solid informational foundation and an author who understands their book, has realistic expectations, and is willing to work alongside us to get the job done can make or break our case—and it is your cover letter that reveals all of this to us.

Every manuscript for which we request a proposal package gets thorough, careful consideration. But even with an excellent manuscript, the author’s work is not done. You’ve got to convince us that you and your book are the right fit for us, that you are willing to do what is asked of you and more—and that begins with creating a proper proposal.