Pubslush Blog

Stuff We Love: WriterCube

Since part of our job over here at Pubslush is to be complete and total internet junkies, we find ourselves constantly finding new, awesome websites that we just have to share with our audience. We know you Slushers out there like to be up on the new, being the trandsetters you are, so we’ll try to make that a bit easier for you. WriterCube is one of the latest sites to catch our attention and we were lucky enough to get the low down about the site from Founder, Kristen McLean.

What is the concept of WriterCube?

WriterCube is a cloud-based DIY Marketing and Analytics App for Authors that was developed to give authors (and agents, publicists, publishers, and not-yet-published authors) an easy, cost effective tool for identifying audiences and creating effective marketing strategies. It has three core services: the ability to map real-time sales of any book in the US that we have data on, as well as mapping a user’s social media followers to identify marketing opportunities; a Goal Tracker that allows users to set and then execute common marketing tasks; and a deep database of articles, tutorials, and contacts so users have all of the information resources they might need to get the job done. To be clear, WriterCube is not a “help me publish a book” platform. It’s a “help me market a book” platform. It comes into play after a book has been created.

What is the goal of the site?

The goal of the app is to empower authors to take on basic marketing, and to support the marketing efforts of publishers with a great tool to support their authors with basic education so that they can spend their resources and bandwidth handling the more ambitious aspects of their marketing campaigns. In both cases, users can focus their marketing efforts and resources more effectively based on real-time data. Who is the audience? The primary subscriber will be the author since they need to give permission for us to access their social media. They can set up their agents, publicists, and other proxies as sub-accounts so that those professionals can access their information for co-marketing purposes. Our go-to-market strategy involves talking directly to authors as the primary subscribers, as well as publishers who have expressed interest in offering this as a turn-key author services solution during the frontlist period.

What changes or adaptations can be expected in the future?

We expect to add more data from a variety of sources, as well as more social media platforms as people tell us they want them. We also expect to add new components to the functionality like a module for booking tours via the database, or posting event/tour proposals for venues to browse. We will continue to expand our database of articles, goals, and contacts as users tell us what they want. New features will arise directly out of the feedback users give us. We are building it for them.

Who created the idea for the site and why?

The idea for the app evolved out of some of the ideas we have for connecting authors and readers. For the last few years, the publishing industry has been heavily focused on the consumer, and the idea of “consumer discovery.” We realized that before an author or publisher can market to a reader, they need to know who that reader is and where they are. That’s what the data in this app is designed to show. We think that there are other kinds of “discovery” in publishing we need to be thinking about, and this app is our first exploration of that. Seems pretty simple, but this is the first app of it’s kind that is really built for authors first.

If you could tell our community only ONE thing about WriterCube, what would it be?

Write a good book. We can’t control the quality of your content, and if it isn’t good, all the marketing advice and insight in the world won’t help you find an audience. There is no shortcut to a good book, so take your time, work with an editor and a professional designer, and make something awesome. If you do that, then we’ve got a lot of tools to help you find your readers.