Messaging Apps Are The Next Big Thing For Savvy Indie Authors Looking To Stay Ahead Of The Game.

While most indie authors continue to look the other way as messaging apps become the new black for selling digital goods, the Japan-based messaging app LINE has just launched its second music streaming service in as many months. (LINK)

Hard on the heels of the Thailand launch last month, LINE now has digital music streaming available in Japan, and other countries will be joining the, ahem, line-up later this year.

With Rakuten preparing to relaunch the messaging app Viber as a global sales platform for Rakuten products this year, we indies all need to sit up and take notice of the way the winds are blowing.

We can be forgiven for being unfamiliar. The so-called social media experts and mavens continue to tout Facebook and twitter as the only entities that matter for ebook marketing. Far easier to keep recycling the same old mantra than look at what’s coming next.

Without naming names, one social media maven famously told us MySpace was here to stay and that new cowboy outfit Facebook was just some fly-by-night rival that had no future. This was the same social media maven who told us reading ebooks on phones was a fad peculiar to Japan and was never going to catch on.

Meantime savvy authors are using sites like Pinterest and Instagram to great effect to find new audiences.

And the super-savvy amongst us will be getting established on the messaging apps.

Make no mistake, messaging apps are the next big thing for promotion and sales. Rakuten have made very clear their plans for Viber, and in particular they have spelled out their intention to sell Kobo ebooks using the Viber messaging app.

With LINE leading the way offering music streaming, others will follow. And just how long do you think it will be before other digital goods – ebooks, for example – are streamed on the messaging apps too?

Viber will be leading the way with messaging app ebook sales, and the rest will surely follow.

Meanwhile us indies are still busily carrying on as if Facebook and twitter are the be all and end all of social media promotion.

Wake up and smell the coffee!

Check out our past posts on this subject on the EBUK blog. Here’s one. (LINK) Several more in the archives.

Mobile messaging apps are the next big thing in global ebook promotion. Don’t wait for the social media mavens to wake up and jump on the bandwagon. Explore the world of messaging apps now and lay the foundations for your global ebook promotion empire.

Here’s the top ten social media messaging apps:

WhatsApp
Viber
WeChat
LINE
Kakao Talk
Kik
Tango
Nimbus
Hike
MessageMe

There are many others.

Never heard of them? We need to step outside our box. WhatsApp alone has over 800 million monthly users. Just because they are not on our radar does not mean no-one else has heard of them.

Nimbuzz has 25 million users in India, one of the key up-and-coming ebook markets.

Viber has over 300 million subscribers.

We all know how few of our Facebook friends and twitter followers actually get to see our posts and tweets. And we all know the services are clamping down still further to force us to pay to reach people, especially if there’s a promo link involved.

Instead of playing the same tune over and over to the same handful of people who actually do see our Facebook posts and do see our tweets, most of whom couldn’t care less, why not spend just a tiny fraction of that time and energy reaching out to new audiences in new ways.

Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram… LINE, WhatsApp, Viber…

Yeah, new learning curves, new ways to interact, new demands on our precious time.

But if we want to stay ahead of the game we need to stay ahead of the trends.

Just like, not to very long ago, we all had to sign up with and learn how to use Facebook and twitter and our blogs. Oh, and that crazy new thing called KDP that allowed us to bypass the query system and actually publish our books as ebooks.

Yes, we can all scream “Gimmick! Gimmick! Gimmick!” and pretend it’s not happening. But it’s happening anyway.

Don’t worry. The social media mavens will be along in a year or two to say they saw the messaging apps coming but were biding their time before letting anyone know.

Meanwhile everyday folk, you know, like readers, are busily signing up to messaging apps not by the hundreds, or thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, but by the billion. WhatsApp and Viber alone have a billion subscribers between them.

Just this week twitter announced it is expanding its character quota as it recognizes messaging apps are where people are heading. (LINK) Facebook of course famously already owns WhatsApp.

And no, before someone says it, no-one can do them all. Don’t even think about it. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try at least a few.

Think about the next five years, not the next five weeks.

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Note: We’ll be following up this post with some specifics about getting started with messaging apps in the next few days. Stay tuned!

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Walk The Line. Promoting Ebooks In The Global Marketplace.

When it comes to promotion, we indies like to stay well inside our comfort zones. Facebook, twitter, maybe Google+, and that’s often about it. Of course there are plenty of other options. Pinterest, Tumblr, blah,blah, blah.

But even if we are engaged on these sites our reach is invariably limited to fellow authors and a desperately small circle beyond, usually in a handful of English-speaking countries.

And therein lies the problem when it comes to making an impact in that blossoming global ebook market beyond our shores. HTF do we get noticed by readers in India or Indonesia, Mexico, Myanmar or Malaysia, Vietnam or Venezuela?

