Marketing
Flickr Creative Commons: Daniel Go
Greetings from the road! I’m out on book tour promoting Girl in Disguise, skipping around from the very north (Minnesota) to the very south (Alabama) of the country, filling my days and evenings with readings, signings, panels, book clubs and keynotes. Other than forgetting to pack my makeup remover, things are going pretty well so far.
Like most of publishing, book tours aren’t what they used to be. Which doesn’t mean they’re worse – or better – just different. From an economic standpoint, spending money on plane tickets, hotel rooms and car rentals for absolutely no guaranteed return on investment is, well, not entirely sense-making. Which is why book tours are the exception these days and not the rule. (“We’ll be leveraging your social media presence” is an oft-heard substitute, and perhaps I’ll write a different post about that.)
But visiting bookstores, libraries and other locations to talk about your book is an experience like no other. Those face-to-face interactions with readers are precious. I still regret not getting a photo with the reader whose boyfriend drove her three hours each way to bring her to my bookstore event in Toledo as a surprise. And while there are just as many ways to plan a book tour as there are ways to write a book, I thought I’d gather some tips from the pros – other authors who are out on tour with their books this spring – to provide some guidance.
Pam Jenoff, on tour for The Orphan’s Tale, suggests:
Take a sign-up sheet to collect email addresses for your mailing list. Some savvy writers bring an iPad and just have attendees type their addresses right in. Another thing is to bring postcards so that e-book readers can take them and download later.
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Today I want to talk about how having clear boundaries can HELP you gain momentum in three key areas:
Boundaries are a gift to your creative work. Embrace your boundaries. Let’s dig in…
Why Boundaries Help
I’m sure you have very real boundaries. You may care for kids, have responsibilities to loved ones, work a day job, support an ailing family member, work through bouts of anxiety, and struggle to make ends meet. These challenges are real.
It’s easy to look at others and assume that they have the following things that you don’t have at the moment: money, resources, time, physical energy, mental space, confidence, and skills.
They don’t. These other people struggle with their own unique set of boundaries. It is helpful to remember that nearly all creative work is crafted this way: amidst limitations, lack of resources, and incredible amounts of pressure.
This photo is a good reminder:
The image was taken and shared by Amanda Palmer of her husband Neil Gaiman, and the caption reads: “Neil Gaiman writing down ideas for his new novel as 9,000 people exit the Nick Cave show in Sydney.”
Some may look at this photo and only see someone who is “privileged”: two famous people attending a concert in a beautiful city.
Let’s put this in context. Some of what Neil is dealing with right now:
There is likely much more going on with him, such as public things around his creative work that I haven’t captured here. But there are also likely private things he is dealing with that we couldn’t possibly know about. Difficult situations, someone close to him dealing with a health crisis, navigating his own relationship, perhaps a business situation that isn’t going as expected, managing his own physical and mental health, and so much else.
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I’ve been an avid Amazon shopper since the mid-90s. It started with books, but as we moved into the 21st century it’s come to where I now buy everything from groceries to musical instruments from this Seattle-based behemoth. From the start, one of the biggest differentiating features Amazon offered was its user reviews. I have found those reviews absolutely invaluable in making informed purchasing decisions, and I’m not aware of any other online retailer with a more comprehensive or helpful body of user reviews.
I like to think of myself as a give-something-back guy (in addition to being ruggedly handsome, of course), so I’ve made an effort to post reviews of products about which I had passionate opinions – either positive or negative. The vast majority of reviews I’ve posted have been positive, because I want to champion products that I think more people should be aware of. But over the years I’ll admit there have been a handful of products I’ve felt the need to publicly slam. Today’s post is about one such slamming.
Half a dozen years ago (which sounds nowhere as cool as “four score and seven years ago,” but I wasn’t around back then, and neither was Amazon; nor were Presidents tweeting about women’s clothing lines – but I digress…), I became aware of a new book that was making a lot of waves. It approached a popular topic by using an extended metaphor in what appeared to be a very clever way. Most of its reviews were positive, and I was intrigued enough to want to read it. So, being a lifelong cheapskate, I did what I usually do when I am interested in a book by an author whose work I’ve never read: I looked for it at my public library. They had it, I checked it out, and we were off to the races.
The book started strong. Really strong. I was digging it, and loving the metaphoric architecture the author had created. (And, truth be told, starting to feel the pangs of envy I inevitably experience whenever I encounter a writer who seems to have more game than me.)
