Lorilyn Roberts' first book, The Donkey and the King, had a second printing last year, and is a beautifully illustrated children's book published by Virtualbookworm.
In her latest book, Children of Dreams, the many pearls of suffering Lorilyn Roberts has experienced enable her to share deeply from the heart, and her writing, riveted with emotion, shows how God is able to restore dreams and bring redemption. Combined with her Biblical studies, she holds a unique perspective to write from a Christian worldview.
Ms. Roberts is intimately familiar with adoption, having also been adopted as a child, and is able to present the spirit of adoption, as never before captured, in Children of Dreams.
As an author she shared her experiences with marketing her work. She handed out packets to each member filled with information for Publishing and Marketing for the Unknown/New Author. Less than a year ago Lorilyn knew nothing about marketing. She took a seminar by Randy Ingermanson and she was off. She meticulously kept a record of her trek through publishing and marketing. The packet contains resource after resource along with a mini critique about what she liked and what she didn't like. "The hard part about being a writer is getting people to buy your book." However, with new technology such as the Internet and Print on Demand publishing you can reach the world. As Lorilyn puts it (Paraphrased) Here I am this unknown writer from Gainesville yet I had nearly two hundred hits to my website from people outside the US and over 8,230 hits here in the US.
She explained how she uses her website as a tool. Her website sponsors have records of who comes to the website, how long they stay and what they are looking at. Based on this information she can design a website that is more user friendly by adding more material that drive people to her site (such as pictures which account for 70% of the hits at her website). Once she realized pictures were important to people on her website she added more pictures. This has multiple benefits.
1. The more people that are drawn to her website the better she does in search results (like Google) Currently she comes up as the fourth entry on page one out of over a million results when you type in Adoption from Nepal ( this vary from day to day). Since March 20, 2009 she has had 1,749 views at her website.
2. Google Adwords, pays for clicks
3. The more exposure she has for her book.
4. Under Google images, she is the first ten results for videos of adoption from Nepal and adoption from Vietnam What an accomplishment! Again people see her name and book over and over again. It adds credibility to her work and increases the opportunity people will buy her book.
Another way to come up in searches is to review other people's blogs. If you do this, your review links to your own book and also brings your name or book up in a search result.
Reviews are important so you want to establish a social network to get reviews. She gave us a list of resources on how and where to get reviews. Also television or radio interviews are always great opportunities for the author to talk about their book. But it also has the added benefit of linking to your website and adding to the audio visual component of your website. As the statistics show, most people surfing the net are looking for visuals. Video has an even higher rate. Sites like Youtube offer another tool to get your name and your book out on the web.
This blog is just a snip-it of information that Lorilyn shared. She has an amazing knack for research and organizing data. She is a natural teacher in that, she saw value in every aspect of her journey to write. In the end she became so much more than an author. She became an inspiration to those going through the adoption process and a mentor for those going through the writing process.
by Tracy Redman
FCCW Treasurer
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