When crafting your content for your marketing, leveraging excerpts from your book can be an effective way to draw readers in and build engagement.
But why stop there?
Consider offering additional chapters or scenes of your story beyond the first chapter that can provide further value. These could include exciting or sensual scenes that resonate with your readers.
Be creative in teasing out more value that your readers might appreciate and use it alongside your regular book excerpt to solidify your book’s presence in the minds of potential readers.
This engaging material, that really shows your writing, should helps augment your content marketing strategy and take it to a whole new level.
Let’s dive into how to pick the right section of your story and how to market to your readers.
Purpose of Story Excerpts
Every author wants to hook and engage readers with books. But convincing a potential reader to take a chance on a new author or book can be challenging.
One way to bridge this gap is through the creative use of your story’s excerpt on your author website. Not only can your excerpts capture readers’ attention, they can also help you to boost your mailing list.
Let’s dive deep into the importance of having your story’s excerpt in your author website, and how to leverage them to attract new readers and grow your email list.
Provides a Sneak Peek into Your Writing
There’s no better way to show what you’re made of than by sharing snippets of your writing.
A few paragraphs or chapters of your latest novel can give your future readers a glimpse into your writing style and maybe even raise their expectations of your story while also piquing their interests.
By giving your readers a small sample of what they can expect from your book, they’ll be more likely to take the next step to read the rest of your book.
Highlights Your Writing Strengths
You can include story excerpts that showcase your strongest writing skills; whether it be writing a selection of your most compelling dialogue or showcasing the perfect scene.
You’ll not only enthrall potential readers with your beautiful writing, but also provide them with a taste of your writing style and expertise.
Increases Your Author Website Engagement
A well-placed excerpt can keep readers on your author website longer, allowing them to learn more about you and your books, while hopefully, convincing them to not only purchase your next release, but also to sign up to your email list.
Once a reader is on your site, you want them to stick around, and what better way to do that than by offering them captivating content that’s enticing and interesting enough.
A Catalyst for Growing Your Email List
Story excerpts are a fantastic way to lure readers into signing up to your email list. You can offer them a free excerpt off your latest release or even your best book as an incentive for signing up.
For example, “Sign up for my newsletter and receive the first chapter of my current release, Into the Wild!”
This way, you can get new subscribers onto your mailing list while providing them with a free sample of your writing with a strong likelihood of them transitioning to a loyal reader.
Helps Your Search Engine Optimization
Along with being beneficial for website visitors, story excerpts are also important when it comes to SEO (search engine optimization). Including relevant keywords, metadata, and ALT tags for your images and graphics to help search engines understand the content within these excerpts.
All things considered, search engines can then better index and rank them, thereby driving the much-needed traffic to your author website.
Conclusion
Effective use of story excerpts on your author website is essential for hooking potential readers, highlighting your writing strengths, and increasing website engagement.
By taking a step further and leveraging your excerpts to grow your mailing list, you can increase your readership and promote your books with ease.
So, don’t wait any longer. Add your story excerpt to your author website and give your writing the attention and readers it deserves!!
How to Pick Your Best Story Excerpt
When you’re selecting the story excerpt you want to show off your work, it’s important to remember to pick a piece of story that plays to your strengths as an author. Not only should the section have all the qualities you want to be associated with your writing style, it also should be compelling enough that readers will be captivated and hooked into reading more.
Focus on a small part of the story to capture its essence – select only what needs to be included for readers to catch on. Different descriptions – sensory or otherwise – should be used at appropriate moments to craft an engaging story excerpt.
Insert story-specific dialogue that helps move the story forward and drives the reader into wanting more. Put these elements together concisely and thoughtfully, and you have created an immersive story excerpt!
Additionally, make sure your story excerpt has a clear story arc so readers can get a sense of where the story is going and why they should keep reading. Picking an effective story excerpt can put you one step closer towards having readers enjoy and appreciate your work.
Create Your Own
Excerpts are a great way to promote your books and grow your audience. By sharing excerpts on social media, in email newsletters, and on your website or blog, you can give potential readers a taste of what’s to come and entice them to purchase your latest book.
So, what are you waiting for? Start incorporating excerpts into your content marketing strategy today!
To save you time and money, here’s a fun content template that’ll enable you to easily and quickly create a pdf that you can either add to your website or offer it as a freebie on your website.
What’s Next…
Add something different: Visualizing Your Story: The Power of Charts, Graphs, and Maps on Your Author Website
Want a deeper look into how to create content that’s entertaining, educational, engaging, inspiring, and persuasive.
Still wondering about the benefits of offering quality content? Take a look at this article.
Make sure to add the essential content elements to your author platforms!
If you’re ready to take your website to the next level, check out how you can Build Your Own Content Library and pick a content template that fits your readers.
Check out the Ultimate Guide to Building your Content to get tips on how to do-it-yourself!
