Fiction Novel Writers Solution
EzineArticles expert author Marv Lincoln asked:
“I have just written and self-published a novel. How can I use the book and its subject matter as the basis for EzineArticles — graciously and without blatant self-promotion?”
Excellent question Marv and thanks for giving me permission to share my thoughts about how to get this done.
- I’m going to assume we’re talking about using your fictional content in the article body and not about writing articles about character & plot development (even though those would make great article ideas also).
- Mistakes I’ve seen prior authors do is they will just slice & dice their fictional works, slap up a bad article title, add a resource box linking to their website and then wonder why we rejected their articles.
- You’ll have to make peace with the fact that your articles that contain fiction will be in our general Arts & Entertainment category…until the day comes for us to introduce a “Fiction” category. Despite what you might think, the category your article in matters very little.
- We do have a BOOK-REVIEWS:FICTION category, but that’s solely for book-reviews and not sections of fictional content for the article body. (Read this to refresh yourself on how our book reviews category works in terms of your own book(s).)
- Start with thinking about what fans of your book(s) would want to know? Be sure to include descriptors in the article title that references the volume or series that you’ll be sharing in the article body.
- But, each article can not link or refer to the other series of articles you have because article marketing is not *article parts* friendly. Each must stand alone.
- Include a short introductory paragraph about the story before ‘diving in’ to orient the reader that they are about to read fiction and follow it up with a short (1) paragraph conclusion.
- Never include your author name in the article title.
- It helps if you can cover a story arc in your article so that it makes some sense because each article must stand alone.
A lot of the above tips can also apply to other book authors (including those who write non-fiction)… but at least I hope this gives you some guidelines to get started on repackaging your existing fictional (or non-fictional) book/ebook content to use for article marketing for purposes of attracting new leads, prospects and buyers to your website.
Chris,
I enjoy what you wrote about how to write articles using excerpts from books. From what I understand many times fantastic fiction authors can do a poor job of promoting their books. The advice you offer is to the point. Another point you make that applies to all of us is “start with thinking about what” your target market “would want to know”?
So many internet marketers get great ideas, but simply don’t take this thought into consideration. Great point Chris.
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