Welcome to the Author Marketing Toolkit, where you can learn from 20+ years of time-tested marketing and insights expertise, translated for authors. I’m Carol Van Den Hende, an MBA and strategist who’s known for bringing chocolate when I speak at conferences (surely, we’ll get back to in-person events one day!) I’m thrilled to be joining… Read more »
So, you want to be a food writer, but don’t know where to start? You’re not alone! Scan the internet, and you’ll find everything from recipe blogs to featured magazine articles on a single ingredient. You may think: I love food, but I’m not “qualified” to write about it. Good news. You don’t need a… Read more »
Hi, writers! In my last post, I wrote about how to create a book cover that not only accurately reflects your brand but also attracts your ideal readers. While an amazing cover can persuade readers to click on your book (or to pull it off the shelf in a physical book store), it’s your book’s… Read more »
One of the things I hear from writers again and again is how much they dislike marketing. Any time the dreaded p-word (ahem, platform) comes up in a room (in person or virtual), you can hear the collective groan ripple among the crowd. Marketing, sales, and promotion do not rank high among writers’ favorite things…. Read more »
Whether you’re writing a short paragraph to include in the back of your newly finished novel, or are revamping your website’s “About Me” page, it’s important that you don’t skimp on your author bio. An “About” page is one of the most visited pages on a website, second only to the homepage. And if your… Read more »
The digital world is constantly evolving, and big shifts occurred in the social media landscape as we head into 2020. TikTok continues to grow rapidly, Instagram decided to remove its Like counts, Twitter changed up its format–and those are only a few of the changes that took place this year. For authors hustling to make… Read more »
“I’m so busy I barely have time to write! How am I supposed to work on building my author brand, too?” For those of us who have other full-time commitments, it can be hard to find the time to work on our writing projects, let alone focus on building an author brand. However, that doesn’t… Read more »
When I was first trying to develop a more cohesive author brand and platform for myself as a writer and creative writing coach, I struggled to visualize exactly what I liked and wanted. I mindlessly clicked through sites that I admired and tried to imitate what I saw. But I found that I wasn’t creating… Read more »
This August, we’re celebrating an awesome DIY MFA milestone—five years of our “Five on a Friday” series. The Five on Friday column is one of my favorite things that I get to work on every week. Why? Because while everything we do here at DIY MFA is for Word Nerds, these articles are often by… Read more »
We’ve talked before about red flags when your social media following is growing too quickly, but you should always see a little steady growth happening month to month. That said, theory and practice rarely align perfectly. As your following grows, it’s also inevitably evolving. Which means you will have times when what has worked for… Read more »