But then something happened. The book started to fall apart. The story became tedious and petty, the architecture more and more contrived and gimmicky (which I wasn’t sure was actually a word, but my spellchecker isn’t raising any eyebrows over it. If spellcheckers have eyebrows, that is. Which would mean they’d also need to have eyes. Possibly even noses, for sniffing out grammatical stinkiness – a word over which my spellchecker *did* raise an eyebrow. But I digress again…).
In short, the book turned into a major disappointment. Yet it was selling like hotcakes, with mostly positive reviews. So I did what I felt needed to be done, out of my duty to the clientele of the store from which I buy all my books (and all my ukulele strings, and all my smoked oysters, and all my toothpaste, and, and, and…) – I logged into Amazon and reviewed the book, sharing my candid opinion of the author’s work.
More succinctly, I trashed it.
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At the risk of making everybody’s eyes glaze over, today I’d like to talk a bit about one of those hands-on, practical issues that’s key to any book’s life cycle but totally unsexy: Galleys.
No, this has nothing to do with seafaring or food.
The truth is, there’s a lot about writing and publishing that’s not only unsexy but – as my French husband likes to say about certain other things – real “love killers.” (Picture husband sneering at my comfy fleece PJs and saying, “un vrai tue-l’amour.”)
But like with those PJ’s, we’ve just got to have them. Editing, revisions, production timelines, marketing, sales reports…. These are just as important to your book as those sexy, dazzlingly inspired late-night write-athons we’d all much rather be talking about.
Galleys are one of these things. While we’d love to ignore them and just keep writing, if we do they’ll eventually get in our way. (Just like those PJs…) Because at some point, most authors publishing and publicizing a book will need to understand galleys and make decisions that involve them. Otherwise, vetting your book and getting it the visibility it deserves becomes extremely complicated. I’ve seen this happen all too often.
Many of you have probably already heard the word “galleys” floating around in writerly circles. But I’ll bet that you’re not exactly sure what it means. So let’s start with their definition.
In essence, galleys – which are typically created up to 5 months or so before your pub date – are a preliminary version of your book used by your publisher for various purposes before the final copy is ready. Sometimes called “galley proofs” or “uncorrected galley proofs,” they might still have typos or even sections that need some tweaking. Often the cover has not been designed yet, and instead, is a temporary layout showing basic info such as the title, the publisher’s name, your name and the publication date. Or the cover might be partially designed so that the front is in pretty good shape but the back has a lot of space left to fill. That’s where, ultimately, blurbs should go.
Yes, they’re usually ugly. Like fleece PJs. But like the PJ’s, they’re also practical. Beauty aside, there’s a lot they’ll be used for:
What if, like so many authors nowadays, you’re with a small press that doesn’t produce galleys at all? Or are self published?
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Happy authors, happy audience: at an Eagle Books launch earlier this year
As co-director of a small press publisher, Christmas Press, and its associated imprints, Eagle Books and Second Look, November is a busy month for me. We have three book events scheduled, two being a launch for the same new book on two different days in two different cities and the other being a re-celebration, in a different city, of a book published (and launched) earlier this year. In the weeks and months leading up to the events, I nailed down the details; venues, publicity, making sure authors can come, and ensuring that the books would be available at the various venues. This is easy when it’s being held in a bookshop, as one event is, but not so simple when they are held in other places. It’s certainly not the first time that I’ve run such events, both as publisher and as author, and it’s pleasing to know that they have generally been very successful. It struck me that perhaps WU readers might be interested in some of my tips on planning book events.
If it’s a launch, think carefully. I know most of us authors love a good book launch but not every book needs to be launched—and wearing my publisher hat, I understand why publishers can be reticent about that! For a start, it’s a lot of work, it costs money, and your supporters can get launch fatigue if you do launches too often. Launches are especially good for debut books; for bespoke, collectible books; and for group books, such as anthologies and collections. In each of those three cases you are pretty much guaranteed to get a good crowd, as friends and family flock to the debut author’s event, connoisseurs and special-interest people get fired up over owning their own signed copy of a collectible book, and contributors to anthologies and collections can be relied on to turn up to celebrate their group effort, bringing their own supporters with them. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that other types of book launches don’t work. They certainly can, but you’ll need to put in extra work and imagination if the launch is for say your fifth or tenth or twentieth book—unless of course you are a bestselling author for whom crowds will always come no matter what!
