Marketing

Quick Link: 5 Musts for Self-Publishing Great Books

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A timely post now that NaNoWriMo is almost done! Once you have completed writing your story there are some essentials you need to do to make it worth publishing. Laurisa White Reyes from Janice Hardy’s Fiction University lists them out for you. 

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5 Musts for Self-Publishing Great Books

By Laurisa White Reyes, @lwreyes

Quality Puzzle Showing Excellent Services And Products
I will give you a hint…

Part of the Indie Authors Series

When I was fourteen years old, I described my life’s dream on a page in my journal. I wanted, more than anything, to be an author. Not just any author. I wanted to be a New York Times Best-selling author. I fantasized about autographing books and winning the Newbery Award. In bookstores, I scanned the shelves, hunting for the very spot where my books would one day be. Once I actually started writing novels about a dozen years ago, I fully believed this dream was within reach, that any writer who worked hard enough could achieve it.

Naïve as I was, this dream kept me motivated through fourteen complete manuscripts and hundreds of rejection letters. Along the way, I did get three books published with small presses. I thought my dream was coming true. But I soon discovered that publication is no guarantee of success, and that too often, getting published with a small press (as well-meaning and author-friendly as many of them are) can be worse for an author’s career than having never published at all.

That’s where I found myself in 2015, with three published titles, a career in the publishing industry, and an impressive list of awards and recognitions under my belt. Yet I felt no closer to my dream than I had been as a teenager. By that time, I had spent two decades working on one particular book that meant a great deal to me.

In 1993, I worked as an office assistant at an AIDS clinic in Pasadena, California. I witnessed a lot of tragedy there, people suffering from a disease for which, at the time, there was no effective treatment. My experiences stuck with me and eventually resulted in a children’s novel about a girl whose father is dying of AIDS. Though I received numerous positive responses from literary agents, the manuscript accumulated close to thirty rejections. One agent told me that though The Storytellers was good, “kids today aren’t interested in reading about AIDS in the 90s.” In other words, it simply wasn’t marketable.

I was discouraged. I was disillusioned. Maybe the publishing industry was somehow rigged against people like me. I had a decision to make: Give up on the book or self-publish.

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Quick Link: This Is The Reason Your Author Platform Impacts Book Sales

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Rachel Thompson, at Bad Redhead Media does not mince words! But if you want to know what you can do in terms of marketing your book, and don’t mind a little bluntness, she has got some great tips for you. If you are an indie writer, you must also be a business person, even if you hire people to help.

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This Is The Reason Your Author Platform Impacts Book Sales

Internet Marketing On Monitor Showing Emarketing ConfusionBy Rachel Thompson

How much impact does your author platform have on book sales? People ask me this all the time — they want hard numbers.

Author: If I tweet about this or that for three months, if I post on my Facebook page about my book or share a few reviews, if I share a recipe board on Pinterest…how many books will I sell? 

Me: There’s no way I can give you a hard number. There are too many factors to consider. 

Author: So, 10? 50? 100? 

(One person told me that even though she’s writing a book, she’s “not an author,” so she won’t need to market it; though she fully expects people to “just know to buy it.” Um, okay.)

It doesn’t work like that: there’s no easy button. Let’s deconstruct.

Writing Is A Business — So Be Professional

Pardon me while I’m a bit indelicate here, but please, take your head out of your ass for a second. Why do people believe that a few tweets will equal book sales? It boggles my mind. Writing is great — I love it. I encourage anyone who feels they have the talent to pursue the craft, work with professionals, and create an amazing book which will have the greatest chance of catching the eye of a reader to do so.

But there’s the rub: how to catch the eye of a reader. With 1,000 books released daily in the US (Source, UNESCO via Wikipedia), how will readers, book bloggers, book clubs, and book reviewers find your book at all? By marketing! Marketing is a function of business. And publishing is a business.

