Using TikTok to promote your book

“Another platform for book promotion? Aren’t we swamped already?”

Good question.

TikTok is not for every author, but for some, it could really help in book promotion. To understand how, let us look at TikTok first.

TikTok is the newest and fastest growing social media platform of 2019 and the trend is continuing. It started in China and is the visual equivalent of Twitter. Where Twitter posts are composed of short written prose, TikTok posts are composed of short videos. Users can create videos of fifteen seconds (or string togehter videos into posts of sixty seconds each.) Most users create videos on their phones, edit it using the easy-to-use but professional tools, add music, and download it on to TikTok. Most users use the platform on their mobile devices.

Is TikTok worth it? It depends on the audience for your book. Sixty percent of TikTok users in America are between sixteen to twenty-four years of age. For a young adult title, this is the perfect demographic and can help in author-branding. It is also extremely popular in places like China and India, with five hundred million monthly users in China while about the same number of Indians download TikTok videos every month. Targeting these geographic areas specifically is an option.

By its nature, TikTok is visually driven. Graphic novels are prime candidates for TikTok promotion. . Large companies such as Guess jeans and Chipotle have used TikTok with great success and many more are joining the trend. TikTok is a fun and visually-appealing platform. It doesn’t lend itself to serious topics and is not a place for making sales pitches.

TikTok has made available several marketing tools available. The videos can be linked to websites and the social engagements (likes, impressions, clicks, etc) are measured, allowing a marketer to know how well a campaign is doing. Use of hashtags, games and challenges allow for viral promotion.

TikTok is very easy to use and understand. It is this ease of entry that is its main drawing card. It is not for everyone, but for a product or book with a good fit, it can work well.

Mohan Ashtakala is the author of "The Yoga Zapper" a fantasy and "Karma Nation" a 

Literary Romance. (www.mohanashtakala.com)

He is published by Books We Love Ltd. (www.bookswelove.com)

Google Trends, a Powerful Tool

Google is the world’s most popular search engine. Want to know when the next snowfall will arrive in Calgary? What about the spread of the coronavirus epidemic? How about a recipe for apple pie? These are just three of the about five billion daily searches on Google, accounting for an astounding 90.5% of all searches on the internet.

The question arises as to how to make sense of these searches. Are some items searched more often than others? Are some searched seasonally? Can searches be categorized—for example, relating to book purchases?

These questions have more than a curiosity appeal, given that Google’s ad revenue amounted to $135 billion in 2019. There is big money to spend, and to make, with Google. Having the ability to use Google in marketing and promotion affects every business with an on-line presence, and even for purposes other than sales.

For example, a blogger may want to know what the hottest trends are in fashion. An epidemiologist may want to investigate the country with the most searches per capita of a virus. A marketer would like to know if the band he’s promoting is trending in a particular province.

Fortunately, for the common man or woman, there is a tool to help search searches. Google Trends was launched in 2006, but only became the robust tool that it is today in 2012.

To use Google Trends, one needs to enter the following website: trends.google.com. On the website, there is an “Explore” bar, where one can put in the search terms. For example, I chose the United States as my geographic region, entered “Apple Pie,” and several sections showed up. One, “Interest over Time” revealed a large spike in the search for this term in the last week of November which, being Thanksgiving in America, makes sense. The next section showed that Pennsylvania, for some reason, evinced the greatest interest for “Apple Pie.” Google Trends also allow you to compare searches: I compared ‘Apple Pie recipe’ with ‘Cherry pie recipe.’ The winner: Cherry pie, by a mile! 

More powerfully, it also allows searches by categories, such as Books, Games, Education, and so on. What about the hottest trends? Google Trends has a section that lists the top twenty of searches, by day, of all topics. On another page, called ‘Real Time Trends,’ shows the number of searches in real time, per hour, in a graph of the top searches.

A very simple use of Google Trends would be in Search Engine Optimization: the use of terms that would generate the greatest interest in a blog, a website or a product description. But Google Trends has turned out to be a lot more subtle and revealing than many expected. For example, the search ‘is my son gifted?’ was shown to be more popular then ‘is my daughter gifted?’ Similarly, the search ‘Is my daughter overweight?’ turned up more times than ‘Is my son overweight?’ Searches like these show cultural attitudes in statistically significant ways.