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By Bob ‘n’ Renee, Flickr CC
Please welcome Maria Ribas as our guest today. Maria is a literary agent at Stonesong and a blogger at Cooks & Books. She helps turn great ideas into beautiful books, and she specializes in cookbooks, design, personal development, business, creativity, and spirituality. She likes those topics so much she also writes about them on her blog, Cooks & Books, where she hopes to show writers that running a creative business doesn’t have to be at odds with a quiet and intentional life.
I hope to help fiction writers see that sharing their work online is one of the most powerful ways they can grow creatively and that they already have many of the innate skills needed to stand out in a noisy online world. I believe storytelling is the secret sauce of the interwebs.
Connect with Maria at on Facebook and Twitter and on the Stonesong website.
Turning Social Media into the Grandest Writing Exercise Of All
I specialize in platform-driven nonfiction, which is a very different beast than fiction. Or at least it used to be. In the past few years, there has been a shift toward platform-building in the fiction world, and I know this trend has left many a novelist frustrated and discouraged.
So what I want to tell you is this: as a novelist, you have a secret advantage in the online world.
I recently signed a new author—a food blogger—who has over 500,000 Facebook fans. People love her recipes, and they frequently come back to her site and newsletter for more of them.
But on Facebook, less than 5% of her fans are liking or clicking on her posts. That’s because recent algorithm changes to Facebook and Instagram have throttled the reach of posts, meaning that only a tiny percentage of the people who once clicked “like” on your page will ever see a certain post.
In today’s online world, you need to understand the algorithm if you want to get results from social media without the usual frustration and wasted effort. Luckily, at Facebook’s recent F8 conference, they explained exactly what makes their algorithm tick and how to make it work for you.
And it all comes down to one thing: storytelling.
Story matters
Social media is nothing more than storytelling. Very-short storytelling. Let’s call it micro-storytelling, if you’ll humor me! It’s sharing snippets of stories with readers, but this time, you have a few more tools in your bag of tricks. You have images and videos, and they can open up your range of creativity and allow you to create vivid worlds and emotions for your reader.
Nobody does this better than novelists.
That’s why I sometimes have to coach my nonfiction authors to embrace storytelling on their social media and blogs, because many of them have become so efficient at posting new recipes or sharing helpful links that they forget that emotion is important, too. They become just a content-sharer, rather than storyteller, because they’ve convinced themselves that no one is interested in the stories of their day-to-day lives—their readers are just there for the listicles and action items.
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More than 10 years ago, I began sending out an email newsletter every Friday. Each week, one by one, I sent out a message. Over time, I made these public via a blog. Then social media came along, so I Tweeted the links to the blog and shared other updates.
In that time, I shared:
I even began sharing photos on Instagram, with more than 1,500 shared to date. No, I am not “promoting” any of these things here to get more followers, which is why I’m not linking them.
In total, there have been tens of thousands of times that I have clicked “publish” on something. In each of those times, there was a momentary pause where I tensed up. Where I wondered if what I was sharing was meaningful. Was authentic. Was worthy. And in many of those instances, I worried about what could go wrong. What I risked in sharing.
Today I want to talk about why, as an author, you want to increase your ability to share your voice. Because, in each of those times I clicked “publish,” I was not only using my voice, hoping it was heard, I was also attending to the practice of developing my voice.
A Conversation is happening, whether you know it or not
Plenty of authors tell me they have zero interest in social media. In having to share 20,000 pithy updates that don’t feel meaningful. Nor do they want to develop an email list, or start a blog, or podcast.
Do you need to do any of this to be a successful author?
Nope.
You don’t need social media.
You don’t need an email newsletter.
You don’t even need a website.
But what you do need is a voice. Now, you may be thinking, “Dan, that voice is in the book. The story that is crafted. It is not my voice.”
Do you remember that scene from the Wizard of Oz. (Oh, spoiler alert.) When the projected voice of Oz — this big bold earth shattering confident voice — turned out to be a little nervous man, whose authenticity, while flawed, deeply resonated with others, and helped them in ways that his projection never could?
That’s you.
What I asked today is that you pull back that curtain.
Do you know how many authors I have spoken to, who have written wonderful books, that are published by awesome publishing houses, which FAIL to find an audience? Lots. Too many.