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Quick Links 4 Tips for a Successful Ebook Blog Tour

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Blog tours can be a great way to get buzz for your story, but they can also be a lot of work. Make your blog tour work for you with these great tips from at Digital Book World.

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4 Tips for a Successful Ebook Blog Tour

By: |

 pinup retro woman with travel bag isolatedExpert publishing blog opinions are solely those of the blogger and not necessarily endorsed by DBW.

For every genre of ebook, there are hundreds of book bloggers—people who read books and post reviews on their sites. When ebook authors plan their book launches, many of them add blog tours to their marketing plans. A blog tour is series of pre-arranged blog posts, usually scheduled during the months just before and just after a book launch.

The exposure ebook authors receive in blog tours can help jumpstart interest in their book. The book cover will be introduced to all the bloggers’ followers, and an enthusiastic review can generate the buzz a title needs to get off to a strong start.

But blog tours can be a lot of work. And sometimes, especially for first-time self-published authors, blog tours don’t generate as many sales as anticipated.

There are specific steps, though, that you can take to help make your blog tour successful.

1. Start Early and Be a Blogger Yourself

Bloggers are more likely to agree to write a blog post about your book if they already have a relationship with you. That’s why it’s important to start networking as early as possible. If you are a member of your genre’s blogging community, you will have many advantages when your book launches. First and foremost, you will have personal connections with the other bloggers, so they’ll be inclined to read and review your book. People in these networks become friends with other authors and often support each other.

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Quick Links: How Indie Authors Should Price a Book for Optimal Success

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How do you decide the right price for your book? Too little and you risk not making any money and also possibly turning some audience away. Too much and you definitely risk turning people away. Over at Digital Book World, shares her tips on book pricing.

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How Indie Authors Should Price a Book for Optimal Success

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Best Price GuaranteedSometimes the simplest thing you can do to give your book a boost is play around with the pricing.

It’s one thing to have a book, but it’s quite another to have one that actually sells. You have probably heard this from other indie authors, or even experienced it yourself. Your book gets added to Amazon, full of pomp and circumstance, and then, nothing.

It’s disheartening to see your hard work just sit there. But here’s the good news: this might be an easy fix.

How you price your book is something we don’t often think of as a trigger for book promotion or how to sell more books, but it is. First, let’s look at two important factors. Your book’s perceived value vs. the going market rate.

Look at other books. First and foremost, see what others are charging in your market. You may be surprised by what you find. It’s never a good idea to price your book outside of what the market can bear, even if you toiled over the book, worked endlessly, lost sleep, etc.

My book is worth more! Yes, I know. Your book is worth a heck of a lot more. In fact, if you add up all the hours you spent working on it, you probably couldn’t charge enough for it. Here’s the thing, though: you can’t focus on your worth or your book’s worth—you have to focus on what the market will bear.

Consider the ebook. In general, I find that most traditional publishers don’t know how to price an ebook. I’ll see ebooks priced at $9.99 and up, which is a deterrent for most readers. As you build your marketing plan, keep in mind that ebooks should not be priced equal to their print counterparts. Even pricing them within a dollar or two of a $14.95 book is too high.

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Quick Link: How to Get Book Reviews: 10 Tricks for Getting Your Book Reviewed by a Book Blogger

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Book reviews are really important for building trust for new readers. One often overlooked resource is book bloggers. Book bloggers will often post on Amazon and other sites as well. Barb Drozdowich has all the details, including a link to a list of book blogging sites.  All on Anne R Allen’s Blog.

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How to Get Book Reviews: 10 Tricks for Getting Your Book Reviewed by a Book Blogger

Good Better Best Keys Represent Ratings And ImprovementJuly 10, 2016
by Barb Drozdowich

Book review bloggers are friends, not foes–get to know them!

So…who are book bloggers anyways? I know that Anne periodically talks about book bloggers on this blog – but many authors that I talk to seem a bit fuzzy on the subject. I’m going to see if I can help you understand who book bloggers are and help you with some tricks to find some powerful ones to promote your books.

