For Authors

Here at Its Write Now, we want to connect our reading community with the best free, discounted and generally awesome Kindle books that are out there to be read, with the discovered and undiscovered gems of the author and ebook world. For many readers, much of the judgement is done by the book’s cover, but we want to provide other avenues for readers to really read what they want, and one method we’re using on our site is by tagging books.

Why Should You Tag Your Book

With so many options available to promote your book, I’m sure that filling out another field on a book submission form just seems like another burden that takes you away from writing, but a few little keywords make it easier for:

• Your ideal reader to find your book – We’re not saying you should be adding 100’s of keywords or sharing the ending of your book, but if you’re promoting a sweet romance book with a happy ending, why not let the reader know they’re going to have happy tears at the end of their read.
• Promoting team to know how to promote your book – We love promoting books, and we try our best to work with the information provided, but often a little extra information provided in tags can help us paint those interesting little details into the picture of your book for the reader, which ultimately convinces them to pick up a copy.
• Google Rankings – We use tagging across multiple places on Its Write Now to share information about your book with readers. And Google is also looking at this information to figure out how to present your book in the search results. We have pages dedicated to specific reads ranging from topics as diverse as dogs, to travel and even bed-time stories. To help Google know even more about your book, make sure your bed-time travelling dog is on all three of these lists.

Where We Use Tagging on ItsWriteNow.com

Currently we show tags associated with books on:

• Individual book pages
• Tag pages
• Reading lists

The best way to see tags in action is to look at an example, so here’s one we prepared earlier with Lusia Marietta Gold’s book, Escape to Osprey Cove.

Tagging on Individual Book Pages

If you scroll to the bottom of the individual book page for Escape to Osprey Cove, or any other books currently listed on our site, you will find a tag section that lists all of the tag keywords for the book. This information allows the reader at a quick glance to see what your book is about and if it’s for them.

Each of these keywords link to their very own tag page.

Tagging on Tag Pages

Tag pages simply list all of the books with a certain tag. While these pages aren’t the sexiest, we find that readers do find them a useful resource to locating what they want to read. Here are a few examples of some popular tag pages:

• Romance Tag Page
• Science Fiction Tag Page
• Coming of Age Tag Page

Tagging on Reading Lists

One of the unique benefits we offer at Its Write Now are reading lists. These are pages where all books with a particular popular tag are grouped together and promoted as a great fast reading option. Here the reader only has to scroll down to unravel all of the awesome books available for a specific term. Take the Cozy Mystery page for example, which is just bursting with mysterious cozy tales that are best read under a blanket on a cool winter’s day.

How You Can Tag Your Book?

If you want to entice your readers to pick your book up with keywords, all you need to do when submitting your book for promotion is to fill out the Tag Your Book field on our book submission forms, as shown in the image below,.

To your best promotion!

Have More Questions?

Have any other questions about how tagging your book will improve your book’s search-ability? Let us know via the contact form and we’ll answer the question for you.

One of the most frequently questioned areas at ItsWriteNow.com is around the books that are acceptable for promotion.

We want to find and bring new authors to the world and we recognise that setting a large number of requirements can exclude a large number of books from promotion, and leave authors who are trying to break into self-publishing with limited options to share their book with the world. Because of this, we do not impose restrictions like other sites do around things like a minimum number of reviews, word counts, pages or release dates.

In short the only books that we will not consider for promotion:

• Are erotica, or
• Have covers that look like the book is erotica, or show naked people, or
• Promote, encourage or give step-by-step instructions on how to do illegal things.

This means that when books are being reviewed for promotion, the following decision-making process is going on in the head of our book promotion elves.

So, if you’ve used our decision tree and found that your book is acceptable for promotion, then go and submit your awesome book to our promotional services.

Have you gone through the decision chart, but are still a little unsure if your book is acceptable for promotion? You can double-check your specific book question against our book question response page here to see what other authors have asked. Otherwise, you can enter your book and contact details into the form below and we’ll check out your book and let you know if we can help you.

Are you dipping your toe into the world of Kindle book promotion, but find yourself a little bit lost as what information that you need to giving to promotional services?  To get you up and running with the book information we need at ItsWriteNow.com, we’ve provided a little reference guide to help you out.

Your Book Details

Your Name: We want to know who you are, so please let us know who you are!
Author/ Pen Name:  Many of our authors write under pen names, but it can be confusing for our team to know if we’re addressing the author by their real name or their pen name.  To make it a little easier let us know your pen name.

Contact Email Address: If we select your book to be included in the daily list we want to let you know, so please let us know your e-mail address so that we can send you an e-mail.

Author’s Twitter Handle: If you have a Twitter account we’ll send you a tweet to let you know your book has been selected, so please let us know your Twitter handle.

Confused about where to find your Twitter handle?  There’s a few ways to find it, but the easiest way is to login to Twitter and then look at the top left hand corner.  Here you’re looking for the text with ‘@’ as the prefix.