This is why an agent asks you about social media. Why a publisher asks you about what influential people or organizations you know, which they can then reach out to for marketing. Not because they are trying to hollow out the most meaningful thing you have ever created, your book; but because they want to ensure the book turns into conversations.
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Image – iStockphoto: Anja Peternelj
‘Do You Think It’s Serious?’
—Rodolfo, La Bohème
Rodolfo fears for Mimi, of course, as she dies (and dies) in La Bohème. But Puccini’s heroine doesn’t do herself in. Consumption gets her. Many of opera’s longest expirations are suicides.
Some say that Massenet’s 1892 Werther has the longest death scene. It takes the entire fourth act for the titular character to leave this Earth (and the stage). He has shot himself.
And then there’s Meyerbeer’s 1865 L’Africaine, much of the fifth act of which is Sélika’s tragic death. “Every time I thought ‘This is it!’” writes one opera wag, “she popped up again.” Sélika precipitates her own slowly sung departure by inhaling the poisonous perfume of the manchineel blossoms.
But no one takes the vapors like Barnes & Noble.
Now, in what may well be the final act of its agonies, the hulking bookstore chain sprawls on the divan of America’s Bayreuth, rising from the silks to sing another negative earnings report, recently with grace notes about restaurants being added to some locations—and stylish firepits! Hopeful flutes chatter in the orchestra, never mind how urgently Bradbury tried to tell us that books and flames are bad together.
Like those operatic slow deaths, this show, too, is about self-harm.
In “As Feared, Barnes & Noble Reports Poor Quarter, Reduces Sales Guidance,” Michael Cader quotes B&N chairman Len Riggio singing, “We did shoot ourselves in the foot somewhat by making unprecedented inventory reductions…which were ill advised, and by cutting in the worst area—retail floor personnel. These are being remedied as we speak.”
“Being remedied as we speak.” Opera code translation: Look out, she’s going to sing again.
At This Point in the Libretto
Barnes & Noble’s former flagship Fifth Avenue store in a shot by Beyond My Ken. CC BY-SA 3.0. (The new flagship store is in Union Square.)
What has occasioned the latest Chorale of Concern, of course, came near the end of August, the scene in which CEO Ron Boire was hurled overboard after less than a year in the job. At The Hot Sheet, my colleague Jane Friedman and I wrote of the position as “perhaps the fastest revolving door in publishing industry. Ron Boire—whose background lies in general retail at stores such as Sears, Toys“R”Us, and Best Buy—was given the boot by B&N’s board of directors, who cited a poor fit.”
And it would fall to Mike Shatzkin, consultant and Cader-confidant to sing the set piece of the dilemma, “Barnes and Noble Faces a Challenge That Has Not Been Clearly Spelled Out.” He then clearly spelled it out.
“The big bookstore model is an anachronism. Just making it big doesn’t pull in the customers anymore. So a new strategy is definitely called for. B&N is going part of the way to one by recognizing that they need to do more to bring in customers and, at the same time, they can’t profitably shelve 100,000 titles across hundreds of stores. Taking their capabilities to where the customers already are would seem like an idea worth exploring.”
Before the violin section gets going again, let me bullet it out for you:
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Image – iStockphoto: Antonius
Warning: This Column May Make You Angry
No, not that kind of trigger. We’re not talking gun violence today, although I encourage you to do so, every chance you get—it’s that important.
But, as it happens, I’ve just demonstrated what we are talking about: trigger warnings.
If my provocation for you today had been about gun violence, would you consider it to be my job to warn you of that?—just in case you’d suffered one of the unspeakable experiences that far too many of our fellow citizens are having in this age of gunpowder and rage?
Speaking of rage, would you say that the author Zygmunt Miłoszewski, whose Rage is out from AmazonCrossing this month in its English translation by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, owes you a warning that its story involves domestic abuse? Miłoszewski forcefully engages his readers in examinations of various social ills in his books. Another of his novels, for example, revolves around anti-semitism. Want a trigger warning for that?
I bring this up because this week Colleen Hoover, an author with Judith Curr’s Atria Books, has written well to the question of trigger warnings.
Her It Ends With Us is out this month from Atria and, Hoover writes, “I’ve received quite a number of negative reviews in relation to the lack of a trigger warning for the subject matter…and for writing about such unhappy things.”