My name is Barb and I’m thoroughly immersed in the book blogger world. One of my sites – The Book Blogger List has well over 2000 book bloggers listed. I’ve also carried out 2 major surveys of book bloggers – the most recent one ended in January. Between the two surveys, I’ve asked questions of 717 bloggers.

I’m in fact a book blogger myself – my book blog is Sugarbeat’s Books – I started blogging in August 2010.

I’ve spent a lot of time in front of a class – college classes, corporate training classes and more lately, virtual classes – always teaching science or technology of some description.

Although I’ve published a lot of books, I tend to come at the publishing world with a different view than most authors.

But you can’t really take the teacher out of the classroom…this will be an active post. And of course you’ll have homework…

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Quick Links: Indie Publishing Paths: What’s Your Reader Retention Plan? Part Five

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So you have finished your book, and even gotten it published. Don’t think you are done yet, you need to have a reader retention plan. Jami Gold has great suggestions for keeping your readers around for the next book at Fiction University.

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Indie Publishing Paths: What’s Your Reader Retention Plan? Part Five

By Jami Gold, @JamiGold

Part of the Indie Authors Series

WisdomIn this Indie Publishing Paths series, we first focused on how to decide which path will work best for us. Once we know our goals and priorities and are ready to put our book up for sale, we need to decide on:

The second phase of our indie publishing journey is to figure out how best to increase our chances for success along our chosen path. Whatever our goal, we’ll have a better chance of success if we can hold onto our readers from book to book.

So far, in the second part of this series, we’ve covered our options for…:

One of the options we discussed in Part One of this Reader Retention Plan phase was enticing our readers to stick around by offering extra content on our website. Let’s take a closer look at what information should be included on our author website and what information we could include as bonuses.

Read the full post on Fiction University

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Quick Links: What is a Media Kit and Why You Need One

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There are many extras an author needs to appear professional. You may already have some things, such as a website and social media presence. But according to at Bad Redhead Media, you also need a media kit. Find out why you need one and what your media kit should consist of.

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What is a Media Kit and Why You Need One by @MFlicksAuthors

social-networking_110003568-012814-intJuly 1, 2016 By Rachel Thompson

Whether you are a multi-published author or in the process of penning your first novel, an author media kit is an essential time-saving tool. Also known as a “press kit,” a media kit is a collection of information pertaining to you, the author, and your book(s).

Why do you need a media kit?

Your author media kit will come in handy when you are reaching out to book bloggers, setting up book tours, contacting event planners, inquiring to publishers and agents, planning online promotions…etc. Imagine having to search through your computer files every time someone requests your author and book information. What a pain! Having it in all together in one doc will cut down on wasted time and let you get back to doing what you love- writing!

(Here’s an example of Rachel’s media kit.  We update it frequently.)

Making your media kit available on your website and blog is also a great way for others to easily find information on you and your book. You can add your media kit as an individual page, on the sidebar in a downloadable link – either way, be sure to label it clearly.

What should you include your author media kit?

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Quick Link: How to Create a Smart + Savvy Publishing Plan

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We have talked about having a marketing plan and even a writing plan. Kristen Kieffer thinks we should be looking at it differently, that we need a publishing plan. Head over to She’s Novel to see if you agree.

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How to Create a Smart + Savvy Publishing Plan

Search for planHello again, lovely friends! I’m so happy you’re here because I am super pumped to talk about today’s topic.

Like, SUPER pumped y’all. Why? Because I get a wee bit passionate sometimes, especially when it comes to helping you guys avoid major (and unfortunately all too common) writing mistakes. Let me back up a second.

So you can find writing, publishing, and marketing “rules” all over the internet, right? I mean, plenty of them are right here on this site, so I am totally not against the “rules”. But I’m also not *not* against the “rules”. And that’s because the “rules” are often techniques that reflect a pattern of successful fiction.

