My #1 timesaving technique for writers #amwriting #marketing #MondayBlogs

Writers are busy people. In addition to the writing, there’s editing, formatting, marketing, and social media to think about. And that doesn’t even take into account a day job! I’m lucky enough to not need a day job (thanks hubby!), but that doesn’t mean I enjoy the marketing part of being a writer. I’m always looking for ways to streamline the whole process. One idea that has saved me tons of time is the making of an information sheet for each novel I’ve written.

The information sheet should contain – at a minimum – the following information: book title, book series, genre, publish date, word count, synopsis, buy links, author bio, author links, teaser (if applicable) and at least one excerpt.

It may sound like a lot of work to get this sheet set up, but it’s going to save you tons and tons of time. All the pertinent information for marketing your book is at your fingertips. Each time you manage to convince a blogger to promote your book, you’ll use the sheet to give the blogger the information she requested. Often bloggers will just indicate that I should provide whatever information I want. There’s no longer a need to scratch my head at that. I just open up the ‘information for spotlight posts’-file and I’m good to go.

I do a lot of newsletter marketing campaigns. This involves filling out copious amounts of google forms. Instead of opening various documents and websites to find the data for the form, everything I need is ready and waiting for me. Copy and paste is a good friend of mine.

Like all other indie writers, I’m always begging bloggers for reviews. Whenever my begging for a review is successful, in addition to doing a fist pump and dancing in my chair, I send my information sheet along with the book. Although I never ‘require’ bloggers to make a blog post for my review, having the information necessary for a blog post (including review!) at their fingertips makes it easy for them to go ahead and make a post. I don’t need to tell you that blog posts are the bread and butter of the indie writer’s marketing campaign.

I’d love to hear other timesaving ideas. If you have any, just comment below.