Author's Virtual Assistant Jenel Looney!

Do you have a virtual assistant? If not, would you like one? If you do have one, what do you find most helpful? If you don't know what one is, keep reading!

Jenn McKinlay: I do not. I love the idea of a virtual assistant but, honestly, I am such a control freak I'd have a very hard time giving up any control of my stuff. Plus, I really love playing with apps. I do have young, hip librarian friends that step in and help with the grunt work of contests and mailings, when needed, but mostly, it's just me.

Hank Phillippi Ryan:  I’d adore to have a virtual assistant, but I always worry that it would take longer to explain to someone what to do than to do it myself. How does that work? And I’d love to have a real person come to my house to help with mailings and contests…but again, I always write personal messages and there’s no one who can do that with me. And sometimes I wind up doing that at midnight, or whatever, so that might not be the most convenient. Anyway. I’d love some advice on how to get a virtual assistant relationship to work successfully—I know there’s a lot of time I spend dong something that someone else should be able to do—but I’m not sure what that something is.   

Ingrid Thoft: Alas, I do not have a virtual assistant.  I suspect that, like Jenn, and given my self-identification as a "control enthusiast," I might have trouble letting go of the reins.  I'm still trying to make the transition from a paper calendar to a completely electronic one.  I recently went so far as to download a to-do list app to my phone, which felt pretty gutsy!  I'm curious to learn about must-have apps from Reds and readers.

Jenn: Oh, "control enthusiast" made me belly laugh, Ingrid!

Deborah Crombie: Honestly, I'm not even sure what a virtual assistant does. I have had a real part-time assistant a few times, but it only ever worked for me when it was my friend who was between jobs and was WAY overqualified to be doing stuff for me. And I have found that having someone come in and work totally blows my writing time, in which case I might as well do things (or not...) myself. 

Hallie Ephron: What I need is someone to go to the bank and post office and grocery shopping for me. Someone to buy a light for my dining room and get it installed. Clip my hedges. Please. 
The career work I need to do myself... until that happy moment when there is SUCH a clamor for my presence that I'm overwhelmed. Then virtual assistant? Bring it on!  But really, why virtual? Why not actual personal assistant?

Jenn: I hear you, Hallie! I think we need a butler or a valet or just someone named Jeeves at our beck and call.

Jenel Looney in a fetching hat!

And now to answer all of our pressing questions, here is virtual assistant extraordinaire: Jenel Looney!

True confession, I've done some amazing promotions with Jenel and invited her here mostly so I could pick her brain and now you can, too. You're welcome!

    

How did you come to be a virtual assistant? What do you love about it? What do you find most challenging?

I had gone to grad school for writing popular fiction, but had lost the dream of being a writer. I was looking for a new career, and I knew that one of my classmates and friends had a virtual assistant, my dream job. That friend was Susan Mallery, a fabulous romance and women's fiction writer. I asked Susan how much she paid her VA just so I could figure out whether I could really make a living at what sounded like a made-up job. The math worked, and as it turned out, Susan was looking for a new assistant. I've been working for her since around August 2008, and since shortly after that, for Kate Carlisle and Maureen Child, as well.

The thing I love the most about being an author's virtual assistant is also the most challenging—it's constantly changing. In book marketing (and probably all marketing), you have to keep adapting and trying new things. When something works, everyone starts doing it, and then it doesn't work anymore. I have never, not for a minute, been bored at this job.

    What do you consider your main function as a virtual assistant for authors?

Marketing. It used to be, authors were competing against other books that came out at around the same time. With the advent of ebooks, books never go away. There is no longer a limited shelf life, which means you're competing for readers' attention against an ever growing number of books. The challenge is to come up with new things to get readers excited about the book you're promoting.

For example, in ONCE UPON A SPINE, Kate Carlisle's latest Bibliophile Mystery, bookbinder Brooklyn Wainwright solves a murder linked to a rare first edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, so Kate and I came up with the idea of making a custom set of ONCE UPON A SPINE playing cards. (In honor of the cards that come to life in Alice.) Every face card is holding a different Bibliophile Mystery and a different murder weapon.

Kate is doing 30 days of giveaways in the Secret Room at KateCarlisle.com, which is how we're using the cards to drive membership on her mailing list and get readers excited about the book.

     As you promote your authors on multiple platforms, I imagine you see their functionality in a different light than most people. What do you think is the most essential place for an author to build their audience? Website? Facebook? Twitter? Other?