For example, here’s the Twitter handle for ItsWriteNow.com – @itswritenow100

ASIN Number: The ASIN is the code that Amazon uses to uniquely identify your book.  Because this code is unique we also use this code as the basis to find the information about your book that we use for promotion.
You can find your ASIN by navigating to your book page on Amazon.  And then clicking on the ‘Ebook’ of ‘Digital Book’ book.

After that you need to scroll down to the ‘Product Details’ section and your ASIN is located there.

Link to your book on Amazon: We also ask you to provide us a link to a book on Amazon.  Why do we need a link to your book when you’ve already given us the ASIN, well it’s for checking purposes.  When authors are promoting many books, or are just starting out from time to time we find that the ASIN and the link to book to be promoted don’t match, and this can be confusing for us to know which book you’re looking to have featured.  In these cases we can drop you an e-mail and clarify what book should be promoted.  Also, having the direct link to your book makes our selection process a little faster, which means there’s more time to work on your feature!

What Categories does your book fall into?:  Categories are important as they help readers figure out if they want to read your book.  The categories that we have align to the top level categories that Amazon use so you can use the same categories that you’ve setup for your Kindle book.

Tag your book: Sometimes categories just aren’t enough to really show a reader what your book is about, so we’ve added the ability for authors to tag their books.  Think of tags as ‘buzzwords’ about your book that give enough of a hint to readers to show what your book is about.  For example some of the most popular tags we have seen include: cozy mystery, vampires, series, historical fiction and mystery.
Remember to separate the terms with commas!

We also use these terms for our reading lists where we pull out some of the best books of from the archives for readers looking who are in the mood for specific reads.  Here’s a few examples of lists we’ve already setup:
https://itswritenow.com/reading-lists/free-discount-recommended-kindle-historical-fiction-reads/

https://itswritenow.com/reading-lists/best-free-and-discounted-kindle-reads-to-laugh-out-loud-with/

https://itswritenow.com/reading-lists/free-and-discount-cozy-mystery-kindle-book-recommendations/

Is your book permafree?:  Permafree books are books that are permanently listed as free or are listed as free.  If your book is always listed as free let us know as we flag handle these books a little bit differently :).

What is the first day that your book will be free?: So that we can line your promotion up with when your book is free let us know the first date that your book will be free.  We accept books that where the free promotion has already started, and books that will be free in the future, so it doesn’t matter if this date is in the past or future.

What is the last day that your book will be free?:  This is the last date that your book will be free.  Fairly obviously this date shouldn’t be in the past as we unfortunately don’t have time machines to turn back the clock and include your book in a past promotion!

Hopefully those tips help you find the information that you need.  If there’s any other questions that you have when setting up a request check out our FAQs for more information, or drop us a line using the contact form.

I  joined Twitter in 2007 and played around with it a bit and then forgot about it. I used to view social media as just a huge waste of time. Boy, was I wrong, I wish I would have cultivated a proactive Twitter following much sooner.  Now that Twitter is main stream it’s usefulness is obvious. You can use it to get breaking news, share your opinion about the latest reality show, keep up with current events, and get your books and blog posts in front of a targeted audience.

The latter seems to be a popular subject with authors, bloggers, and marketers, but how is it accomplished? One word, well, uh two words, hash tags. A hash tag is a keyword with a number sign in front of it like this #hashtag. By including a #hashtag in your post, your post will show in the Twitter stream for that tag. For instance, if you click on a #hashtag or just type one in the Twitter search box and you will see a stream that contains tweets related to that #hashtag.

Use Relevant Hashtags

It’s proper etiquette to put 2 or maybe 3 #hashtags in a tweet, don’t over do it, and make sure that the #hashtag you use is relevant to what you want it to mean. It’s always a best bet to do a search of a #hashtag before using it to avoid potential embarrassment, and to have your tweets targeted correctly. There are also numerous websites devoted to #hashtags and their meanings. If you are new to #hashtags a quick search might help you find some relevant tips.

Signing up for Twitter is easy. Just use an email address, a user name, and a password and you are in business. One caveat is that you can only have one Twitter account for each email address, but too many Twitter accounts would get unruly, anyway. Once you sign up, you want to setup your profile so that potential followers will know if you are a right fit for them to follow.  You can create elaborate backgrounds and color schemes, but the most important thing is to clearly let people know what you will be tweeting about.

Create A Compelling Profile

Put up a picture, and let people know exactly what you are about. Whether you are promoting your website, your books, or love animals and vegetarian food, having a clear blurb in your profile about who you are will help potential followers know if they want to follow you or not. Once you have an inviting profile, you can start following people in hopes that they will follow you back. Personally, I’m trying to cultivate a following for my ebook website. My target demographic is writers, publishers, and readers.

I also follow certain people or groups just because I like their profile or think they are fun. Plus, readers fall into a broad category. I don’t usually participate in the follow me and I’ll follow you back schemes, where you can have 100,00 untargeted followers that will never check their feed. It’s my goal to have an active follower list that will actually click on some of my tweets and maybe even find a new book or two to read. I also want to get as many eyes as possible to my website and Twitter feed.