Personally, I might need a trigger warning for male love interests named Atlas and Ryle, but that’s just me being me, what an ass I am, imagine suggesting that the romance genre has a thing for fanciful character names, I’ll just shut up about all that, you’re welcome.
But seriously. Hoover is making such a valid point, one we all need to consider.
She’s made the choice on It Ends With Us to add this line to her sales page in deepest, darkest Amazonia (where the consumer-reviewers run wild and the drumbeats are so ominous): “This book contains graphic scenes and very sensitive subject matter.”
Should she have to do this?
Hoover, in My Thoughts On Trigger Warnings, writes:
As a fellow reader with my fair share of past experiences, I understand that there are issues some people do not want to read about. But as a writer, there are many things I don’t want revealed in the blurbs of my books.
And David Vandagriff picks up the point at The Passive Voice, ably coming to her side:
PG has enough experience in life to know that the number of ideas or concepts that will upset someone somewhere approaches infinity…When ebooks can be distributed around the world within a few hours, it is almost certain that a writer in one culture is capable of disturbing a reader in another culture with no intent to do so. Indeed, it may be impossible to discuss some topics without upsetting readers somewhere in the world.
Of course, his input triggers 113 comments. Hoover’s piece triggers 79 comments.
Congratulations, we now need trigger warnings about trigger warnings.
The surrealism of this Summer of Darkness already Trumps any trigger warnings that might once have been needed for bug-phobic readers about Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis.
Here’s […]
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A great book launch relies on word of mouth marketing. Today, I want to share advice I tend to give authors for setting the foundations for word of mouth marketing. This work tends to begin well ahead of the actual launch of the book, oftentimes a full year or more before publication date. I’ll explain why throughout the post.
To have some fun with it, I am going to frame this into the universe of The Lord of the Rings. Why? Because… um… it’s Friday!
Let’s dig in:
Step 1: Find Your First 8 Supporters
Consider this your own personal fellowship of the ring. You have been compelled to write this book, and these people will help support you in sharing it with the world. Yes, you are Frodo.
Why focus on a small group before you think about how to “go viral,” reaching millions of people. Think about it this way: if you can’t engage 8 fans, how will you engage 100? Or 1,000. Or a million.
Before you think big, you have to think small.
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“Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it short.”
—Henry David Thoreau
Laurie R. King once remarked that she tends not to write short stories because, to make sure they meet her personal standards, they require almost as much work as one of her novels, with only a fraction of the financial reward.
Sure, she was exaggerating—I think … somewhat—but I’ve heard a number of other novelists say much the same thing.
I myself tend not to write short stories unless specifically asked to do so, usually for an anthology a friend is putting together (e.g., Wall Street Journal music columnist Jim Fusilli’s Crime Plus Music, coming out later this year).
I tend to think of stories in much the same way I do articles, as marketing devices, ways to get my name out there in a novel way, ho ho.
But that won’t work unless the stories are strong, and like Laurie says, good stories require a lot of the same effort that full novels do, precisely because of the increased demands for condensation, clarity of effect, and brevity.
This is very much on my mind right now because I’m working on a new novel as my story collection, Thirteen Confessions, is coming out.
I had to review once more all those stories I’d written for various anthologies and magazines, choose the best, say goodbye to the less-than-best, and do any last minute tidying up I felt was necessary.
It was a sobering experience, and not for the reasons I might have expected.
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The question of how important book promotion is to sales and an author’s career is the subject of continual, heated debate.
On one hand, many agents these days urge their clients to hire an outside publicist no matter who their publisher is, claiming that without robust PR and promotion no book (or author) has a future. On the other hand, many — like WU’s own Donald Maass — stress the greater importance of staying focused on writing, insisting that the real ticket to sales is to craft a killer book. Combined with the fact that the level of efforts publishers make varies wildly and publishers’ in-house teams often shrug indifferently when authors ask if it’s worth hiring help, this makes for a lot of mixed messages, ambivalence and confusion.
Add to that the unclear correlation between promo efforts and sales and the entire issue starts to look like a riddle that’s impossible to solve.
Over the years, though, I’ve noticed one surprising pattern that might offer an answer for many:
When successfully implemented BEFORE a manuscript is even shopped around, book PR can have quite a profound impact, one that will ripple out well into the future.
I know, you’re probably thinking, “Huh? Has she lost her mind?” After all, how can you promote a book while in essence it’s still a work-in-progress?