It takes times to become a competent user of Google Trends. Fortunately, over forty free lessons are available on the website itself. For authors, bloggers, businesspersons, or for anyone who is interested in public trends, it is a wonderful tool!

Mohan Ashtakala is the author of "The Yoga Zapper," a fantasy, and "Karma Nation," a literary romance. www.mohanashtakala.com

He is published by Books We Love (www.bookswelove.com)

Targeting Your Audience by Connie Vines

The ‘how long?’ question has to be one of the most commonly asked by new authors – perhaps even experienced ones, too. It was certainly one of the first to pass my lips when I began to cross genres.

“What’s the age range?” I asked a multi-published at my local OCC/RWA Chapter monthly meeting.
“I’m thinking of aiming for older children,” I told her.
“That would be ages eight to twelve, then. In that case, it should be between 30,000 and 50,000 words.”

The precision of her answer was satisfying, but it also piqued my curiosity.
“Why that particular length?”
“It’s just considered to be the ‘right’ length at the moment for that age range,” she explained. “Not too long, not too short.”

This ‘Goldilocks’ principle is good general advice to keep in mind, but there are also more specific factors to consider that will help you nail the ‘right’ length for whatever genre book you’re writing. While you should work to your natural style, it’s advisable to be aware of and (as much as possible) write to the length that publisher and readers expect (logon to a publisher’s website for ‘publisher-specific’ guidelines.)

Type of book and target audience

You can hone in on a rough idea of ‘how long’ simply by categorizing what kind of book you’re writing and its target audience. Clearly, any six-year-olds without the miraculous intellect of Roald Dahl’s Matilda aren’t going to want to read something the length of A Tale of Two Cities. Similarly, most adults won’t be very interested in a 40-page picture book.

Most of the data I’ll be using throughout this article was sourced from Writer’s Digest  and personal experience.

Children’s picture book: 500–600 words over 32–48 pages.

Children’s chapter book: 1,000–10,000 words.

Middle grade: 20,000–50,000 words.

Young Adult (YA): 40,000–70,000 words.

Flash fiction: 500 words or less.

Short Story: 5,000–10,000 words.

Novella: 10,000–40,000 words.

Novel: Anything over 40,000 words. Anything over 110,000 words is an ‘epic’.

Adult literary and commercial fiction: 80,000–100,000 words is considered to be the ‘Goldilocks’ zone, though you could get away with 70,000 words minimum and 109,000 words max.

Genre

Again, when considering the authority of agents and publishers, “adhering to the expected word count demonstrates that you understand your market.” The ‘right’ answer to ‘how long should my book be?’ is dictated by the audience’s expectations.

Genre has more influence on book length than you might think... 

Here’s a guide to the recommended lengths for genre books.

Sci-fi/Fantasy: 90,000–120,000, anything over 150,000 words might be testing for your readers. As I just touched on above, books in these genres are allowed and expected to run longer than others. This is due to the amount of world building required to introduce a reader to a fictional setting, but be careful not to let this expectation manipulate your natural style.

Historical: As above.

Romance: 50,000–100,000 words. The wide range for this genre is because of the number of sub-genres that it can divide into: supernatural, erotica, historical, ‘chick-lit’, etc.  It’s also worth bearing in mind that longer romance novels seem to be the trend du jour, with bestsellers Twilight and Fifty Shades of Grey both comfortably over 100,000 words.

Crime/Mystery/Thriller/Horror: 70,000–90,000 words.  Suspense is key to all of these genres. Pacing is vital in creating suspense, which means it couldn’t be any more important to nail the word count.

Personal style

While you should certainly keep the data I’ve provided in mind, being too prescriptive about sticking to word counts will only impede your personal writing style. If you end up way under the standard word count, you know that you either need to slow the pace a little or flesh out some underdeveloped areas.

Never, ever loose your 'voice'.  The way each and every author tells a story is unique.  Your readers are downloading your novel or snagging it off a bookseller's self knowing you are a gifted storyteller.  Allow your readers to feel the emotion of first love, see and hear the waterfalls, experience the sweet taste of a huckleberry. . .the possibilities are endless.  Allow your readers to live this adventure--guide them well!

Happy Reading,

Connie


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