Wednesday, August 14, 2013

Have You CFOM'd Today? by Bonnie Calhoun

While Bonnie Calhoun is an author, she's also publisher of an online magazine aimed at helping writers. I asked Bonnie to share how the Christian Fiction Online Magazine could aid a writer's marketing plan. -- Sandy

Bonnie -- The title of this post is the question prominently displayed on our Christian Fiction Online Magazine monthly newsletter. Now what advantage does that give to authors who do columns or advertise in our magazine? Statistics are pretty dry reading, but I hope this information adds a certain level of excitement for anyone wanting to use us as part of their marketing strategy.

The email blast announcing our new issue goes out once a month to more than 15 thousand email subscribers which includes 64 book clubs, over 500 Christian book stores, and 747 library systems. And we average 27 thousand to 35 thousand individual magazine readers each month.

We draw returning readers with an easy to navigate and read website that archives our monthly issues since our inauguration in July of 2008, a great mix of devotions, interviews, book and movie reviews, recipes, insight into authors lives and how they go about writing, and listings of new books on the market that we target with blog tours through our parent organization Christian Fiction Blog Alliance.

The visible coverage for our average blog tour, including coverage on the magazine home page, a layout on the CFBA blog tour page in the magazine, blog tour book listings in the left sidebar of the monthly newsletter, and then the combined effort among our mix of influencers and reviewers, and the CFBA Blog puts an individual book in front of 30k to 40k viewers.

We are steadily increasing our readership and earlier this year we passed our MILLIONTH reader mark! Praise the Lord.

Every good marketing plan contains numerous avenues of exposure in multiple venues. Studies have shown that any given title must be seen an average of 27 times before it is committed to memory. 

What are you doing to increase your market share?


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Bonnie S. Calhoun is publisher of Christian Fiction Online Magazine, Northeast Zone Director for ACFW,Mentor of the Year,’ President of Christian Authors Network. Her latest novel Pieces of The Heart in Abingdon’s Quilts of Love series released in June. Her website is: http://bonniescalhoun.com 

Find her on Facebook at: https://www.facebook.com/bscalhoun or