In other words, the “rules” are usually backed by data, wisdom, and years of experience.

But they’re also not the total sum of every writer’s experience ever. We’re all different, and so while most of us (and most of our stories) can benefit from following classic writing “rules”, there are also the outliers. The marks that fly waaaay off the graph.

Catch my drift?

And so, while I’m 100% positive that this relatively new writing “rule” we’re going to talk about today works for some people, I don’t think it has nearly enough time, research, data, and experience to back it up. What “rule” am I getting at here?

I’m talking about the idea that you need to start publishing ASAP if you want your best chance at success.

I’ve seen this advice everywhere lately, and I get where it’s coming from. It’s implying two things, really:

A) That it’s going to take time to begin building your readership, so you should start now.

B) That your first published book is unlikely to be your best, so you might as well get it out of the way and start working on the next one.

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Quick Links: How Goodreads Can Help Writers Grow Their Readership

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Every author knows that social media is important in the hunt to find readers. But how much time have you been spending on Goodreads? If you are like me, you pop in occasionally when you remember or need to do something. Frances Caballo at Live, Write, Thrive presents her case on why you should spend more of your social media time on Goodreads and the benefits thereof.

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How Goodreads Can Help Writers Grow Their Readership

July 1, 2016

goodreadsToday’s post is by social media expert Frances Caballo:

Goodreads has become the most important networking site on the Internet.
—Forbes

Goodreads has a storied beginning. This is how founder and CEO Otis Chandler describes his epiphany to start what has become a powerful online reader resource and social media network:

One afternoon while I was scanning a friend’s bookshelf for ideas, it struck me: when I want to know what books to read, I’d rather turn to a friend than any random person or bestseller list.

So I decided to build a website—a place where I could see my friends’ bookshelves and learn about what they thought of all their books.

And thus in January of 2007, Goodreads began.

The Goodreads of Today

As of January 2016, Goodreads had 40 million members and featured 1.3 billion books and 47 million reviews.

What I find interesting is that many Goodreads users attended college, and even more of them attended graduate school. Goodreads members are educated, love to read, and love to talk about books. Women read more and review more books than men and dominate this online venue. While men aren’t as active on this site as women, they still participate and are a growing force here.

Authors and Goodreads

Many authors join Goodreads and quickly set up their author dashboards. Then perhaps they want to set up a giveaway. What do they do next? Well, a lot of authors I know then start to neglect Goodreads when the giveaway ends.

Too many writers don’t understand the benefits of maintaining a presence, reviewing books, adding favorite quotes, or joining groups.

Some writers neglect Goodreads to their detriment.

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Quick Links: How to Create a Link on Amazon for Book Reviewers

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Who doesn’t want more reviews! The awesome Shelly Hitz has a great way to add a direct link to the Amazon review section of your book, making it oh so easy for readers to review your title.

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How to Create a Link on Amazon for Book Reviewers

abstract_110006583-1013int-011314intAll authors love to get new reviews on their books in Amazon, right? Reviews give more credibility and social proof to your book.

Therefore, in this post I decided to share with you how to create a direct link on Amazon for book reviewers to post their reviews.

How to Create the Link

Today I have a question from Paula Moldenhouer. She recently saw me share my Amazon presentation at a conference and loved the ninja tip I shared for creating a custom review link. However, she needed a little more help setting it up and so sent me this question through my “Ask Shelley” page.

“I love your idea of putting the link for reviewing your book in newsletters, blogs, etc., but as I’m on Amazon I’m not sure which link that is. I’m assuming you don’t want all the extra letters that would connect stuff to my account, but at the same time, when I take them away I only get a blurb of how to write a review, it doesn’t seem to be connected to my product.”

First of all, I would like to thank Paula for asking that question. I’m sure a lot of you will benefit from it.

So here is the step by step process of how you can create a link for your book reviewers.

Before we go any further, I would like to recommend that you optimize your book on Amazon for selling more books.