While it’s true that at such an early phase you can’t promote a book per se, what you can do is promote yourself: your name, your background, your voice and your ideas. As the author, you are the persona behind your work. Thus promoting the book and promoting yourself are one in the same.
Authors who promote themselves in advance of searching for an agent or simply find themselves in the fortuitous position of having an existing media platform enjoy a number of distinct advantages when it comes time to shop that manuscript:
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Photo by Nancy Anne L. Merolle via Flickr Creative Commons
Please welcome Kim Wright as our guest today. Kim is the author of Last Ride to Graceland, The Canterbury Sisters, The Unexpected Waltz (all Gallery Books), and Love in Mid Air (Grand Central), as well as seven books of nonfiction and the historical series City of Mystery. She lives in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Like, I suspect, most writers, figuring out how to promote and market my books has been an ongoing struggle. How much social media is too much? Is there a way to make book tours more palatable? What works and what’s a complete waste of time and money? When I fell into the Authors Out of Carolina group, which is the brainchild of a group of longtime friends, it seemed to offer a fresh new way to look at the marketing angle, and I wanted to share our experiences with other writers.
Connect with Kim on Twitter and with the Authors Out of Carolina on Facebook.
Authors Out of Carolina (or Anywhere Else, for That Matter)
Like most writers, I have a lot of friends who are writers. And, also like most writers, I have a knee-jerk reaction to the very idea of using my friends. But lately I’ve been rethinking the assumption that it’s somehow morally wrong to base your marketing plans around your personal relationships. Here’s why.
Through a strange piece of serendipity, four members of my local writing group have books coming out this summer: Last Ride to Graceland by me; The Fifth Avenue Artists Society by Joy Callaway; The Last Treasure by Erika Marks; and The Things We Wish Were True by Marybeth Whalen. We all have different publishers and thus different publicists, but we decided to pool our efforts, starting with a joint launch party.
We’re renting a nearby Victorian house and each theming a room to our novel, complete with snack. (In honor of my book’s Elvis connection, I’m doing banana and peanut butter Hunka Hunka Burning Love milkshakes.) We decided to call it a salon and invite everyone in town—Friends of the Library, book clubs, the historical society, retirement centers, and of course our own family and friends.
Advantages of the joint launch:
Unless you’ve been garreted away working on the Great American Novel—and maybe you have!—you’ve probably noticed that video is becoming a big deal. There’s high market demand for it, and we’re all spending more and more time watching video online, which means more advertising money is moving to video. Trend reports indicate that video advertising is now growing faster than social media advertising.
As a result, Facebook is now paying big bucks to celebrities and others to produce high-quality video, in addition to rolling out Live Video functionality to all users.
Plus:
As a writer, should you care? And if you’re interested, what’s next?
Here’s the big problem—for everyone, not just writers: All video starts off wanting to be crap, even more so than a NaNoWriMo first draft. It’s no small thing to shoot, edit, and produce video that people want to watch, even if it’s just a minute’s worth.
Now, you may be blessed with a really entertaining pet (preferably a cute kitten, bunny, or panda), but as the owner of a pretty cute cat myself, I can tell you it hasn’t been easy trying to turn her into a viral sensation. (But allow me to try here.)
In the interest of interacting with readers, and being open to new ways of marketing our work, what should a responsible author do, aside from shoot cat videos? Let’s start with what you shouldn’t do.
1. Forget about book trailers.
Most book trailers are terrible and will not sell a single additional copy of your book. If you have a large production budget and can hire James Franco, then yes, you should create one. But creating a trailer as a teaser or book advertisement rarely works and can be a colossal waste of your time, unless you have some skills in screenwriting or humor—and preferably both.
2. Don’t talk at length in a static shot.
There are some exceptions to this rule, but generally, the worst author video in the world is the kind that features a talking head, and nothing else, with no cuts or camera changes. There are people who can pull this off with cuts (John Green), but you need some serious charisma or super useful information to compel people to watch. And, again, probably some screenwriting skills.
3. Don’t post unedited video that’s longer than a minute or so.
I’ll refer back to my earlier point: all video wants to be crap. It’s near impossible to create a compelling video using an iPhone or tablet unless you break out the editing software (even if it’s just iMovie) once you’re beyond 30-60 seconds.
Now that you know what to avoid, here are a few things to consider.
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