Author marketing ideas

Hello all,

The next set of features on Novelo are going to be dedicated to author growth and marketing. With that in mind, we would like to invite you to give us your views on what sort of features you'd like to see on this platform to help authors grow, reach more readers and market to them. We currently have the following ideas, please feel to free to let us know what you think of them and any other ideas you may have:

• Customisable webpage with own subdomain, i.e. davidkcyip.novelo.com (subscription based). This webpage would include a description of you, links to your stories on Novelo and other platforms, your social media links, and show reviews that users have written about your stories on Novelo.
• Ability to A/B test story synopsis/description and book covers. This means you can add additional synopses and book covers and test which one works best to attract readers to your story on the search page and anywhere else your story can be found on Novelo (subscription based).
• Ability to send newsletters to people who follow them on Novelo. This feature will send emails from hello@novelo.com, not your own email. You will not be able to see your subscribers' email address for privacy purposes (subscription based).
• Ability to pay to feature/advertise your book on the homepage, search page and other pages on the platform. We would like to give authors the option to present their story to readers on the platform, however we do not want to litter the website with advertisements.
• Ability for authors to post blog posts
• Monthly featured Q&A with an author
• Sending email nudges to registered users on the platform to review stories they have finished reading
• Enhance story analytics. Currently analytics that authors can view regarding their stories is basic, such as the number of views. We would like to add more and differing analytics authors can view and some would be subscription based. What sort analytics would you like to see on your stories?

This list is not exhaustive but it is a lot and will take a while to implement. What do you think of the above features and what else would you like to see on Novelo?

We will start with some of the low-hanging fruit, such as sending email nudges to review stories and blog posts.

How about a book club? Get a group of members together and pick out a book each week/fortnight and everyone reads a couple of chapters and reviews it

That would be a good idea, perhaps this could be done by creating a book-club only Discord channel that is unlocked 30 mins before the reading begins and 30 mins after it ends. We are wary of creating a general Discord channel as it requires a lot of moderation.

Excellent ideas David, as always;

my personal two favourites are webpage subdomains and story analytics

my main question would be: subscription price levels - there are so many demands on our monthly monies - so happy to pay, but hope not too high!

my extra question as I think I have mentioned previously - to see social media buttons for links on each story's header page;

I have given up on Twitter/X

much happier with Instagram, which can be set to auto-post to Facebook

my further question: would love to see an extra genre for "Children's Books" rather than just "Young Adults"

Hope of interest,

best wishes,

Peter Brighouse

ageing gracefully in Manchester England

whilst worrying for the future of our Grandkids in this our troubled world!

What sort of analytics would you like to see?

I think it would be around $7/month which would include the webpage, A/B testing, a Bookfunnel type service and advanced analytics (these would mainly be analytics around the subscription features). $10 would get you the features listed before and ability to send newsletters.

As regards to the social media buttons, do you mean buttons to share the story or do you mean links to the author's social media?

Will have to have a think about the Children's genre.

Thanks David,

$7 seems fine

buttons to share the story - would be my choice

Okay, great. Do you have any idea what additional analytics you'd like to see? We will be adding additional free analytics pertaining to stories.

Have added some share buttons on the story's header.

The X link works fine, so have started using it.

The facebook one went silly, so I shall check that I have put the correct link from my angle, before reporting again.

Would love to see an Instagram one; elsewhere I use it a lot.

Concerning analytics, I am happy with what is there at present, so I look forward to your new developments and shall examine them closely.

kind regards,

Peter

The facebook one works fine on my Microsoft surface.

previous comment was no doubt just my usage of my iphone!