Mailing list, 100%. That's the only method of communication over which you have any control. Any of your social media properties could be taken away from you in an instant. (They probably won't be, but they could.) Everyone with a Facebook business page knows that you often get frustratingly low reach with an important post.

Don't get me wrong, Facebook is valuable, but I recommend that authors use it in part as a tool to build their mailing list. Also, targeted Facebook advertising can be very effective. Play around with different audiences so you're not always advertising to the same people.

When a book is first released, I think the most effective advertising an author can do is to people who are already her fans. It's easier to motivate a current reader to buy your new book than it is to motivate someone who has never heard of you to buy it. So when a book is first out, I suggest targeted advertising to people who have liked you on Facebook, and to people who are on your mailing list.

Instagram gets more and more interaction all the time, and I think it's valuable. Twitter is like cocktail party conversation—if you happen to be in the right spot at the right time, you can be impacted by it, but the conversation flows so fast that I'm not sure you sell a lot of books on Twitter. An exception to this might be for live-tweeting during specific events, like when Kate Carlisle live-tweeted during the airings of her Fixer-Upper Mysteries on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries.

   What metrics do you use to determine the success of a promotion? Reader engagement? Book sales?

The most frustrating thing about marketing is that it's rare that you can draw a straight line from this promo to that sale. That said, book sales are always the ultimate metric. It's just that we can't ever really know whether they came from our promotional efforts—with traditionally published authors, at least. Self-pubbed authors have more immediate sales information at their fingertips.

I'm quite nervous about a promotion I'm coordinating right now for Susan Mallery. Susan invited her readers to sign up for three Secrets of the Tulip Sisters bookmarks to promote her summer hardcover. Thousands of readers signed up, and each of them will receive the three bookmarks. The first was mailed on June 1. The second will be mailed on June 22, and the third will be mailed to coincide with the book's July 11 release date. On the back of each bookmark, there's a secret contest, driving readers to secret pages at TulipSisters.com where they'll watch secret videos of Susan talking about the book.

This is a complete experiment. Susan is always looking for ways to connect with and reward her readers, so in terms of goodwill and brand awareness, I already consider this a win. But our hope, of course, is that it will also drive early book sales. Here's the thing: we'll never know. If sales increase over last year's hardcover, it's probably because of a number of things—the bookmark promotion, the efforts of Harlequin's marketing department, and the simple fact that Susan consistently writes books that readers love. No amount of marketing matters without a great book to back it up, because when readers discover a good book, they spread word-of-mouth.

     You create a lot of online content for your authors. Seriously, you're amazing! What are your favorite tools/apps to use? How much have you had to stretch yourself to keep up with technology?

I have a subscription to Adobe Creative Cloud, so I use Adobe products—Photoshop, Illustrator, In Design, After Effects—to create most images and videos. But there are a few free apps that I use regularly.

Spark Post – Has an extensive library of free images that you can use to create a graphic with text—a still image or a 4-second video—or you can upload your own image to use in the graphic.

Hyperlapse – Makes high-speed videos, which are very eye-catching.

Boomerang – Makes a brief, looping video based on a burst of photos. Again, catches the eye.

     For authors looking to hire help, what should they look for when hiring a virtual assistant?

That magical combination of good ideas and a killer work ethic. As with writing, ideas are worthless unless they're executed.

And now, readers, Jenel has a question for you: What apps do you love for creating social media content?

Jenn: Apps! I love apps. Seriously, it's a problem. My most favorite for easy to create promo slide shows with music is Ripl but for editing and pasting book covers onto cool backgrounds with book quotes or blurbs, I adore Pixomatic!

Appy Together?

LUCY BURDETTE: I was looking at my iPhone the other day and started thinking about the apps on the homepage. Of course, there are some that I downloaded when I saw them and have never used. And then there are those that I use all the time, like mobile apps of twitter and Facebook and mail. But I thought wouldn't it be fun to see if we could use our apps as a kind of Rorschach test for our current interests. Two things you can tell for sure about me from this page, I'm obsessed with the weather. And I am obsessed with food in Paris.
And here's one more page. This one shows you how much I have gotten into iPhonography. And more stuff that has to do with traveling—I’m always looking for the perfect travel organization app. (by the way, have you found one?) And of course apps to do with writing. How about you guys? What’s on your screen?

