Author advertising - Creating memes using Microsoft Word

As I've touched on before in a previous post, at least half of an author's job is advertising. This means hours of work spent on researching best promotional sites, writing blog posts for tours, setting up newsletters, running FB adds, daily social media posts and a whole lot more.
One of the funnest forms of advertising, I find, is creating memes, because this allows me to be creative and that's something I can appreciate. Now, I don't have expensive art programs, not because I don't know how to use them, but because I don't want to pay for something I don't need. And that's because all the memes I have ever created for my books were made using Microsoft Word. 
Wait. What?
Yup. That's right. All I really need is one program. Plus the standard Paint program that comes with windows computers. I use this to crop my images and convert them to jpeg files.

Consider the image below as an example:

The first thing I did, was create the 3D book image. You can do this HERE for free.
Now, create a new Word document, select the insert tab and click on shapes. Choose the rectangle and size it to a perfect square since this format works well for Instagram as well. Simply hold down the shift key while resizing.
Once this is done, select the square, go to format, and pick the fill color and outline color you want. Play around with the outline width until you're happy with the way it looks.
Next, it's time to add some text. Go back to insert and select text box. The meme above contains three of these because this makes it easier to control the placement of different text fonts and sizes. The first is Sophie Barnes, the Second is No Ordinary Duke and the third is the quote. 
The quote part had to be modified in order to fit around the 3D book image. After inserting the image somewhere outside your square in the document, select it, right click on it and choose 'wrap text in front of text'. This will allow you to move the image about and place it where you want. Resize it and then adjust the text around it. You may have to drop some text to a different line in order for it to look just right.
I grabbed the squiggly thing from 'insert clipart' where there are loads of great choices. If you need to remove the background from a clipart image, you can do that as well. Just select it, click format, choose color followed by 'set transparent' and then select the color in the image you want to remove. If there is more one tone it gets slightly more complicated and you'll have to use Remove Backgrounds.
And that's it. Select all the elements in your design: the square, image and text boxes, and go to the formatting tab to group everything together. Then copy and paste into Paint, trim to size and save as a jpeg file.
If you're feeling more adventurous, you can try using more clipart options for your backgrounds instead of a blank square, like I did with the image below:

I made this even more fun by downloading it onto my phone and then using an animated photo app to add pink falling rose petals. The result was great on Instagram! You can check out the result HERE

Was this post helpful? Do you have advise on creating means that you'd like to share? Let me know in the comments below!

Being an author isn't enough. You also have to be a publicist.

For those of you looking to get published and who think all you need to do is write a great book, you'd be wrong. Not to discourage you or anything, because in my opinion there's nothing better than being an author. It's my ideal job. But it's also a ton of hard work - and that's without considering the writing.
One of the biggest jobs you'll have to take on as well, is the publicity one. If you think a publisher's going to do all of that for you while you sit back and watch your book rankings rise, think again. Sure, a good publisher will push your book because it's in their interest to make you be as successful as possible, but you have to help. For me, doing publicity for my books takes up just as much time as writing, if not more. It also costs a fair bit, so you'll need to set aside a budget and figure out the best ways in which to spend it so your book receives the attention it deserves. Over the years, I've had a lot of terrible experiences with promo opportunities I paid for without getting any results. That sucks, but with time, I've narrowed it down to a few key places I consider reliable.
They are: BookBub (super expensive but worth it), Bargainbooksy and Many Books, which are both great for promo stacking, and Booksweeps, which is great for growing your mailing list.
Now, back to all the extra work I was talking about before. A lot of authors choose to hire assistants (often virtually) to help out with this and while tempting, I really don't want the extra expense because I'd rather put that money toward advertising.
So here's a list of everything I can think of that happens after I've spent about five hours of my day writing and/or editing.

• Update my website for each new book and event - I built my website myself and saved a few grand on hiring someone to do this. Was this something I knew how to do beforehand? Not at all. But I figured it out and so can you!
• Update newsletter for the next mailing
• Find appropriate images for weekly FB posts and schedule those posts
• Post an image to instagram at least once a day with hashtags
• Write a blog post at least three times a week (Monday, Wednesday, Friday)
• Create memes, quote cards and banners for new releases and/or promo events
• Set up giveaways on Promosimple
• Order promotional bookmarks - I do this through Printrunner
• Mail promo material to my amabassadors
• Make sure my ambassadors receive an ARC of any upcoming releases
• Set up promos on various websites (BookBub, Bargainbooksy, Many Books)
• Create FB adds
• Write blog posts and answer interview questions for tours
• Review other authors books as a way to boost traffic on my blog
• Correspondence - respond to emails, FB comments and other online messages.

Now, since I'm also self-published as of November 2017, there are a few additional things I have to add, like:

• Set up Goodreads giveaways - this is no longer a free service, but it is pretty effective in terms of spreading awareness for a book
• Procure a book cover
• Publish book on Amazon KDP and Createspace (these are currently in the process of merging) and via Draft2Digital (B&N, Kobo, iTunes etc)
• Set up a blog tour - I use Indiesage
• Contact bloggers to request reviews and to make them aware of the tour - a very time consuming process but one I consider necessary
• Run a giveaway on Librarything in exchange for reviews.

And that's about it, I think. There are probably other little things I'm forgetting at the moment, but all in all, this is a pretty accurate list. Granted, I don't have to do all of it every day, but each item does take a fair amount of time. 

Again, this is not meant to discourage, but it is something to keep in mind and, I think, good to know in advance. And if you're passionate about writing, you won't mind putting in the extra effort to get your book noticed. You'll want to do everything you can in order to make it happen!