There are actually two ways that you can do it.

In the “Write a Customer Review” Block

The first technique is to go to your Amazon book page and click the “Write a Customer Review” block.

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Quick Links: Finding Your Audience Part Two – Think Long Term & Build Relationships

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This is the second article in Angela Quarles’ series on finding an audience, hosted at Fiction University. She has some great points about being genuine and building a connection instead of bombarding people.

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Finding Your Audience Part Two – Think Long Term & Build Relationships

By Angela Quarles, @AngelaQuarles

Thursday, June 30

People sitting in an audiencePart of the Indie Author Series

In last month’s post, I talked about the pre-release steps you can take to find your audience. Today, I’m tackling finding your audience after your book’s launch.

Lessons to learn from non-fiction writers

As you’ve probably already noticed, it’s easier to find articles on this topic for non-fiction writers because their book’s subject helps direct them on where to find their audience. Plus, there are clear strategies one can take to build a platform. The challenge is slightly different for us, but I think it’ll be helpful to understand a little why it’s easier (not easy, but relatively easier) for them so that we can find the right approach.

Why is it easier for them? Non-fiction writers can go to where their audience is, since humans are great at organizing around shared interests and goals. If their non-fiction book is about grooming long-haired dogs, they can search out forums and blogs and podcasts on the subject. They can also set themselves up as subject matter experts by creating their own platform through the internet and through speaking engagements.

Think beyond sales

I think most writers worry about finding their audience because they’re staring at the barely moving needle on their sales dashboard. So most will go about it by thinking the solution is to blast their book anywhere and everywhere on social media. That will make people buy it, right? Or they think that’s the only way, and they hate even the thought of it, so they bypass looking at it in any other angle. Instead, they hope that if they put their best book out there, the writing will speak for itself and the audience will eventually come.

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Quick Links: Turning Losing into Winning: The Kindle Scout Experience

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Have you heard of Amazon’s Kindle Scout program? I love it! Authors submit their titles to the program in hopes of winning a publishing contract through Amazon. Users vote on the different titles and if a book that they nominated is selected, they get a free copy.

But even if you are not selected for a publishing contract, authors can still win. The people that voted for you are notified when the book goes on sale at Amazon. I have purchased titles this way because I didn’t want to miss out on the story.  Melissa Bowersock at Indies Unlimited has all the details.

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Turning Losing into Winning: The Kindle Scout Experience

Melissa Bowersock

Posted on

kscoutWhen I finished my latest book, Finding Travis, a time travel story, I sent it out to beta readers and prepared to self-publish as I always do. But then a friend began broadcasting the news that she had entered her latest book in the Kindle Scout program and was looking for nominations. I remembered that another friend had entered his book in the program months ago, and had won the coveted publishing contract with Amazon. Because I really, really liked this new book of mine, and because I had built up quite a decent fan base, I decided to try Kindle Scout for myself.

The Kindle Scout campaign is a two-pronged deal. Amazon evaluates the book on its own merit, but they also look at the number of nominations a book receives from potential readers. Because Amazon doesn’t ever tell us how it writes its algorithms or how it decides what’s a winning book and what isn’t, it’s hard to know exactly how to go after the win. The only things that were in my control were (1) writing a good book; and (2) getting as many people as possible to nominate the book. So that’s what I did.

Some people might balk at the idea of nominating a book they haven’t read. I totally understand. However, Kindle Scout creates a landing page for each book and includes the cover, a short blurb, and the first chapter as a sample for voters to read. Readers can then decide for themselves if they feel the book is a winner, or they might simply go on the author’s past performance.

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Quick Link: I Lost $6,500 on My Last Book Launch: Details, final tally, lessons learned

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Poor Linda Formichelli! She had a horrible experience launching her last book, but was gracious enough to share her experiences at Renegade Writer Press. Be careful out there!

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I Lost $6,500 on My Last Book Launch: Details, final tally, lessons learned

Linda Formichelli

Be careful out there!
Be careful out there!