Increase Targeted Followers On A Daily Basis

As I began this article, I had increased my Twitter following by over 900%, which sounds like a lot, but the numbers are relative. I started out with a handful of followers, and now I have a little over 1200, but the numbers are increasing every day, and they are mostly targeted towards people who may be interested in what I have to offer when I tweet. Update: I am now closing in on 10,000 followers.

When I first began my Twitter quest, I read several Twitter ebooks and blog posts. I also tried out a myriad of free Twitter tools. Many of these have paid options that you can upgrade too, but so far I have stuck with free. The two tools I decided to stick with are Tweepi and Hootsuite. Tweepi is great for growing your followers and Hootsuite is awesome for managing followers, creating lists, and posting and auto-posting Tweets. I always use Hootsuite to auto-post my paid book submissions at the most popular times of the day. I also use #hashtags to make sure these tweets get in front of the right people. As my following and the popularity of my site grows, this service will only become more beneficial.

Using Tweepi To Find and Manage Followers

You can do some pretty cool things with Tweepi. I just use the free services, but updating to premium would even unlock more features and would be good if I were a social media maven or wanted to give my twitter account a boost. For now I am fine with building a slow and steady following of targeted users.

Tweepi can tell you who you are following and if they are following you back. You can use the flush feature to unfollow those that aren’t following you back. Be relentless, if people don’t follow you back then unfollow them. You want to keep your follow to unfollow ratio low and this is a good way to do it. You can also use tweepi to reciprocate follows you may have missed. Just keep in mind that you may not want to follow everyone. I never follow anyone without at least glancing at their profile and I usually read some of their tweets and look at their books or visit their site. There are a lot of people in this world and not everyone will fit in the demographic you want to actively tweet with.

When if comes to finding who to follow,  Twitter will make suggestions and you can also look at other people’s profiles and follow some of the people they are following. You can also explore different #hashtags and keywords to find people with similar interests.

Using tweepi you can find users to follow based on their tweeps, you can follow friends of other people on twitter, and you can find lists to follow. These are great ways to narrow down your potential follows by people who have the same interest as you. You can also take a look at their profile, how active they are on Twitter, and take a peek at how many follows and followers they have, and even their Klout score.

Use Tweepi To Find People To Follow and Flush Those Who Don’t

When you follow someone, there is a good chance they will follow you back, if you are a good fit and they are active on Twitter. It is also polite for you to reciprocate follows. Some people will send you direct messages using some type of automated tool. Personally, I’m not a fan of the direct message spam and the automated tools. If you want to ignore these people don’t feel bad about it.

Tweepi has a lot more to offer than what I listed here. But these few tools will be enough to kickstart an ever growing Twitter following. Each day I spend a little time on Twitter following back my followers and finding new people to follow. I also use tweepi every week or two to unfollow those people who haven’t taken the time to follow me back. My followers are growing and by this time next year my Twitter account should be an extremely powerful marketing tool.

If you use an email address that you use regularly for Twitter and your settings are set to receive email notifications then you will get an email when you get a new follower. If you miss some you can use tweepi to reciprocate. Keep in mind that the newest followers will show up first, so start with the back page and work your way forward. You can also click on columns and make sure things like the users profile and location and any other pertinent information shows ups. Then go through each person and glance at their profile and put a check mark next to their name if you want to follow them. Then click on follow on the top or bottom of the page. When it comes time to flush unfollowers use the same technique. Just don’t unfollow too frequently or Twitter may think you are spamming. Just do it every week or two, and spend a little time each day or so following and reciprocating follows.

Hootsuite Does It Best

There is no shortage of free and paid Twitter tools available. One of the most common and the most popular is Hootsuite. This is a powerful tool and the paid version does more then I am even aware of, they even offer classes to help social media people learn how to get the most out of it. I use the free version of Hootsuite to view followers and group streams that I want to follow. Once you have many followers your stream will move so fast you will miss most of the tweets. With Hootsuite you can create specialized streams. I have some business ones and some fun ones. It’s great to group friends in real life, business partners, and favorite celebrities in their own streams. Hootsuite makes this easy.

The other thing that Hootsuite is great for is composing tweets. You can post now or schedule future posts. It even compresses your links and adds images and files. The best thing is you can auto schedule posts and Hootsuite will post for you at the appropriate times. I use this for my free ebook promotions. I will make a post with the proper #hashtags and the book’s link. Then I will copy it and post it. Then I will paste that post into the compose window again and auto schedule it to post again. After all, I want to get my client’s books in front of the most people possible. I don’t over do it or spam the posts, but I try to get a reasonable amount of exposure for the books.

Use Hootsuite To Create Custom Streams and Schedule Posts

I barely scratched the surface of what you can do with Hootsuite, but this should be enough to get anyone started without over complicating things. Keeping Twitter simple and effective is the best way to enjoy it. Having tools that help make things effective without over complicating is my goal. So even though there are a lot more things you can learn and do, I’m keeping it simple.

The bottom line is follow business contacts, and people for fun. Tweet about important things you want to share and tweet about intereting things that humans may find entertaining. Slow and steady wins the race, and cultivating a solid Twitter following of real people, who actually participate, is the best way to get the most out of Twitter. You can follow me here. Let me know how you liked the article @NewsScribe and I’ll follow you back.