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!