HALLIE EPHRON: What you can tell absolutely and definitively from my apps is that I rarely use my phone. I message and facetime with my kids. Use Google Maps. And I've got all the airlines and Amtrak apps loaded. Yelp in case I need a restaurant. I've got Dragon Dictate because of the blog Lucy posted awhile back saying that it helped her write fast. I used it twice.

What I need right now is an app that will take a selfie of my cell phone screen... and you know what, there isn't one.
RHYS BOWEN: Apart from the obvious ones like Facebook, Twitter, Kindle and the various airlines I use I seem to have an eclectic mix. At the top of my list is Evernote, which is brilliant for all kinds of note-taking, snagging pages from websites etc. I also have a Zen garden with chimes or birds, an aquarium (different aquariums on my iPhone and iPad--the one on the phone lets me feed my fish, which I like!)

I have Scrabble and a addictive game called Wordpops, I have Dragon that I rarely use, Password vault that I've never used, but Apps for tennis tournaments and ESPN--revealing I'm a sports-loving workaholic who calms down by feeding fish and visiting a Zen garden.

LUCY: Rhys, what’s truly frightening about your photo are the 829 messages—yikes!

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Ha. I am so happy it's not just me. Lucy, when you suggested this topic, I thought: great! Then I thought--but HOW am I gonna get a photo of the front of my PHONE? Because I need the phone to take a photo of the phone, so it'd be impossible to...worry worry worrry.
And then I burst out laughing. Get Jonathan's phone. Take a photo with that one. HA.

Although I do think you can take a screen shot, I just don't know how.)

Anyway, I am app-light. I have Scrabble, and flashlight, and Uber, and Audible, and Evernote, and podcast, and Soundhound, and Songify. (Do you know Songify? It makes anything into a song. VERY cool. I have used it a million times, but all on the first day I got it. ) I have Epicurious, and Open Table.  I think this shows I am a very practical person who is sometimes interested in recipes , but would rather have a  black car take me to a restaurant while I read or listen to music or look for stuff in the dark..

LUCY BURDETTE: I take a screenshot with my assistive touch button, which I discovered accidentally when I dropped the darn phone and my home button QUIT WORKING. Ack! Here's what came up on Google:

Here is how to turn the Assistive Touch feature on, allowing you to use an iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch that has a nonworking Home button:

    Open “Settings” and go to “General”, then tap on “Accessibility”
    Under “Physical & Motor” tap on “Assistive Touch” and then flip the switch to ON

My home button miraculously resuscitated itself, but I still have this other button. Just In Case.

Now I have to go try Hank’s Songify…

HANK: Ah...bwa ha ha. I don't even understand that. I kind of don't even want to. I am getting Jonathan's phone.
DEBORAH CROMBIE: Lucy, you just made my eyes glaze over... And I don't even have an iPhone. But now I wonder if I can take a screen shot on my Galaxy? Hmmm. Apps? Oh, geez. I don't just have apps, I have folders of apps. Rick really likes apps so keeps finding them for me. How many do I actually use? Google. (Does that count as a app?) Facebook. Kindle. Weather, astronomy, photo gallery, Evernote. I have Zite and Flipboard but don't use them much.

And I have the coolest bird watching app called iBird Pro, but it takes up a lot of storage space. Oh, and I love my music player, which is called Rocket Player. The only games that tempt me are Bejeweled and Words with Friends.

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Okay, I am about to out myself as the Luddite of the group. I don't have a smart phone. We have five people on a family plan, and until very recently, my service only offered an upgrade if EVERYONE got an upgrade - and frankly, I didn't want to pay the $$$ that would entail. Ross and Youngest got Kindle Fire HD 7s for Christmas (there was a great sale on earlier generation HDs in October, when the latest ones came out) and I'm pretty sure hers is already loaded with God-knows what. I helped Ross load apps onto his, which mostly consist of ESPN, CBS SPORTs, apps major league baseball, NFL football and college basketball. Oh, and weather. Yes, we have reached the "weather years."

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Lucy, I can't even make sense of that! I have an iPhone with FreshDirect, our grocery service, so I can add items to my "cart" from the phone when I have a sudden epiphany (Glass cleaner! We NEED glass cleaner!).