Yes, all these countries use Facebook and twitter, often on a scale beyond anything we might expect, but if we have an existing FB or twitter account with a ton of US/UK/Australian/Canadian/NZ friends, then the platform algorithms will do their level best to keep it that way.

Why? Well, how would you feel if your inbox was overrun with tweets or FB posts from people you’ve never heard of in Nicaragua, Niger, the Netherlands, Nepal or Namibia? And in a foreign lingo to boot?

So for very compelling reasons our existing Facebook and twitter accounts are NOT the best way to reach the global markets beyond our shores.

Yes, India has over one hundred million active Facebook users, but we all know how most of our FB posts aren’t even seen by our connected friends. What chance getting noticed by any of those one hundred million Facebook users who aren’t our Facebook friends, even if the algorithms were on our side?

Wehear back constantly from frustrated indies saying they are promoting their Flipkart and e-Sentral links on Facebook and twitter but nothing happens.

One key reason is quite simply because no-one in those countries are seeing them.

One solution is to step outside our comfort zone and sign up to a messenger service or social media platform in a distant land that doesn’t know or care about your friends and family back home.

How will we gain traction? The same way we did on twitter and Facebook when we first started out. By making friends, beings sociable, and promoting others.

Yes, we know, we all have zero time and can’t be bothered. But is that really true? Somehow we are finding the time to endlessly tweet and FB the same book details to the same handful of people over and over, usually to ever-diminishing effect.

Take some time off from twitter and Facebook and try signing up and being social (yes, social, not ramming our books down everyone’s throat from day one – there’s a clue in the term social media platform) to a messenger service or Facebook clone that we in the US and UK may never have heard of but which are having a big impact in the countries we are trying to reach.

Take Whatsapp. Never heard of it? Obviously you haven’t read our previous posts on India!

Whatsapp is a Facebook alternative in India (and elsewhere), currently boasting around fifty million monthly users. And yes, it’s in English.

If we know someone who can speak Mandarin we might want to sign up to Sina Weibo, WeChat or Tencent.

Never heard of them? If you live in China you will have.

Sina Weibo, a Chinese version of twitter, has 148 million active monthly users, knocking India’s Facebook for six.

WeChat in China has 350 million active users each month. That’s more than the entire population of the USA!

Sounds impressive until you consider that Tencent has 800 million active monthly users. At one point in April Tencent had an incredible 200 million users online at the same time!

Of course, unless we have ebooks available in China there’s not much point spending time promoting there.

But even if we are exclusive with Amazon, we can take advantage of a ton of other social media platforms to strike up a presence in key countries like Brazil, or Mexico, or Japan.

Take Line.

Line may be a Japanese messenger service, but you can download the Windows app right here.

And you’ll be delighted to find it’s in English.

Never heard of Line?

Here’s the thing. Four hundred and ninety million people around the globe have.

Line has a measly ten million users in the USA. But… It has fifteen million users in Mexico, and eighteen million each in Spain and India.

Thailand had been in second place for Line, and Indonesia third. That was way back in… April.

In the past six months alone Line found ten million new users in Indonesia, taking it up to thirty million, and knocking Thailand back to third place with just 27 million users.

A reminder here that Indonesia is tipped by EBUK as one of THE key places to be.

Line’s top spot is still held by Japan, with over fifty million users.

And because their algorithms haven’t got you locked down into a pattern, you can start off fresh, find fellow writers and readers and make social contact, and gradually introduce your books to all the new friends you’ll be making.

Try a mixture of English-language and local-language. Yes, use Google translate or whatever. No, it won’t be perfect, but at least you’ll be seen to be making the effort, and that will count in your favour.

Line is just one of a gazillion options available. There are more social media platforms out there than you can shake a banana at, and yes, it would be senseless to devote all your time to chasing them.

But pick maybe one or two that have a good presence in the countries you are targeting for your books, and give them a try.

Want to target Indonesia (an especially good bet for indie authors in Australia)? Yes, of course twitter and Facebook are humungous there, but see above.

To be productive in Indonesia try a new account with Line (thirty million users, remember?), or try the aforementioned WeChat or Whatsapp, both making big gains here.

Or try Kakao Talk, or Bee Talk, or Blackberry Messenger. Or Viber.

Viber began life in Israel, but is now part of Rakuten (Japanese) who own Kobo. It could be worth getting on Viber just to be part of the Rakuten ecosphere.

Don’t make the mistake of dismissing Rakuten as some two-bit Japanese outfit that happens to own Kobo. Rakuten is BIG. Globally, not just in Asia.

Go on, set aside five minutes now and then to give one of them a try.

One of us might just find ourselves a bestselling author in a far-flung land. And how cool would that be!

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