Hello, Renegades! You may remember that I started a series of posts on the work and expenses that have gone into writing and publishing my new book, How to Do It All: The Revolutionary Plan to Create a Full, Meaningful Life — While Only Occasionally Wanting to Poke Your Eyes Out With a Sharpie.

I promised to follow up with a final accounting and to let you know if all the work and expense was worth it. That’s what you’re reading now.

In short, I’ll tell you that the book cover designer, interior layout designer, and proofreader were all 100% worth the cost. They all delivered on what they promised in their contracts.

The launch team that constituted the bulk of my expenses ($6,500 of the $10,000 spent)? That’s another story. I learned a lot of hard lessons from this, and hope you will, too, as I’m passionate about helping writers and want to make sure no other self-publisher has to go through what I experienced.

Some key information to remember as you read this: How to Do It All is a nonfiction self-help title aimed at a female audience between the ages of 20-60.

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Quick Links: Book Cover Redesign as Marketing Tool

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We have talked about how important having a good cover is, after all it is what your story is first judged by. But did you know that just having your cover redesigned professionally can do wonders for sales? Jane Friedman explains.

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Book Cover Redesign as Marketing Tool

Posted on June 23, 2016 by Alexander von Ness

Getting professional help is always a good option
Getting professional help is always a good option

Today’s guest post is from graphic designer Alexander von Ness (@AlexandervonNes), founder of Nessgraphica and Bookcoverpedia.
Authors may spend a fortune on book editing, but leave very little for the cover design—thus forgetting that the cover is the reader’s first impression of the book.

If you are a well-known author, your books may sell themselves because readers trust the story or the content, but if you are new, then you need to make a statement with the first thing a reader sees: the book cover design. And if your existing book cover design isn’t currently making a good impression, you may want to consider a professional redesign.

Last year, I had almost the same amount of work with redesigns of already-published books as with new books. Even a simple redesign of a book cover can create miracles marketing-wise. Some authors have even requested redesigns of over ten books after seeing how much a book cover redesign can increase sales. A professional book cover design isn’t just a sign of good content but appreciation of your own hard work.

In the next few examples of real book cover redesigns, I offer a short explanation of the challenges and goals I had in redesigning each cover.

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Quick Links: When Less Is More on Social Media

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I don’t know about you, but I am totally overwhelmed with dealing with social media. It takes time to really connect and do justice to the people who are wonderful enough to engage with you. So when I read Jane Friedman‘s post on managing social media, I knew I wasn’t the only one. It has some great tips!

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When Less Is More on Social Media

Too much social media can be overwhelming
Too much social media can be overwhelming

June 22, 2016 by Chris Syme

Today’s guest post is from social media expert Chris Syme (@cksyme). Learn about her June master class.

Social media boasts some pretty staggering numbers: nearly two-thirds of American adults use social media. And 70 percent of those users ages thirteen and up are on Facebook, according to the Pew Research Center.

Authors feel the steady pressure to be on social media channels promoting themselves, promoting their books, and searching for those ever-elusive readers. Some marketers tout it like it’s a magic pill, encouraging authors to be in every possible corner of the social media universe. After all, you don’t want to miss anybody, right?

The trouble with this advice is that it is antithetical to the present marketing culture. Marketing in this day and age is not about casting a wide net to get all the fish. It’s about knowing who your audience is, understanding where the best spots to find them are, and going narrow with the best channels for optimum results. If you want maximum results from your social media channels, less is more.

Fewer Channels Means More Engagement
I have long been an advocate of being on fewer social media channels to maximize engagement. There are several reasons for that, but I’ll give you the main three:

  • Finding where your audience members spend the most time makes it easier to target them.
  • Spending time on channels that grab less than 25 percent of the users online is a waste unless it is a niche channel specific to your audience.
  • Every channel is not conducive to selling. Choose channels where you can engage and sell.

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