Watch the video version!
Indie and self-publishing is at once frustrating and satisfying. I love looking at my Kobo dashboard and seeing that someone in Nigeria or Bangladesh has downloaded my work. On the other hand, it’s up to me to do everything, including the marketing for my work. While I’m neither a Luddite or geriatric, like a lot of people, I sometimes find it difficult to fully adapt to the current way of things. Instead of lamenting change and its positives and negatives, I choose to keep a little bit with the times in order to reach as many readers as possible.
So today, I’ll be looking at the “author platform” of a self-published writer who has had a great deal of success and is doing a lot of things we should do, too. I’ll also take a look at her work because…you know…books are the most important thing.
Carissa Andrews seems to have a lot going on. There’s so much of it, in fact, that I’m just going to take a look at her site and make a little list.
- International best-selling author
- Box set
- Giving away the first three chapters via Bookfunnel
- “Latest releases” (lots of books in the catalog)
- Audiobooks
- Preorders
- Newsletter with reader magnet
- “About the author” with same picture and prose as twitter Bio
- Social media/BookBub links…
- “What I Do” including fiction, nonfiction, graphic design, “content creation,” indie author school, audiobook production, blog
Phew! It’s pretty clear that Carissa has a lot going on. Anyone who has been learning about indie or self-publishing will likely agree that each of these elements is a different skill that a writer might wish to learn. Unfortunately, there are only so many hours in the day, so to some extent we have to pick and choose.
I’m not exactly sure how Carissa would describe her own presence, but I think the site is both businesslike and friendly. Maybe a little busy, but she definitely features tons of calls to actions and gives everyone a reason to click on SOMETHING.
Another of my worries is that I’m only preaching to the choir of fellow writers. I want to sell more books, so to some extent, I need to get in touch with more readers in the future. If I try to forget that I’m a writer, I do like the way Carissa organizes her site, though I think my personal tendency would be to use more words and descriptions in addition to the images. (Of course, I am the kind of person who uses Instagram only begrudgingly.)
Most importantly…let’s look at some of Carissa’s actual writing! I’m writing about Book 1 of her Pendomus series because it’s, you know, the first book. The author does something that I didn’t expect. Look at the Amazon book description for Pendomus: 
I have to admit that I was a little surprised at how sparse the description is. I’m not really criticizing; the book has 90 Amazon reviews, so people have definitely bought plenty of copies. I was just surprised, is all. The tagline is traditionally compelling; Carissa introduces the idea that the book will offer a grand central mystery, which totally makes sense in the context of a fantasy novel.
I really like the next bit, and not just because I love the Rule of Three. The author tells us that she will employ a first-person narrator and gives us a look at her personality. I love that the character admits that she was naive and is no longer, thanks to what she learns in the course of the saga. Maybe it’s just because I watched some of the fourth season over the weekend, but the narrator reminds me of Veronica Mars: snarky and tough and fun.
After having seen Carissa’s author site, I am not surprised that she takes full advantage of the Amazon description space. She hits us with the comps and with quotes from Amazon reviews before hitting us with some more comps and descriptions of the tone and feeling of the book:
As always, there is no right or wrong…just whatever works. I like Carissa’s idea here because, at least it seems to me, the book description puts a lot of importance on the “Look Inside.” Personally, I want to know more about the book, so she is pushing me to read the first few pages or to download a free sample. Vagueness is a double-edged sword. It can either attract or repel the person whose attention you crave. And there’s nothing wrong with nudging the reader to the actual first few pages of your book, particularly if you are confident about your work.
But I found something surprising when I visited Carissa’s site. Check out the description for Pendomus that you will find on the site:
Yes, that’s a more traditional book description! The author begins by describing the world in which the books are set. This is a good way to grab a fantasy reader. After all, the whole point is that a fantasy will take you to a completely different place. I like that Pendomus is a “planet of extremes.” Extreme hot and extreme cold. The characters must negotiate these extremes.
Those characters are (to my mind, at least) more important than the setting. Runa seems like a reasonable YA heroine. Like most seventeen-year-olds, she “feels disconnected” and seeks solace in forbidden places. Great.
Carissa also seems to give us the inciting incident of the book: the awful attack on Runa. In the course of three compact paragraphs, we learn about the world of Pendomus, the protagonist, and one of the obstacles the protagonist must overcome.
Something I might change: I can tell that Carissa is trying to keep the character mysterious, but I might offer another detail about the blue-haired stranger who helps Runa. He or she seems important to the story.
What would make me click “purchase?” The overall package is so well-done that it’s a safe bet that Pendomus is at least a decent read. Carissa has clearly invested a great deal of time, skill, and perhaps money into her work, so I can’t imagine that the book is any less professional.
Let’s recap! What can we learn from Carissa’s author platform and the way she advertises her book?
- Try different kinds of rhetoric for different outlets. The Amazon description for Pendomus is quite different from the description Carissa uses on the web site. Perhaps these are slightly different audiences with slightly different needs. Perhaps Carissa is also trying to pull the reader along in a certain direction.
- Take advantage of all of the room Amazon gives you in the book description field. The space is there, so why not use it? We can include information about the rest of our series, editorial or reader reviews…whatever we want. I think most readers will just scroll past any matter they don’t wish to read. (At least, that’s what I do.)
- Hit every element of story in the book description. Setting. Character. Tone. Genre.
- Offer your reader a comprehensive place to find all of your work, services, and so on. In my years of doing Great Writers Steal and in writing for this author site, I am always astounded when I find that a writer doesn’t have at least a barebones web site so I can find out about them. Carissa has a particularly robust web site, but we all need the basics.