Also have grub hub for ordering delivery (yes, sushi will magically arrive if you press enough buttons and YOU DON'T HAVE TO SPEAK TO A HUMAN BEING!). Then all the social networking apps, Pandora Radio (although everyone tells me Pandora is "so over" and it's all about Spotify now....), Netflix, and mahjong. Kiddo loves to download games to my phone, so I have ones like "Clumsy Ninja" and "Cake Maker." I could probably live without everything except Google Maps — what a timesaver. Seriously. How did we get around before?

There's an App for that!

RHYS BOWEN:  As a fairly recent owner of an iPhone, I'm still discovering cool apps and trying to decide which ones I'd really use. I'm trying not to over-clutter the phone but I've come up with some I find invaluable:
Evernote is probably my number one. So easy to jot down ideas or even speak the ideas when they come to me and not wait until I get home and have forgotten them.
Dragon Dictation is also useful when I want to speak my way through a dialog that has just come into my head.
Google Maps--couldn't do without it.

iTranslate is great when I'm traveling abroad (except that it gave the Greek translation in the Greek alphabet so I certainly couldn't give a spontaneous response)
Obvious ones like Skype, Pandora, Facebook
Then I have PBS to see what programs I won't want to miss.
Kindle so I can keep reading whenever I have a moment
The Tennis app used to keep me updated but it seems to have gone funny recently.
to relax I have the famous Colorful Aquarium where I get to feed my fish and
iZen where I can rake my Zen garden and move the stones around to the tinkle of bells or sounds of birds.
I also have SleepStream 2 to give me relaxing sounds and images.
For fun? Wordpops and Scrabble. My granddaughter loaded on Templerun but I keep getting killed too quickly to make it fun.

So what suggestions do the other Reds have for indispensable Apps? (or fun games where I won't get killed or eaten)
DEBORAH CROMBIE: I suspect I will be the only one here without an iPhone--I'm an Android girl.  Be we have cool apps, too!!!! I have some version of everything Rhys mentioned, except I play Words With Friends instead of Scrabble.  My daughter beats me every time.
But my favorite is an Android only app called Cover. It customizes your lock screen with the apps you use most, according to where you are.  I have mine set to Facebook, so whenever I unlock my phone, I see a slowly scrolling display of my friends' FB posts.  The imagine move so it's an almost 3D effect, and because of the clarity and resolution of the big screen (mine is a Galaxy S3,) it's like having constantly rotating art as mesmerizing as Rhys's aquarium.  I'm going to go stare at my phone now....

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Hi, my name is Susan and I'm an Apple addict. I adore my iPhone.
My favorite app is eBay ? yes, also addicted to eBay and now I can check my auctions on the go. I also love Pandora radio (set to Madonna/Lady Gaga/Pink/Kelly Clarkson for the gym and Pink Martini for dinner parties), In terms of games, I love Mahjong ? good for the memory and makes subway rides flash by! And the tiles are so pretty......

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Apps. Apps. Hm. I love my iphone, in fact, I love it ridiculously too much. But apps? Not so much. I have no games, not fun stuff, not Kindle and not..not anything. So I am reading this with great interest. I am almost tempted by Rhys's zen garden, but then I would just DO that, and then where would I be? Plus, I ALWAYS forget my itunes password, I think the universe just changes it from time to time, so at the moments I am lured to an app, I never get much farther.
 Two questions: One, what app will let me add to Jungle Red from my phone? RIght now, I can't do that.
Also, what app will let me add a photo to Facebook? My phone used to do that, but it won't any more.

DEBS: Hank, I can add  pics taken with my phone to any of my Facebook pages.  Maybe you need an Android:-)

LUCY BURDETTE: She can't get an Android Debs--once you have an iphone, no going back to the dark side:). Ebay sounds like a good one, though DANGEROUS to the wallet. I do love the Pinterest app, and for some reason, I see Twitter and Facebook more easily on the phone. Other than that? AroundMe for traveling. Tripadvisor. Pages. I did just delete a bunch that I don't use (like a seashell with soothing sea sounds) because I keep running out of space for photos. I think I'm due very soon for a brand new phone...

HALLIE EPHRON: Hank, I can show you how to add pics to Facebook with your iphone. It's easy peasy. You need the Facebook app.
I'm not that into apps, either, except for ones that I use to check on flights and Amtrak. I use those all the time. An eBay app? Sounds dangerous.

RHYS: You gals are no fun! I wanted more apps to lure me away when I should be writing. Except eBay. I don't think I'd better download eBay. I'd finish every trip with several packages waiting on my doorstep. But I want to know from our friends--are there any MUST HAVE APPS we've overlooked?