Book Reviews, Thoughts, and Random Interesting Ideas

Book Marketing Part 3:

In my previous posts on the book marketing topic, I talked about some of the things that I have tried from a marketing perspective. Book Marketing Part 3 – The Fog Begins to Lift means that some of this marketing stuff is beginning to become clear to me. Working through some of the topics I have has helped clarify things for me and will help me formulate a marketing plan for 2015. Today, I want to talk about KDP, Kindle Select, Kindle Unlimited and a few others. Let’s get started!

Kindle, KDP, Kindle Select, Kindle Unlimited, and Smashwords

I published all 4 of The Gemstone Chronicles on Kindle, Smashwords, and Createspace. As most of you know, Kindle is the heavyweight in the self-publishing world, so you must have a presence there (at least that’s my opinion). If you are part of Kindle Direct (KDP), then you can publish on other platforms and expand your market options. That is where I personally have seen the best results. If you are part of Kindle Select or Kindle Unlimited, then you can only sell ebooks through Amazon. This can be good or bad, depending on your perspective.

Some authors who unpublished their works on Smashwords, Kobo, iBooks, etc. to go exclusive on Kindle Unlimited and have done very well with that strategy. I know others who locked themselves into the 3 month Kindle Select program and didn’t see any boost at all. I tried Kindle Select and it didn’t work for me. While I still get a majority of my ebooks sales through Amazon, I do get a nice percentage of sales from Smashwords (and via Kobo, iBooks, and other outlets with whom Smashwords partners). I haven’t tried Kindle Unlimited as I don’t want to withdraw my books from those other outlets.

As with other book marketing options, you just have to try them to see which works best for your situation. Remember, too, that these companies are all for-profit organizations, so the decisions they make are in their best interests, not necessarily yours. I’m certainly not bashing the companies for making a profit. Without profits, they wouldn’t be in existence, but they are going to make decisions that most benefit themselves.

BookBub

Bookbub is an interesting site to visit and consider. I cannot say that I have used Bookbub, but that is simply a matter of economics for me. As I have mentioned in the previous posts, I have little to no promotional budget, so BookBub just doesn’t work for me at this time. I know authors who have used it and done very well. Let me give you some BookBub stats for what it would be for one of my books.

For Fantasy, Bookbub has 950,000+ subscribers. Depending on the price of the book, there are different prices for the promotion that range between $175 and $875. A fantasy book averages 17,400 downloads and 1360 sales. The range of sales is 210 – 3530. What this means to me is that I could reduce the price of a book to $0.99, pay $325 for the promotion, and, if I sell the average, make $1021. However, if I sell on the low-end (210 books sold), then I lose money.

However, it isn’t simply a make or lose money decision. If I run that promotion and I sell 210 of The Carnelian and sell 210 of The Amethyst (for which I didn’t pay any promotional fee to BookBub) as a result of a reader becoming interested in the series after buying the first book as part of the promotion, then I come out ahead. Remember, this is about promotion and marketing, so getting the book out there to the public is the goal! Here is the link to BookBub’s listing requirements. This page will give you all the information you need to try to get listed on BookBub!

As I sell books, I do try to set some aside for promotional efforts. Once I get enough saved up, I think I will give BookBub a try. I have heard that it isn’t the easiest place to get accepted, and many authors I have talked with have submitted multiple times before getting accepted. Don’t be discouraged! If you don’t get on BookBub initially, try other options until BookBub accepts your submission!

BookViral

BookViral is similar to BookBub in that it is a pay site. Unlike BookBub, though, BookViral provides a review and promotional activity for a period of time. I did give BookViral a try for The Carnelian (here is the link) and did get some sales from it, but I don’t think I recovered the amount spent for the listing. The review was great and they do a good job of tweeting it, posting it on Facebook, and other social media sites, so there certainly is a lot of exposure to be gained from the site. It is reasonably priced, I think, and cost me about $120 to do the promotion.

Since the links provided at BookViral are links to Amazon, the selling price is whatever you have at that time. it might be a good option to try while you are waiting on acceptance from BookBub, although BookViral does say that they have standards for approval as well, so I can’t say how difficult it is to get accepted. I know that they did accept mine on first submission.

Clean Indie Reads

Clean Indie Reads is a great website I found a couple of years ago. The site targets middle grade and up and is the home of flinch-free fiction. This means there isn’t any erotica or sexually explicit material, minimal curse words (including no “F words”), and no graphic violence or gore. My books are middle grade and up and meet the other criteria. It was a great place to list them. CIR consists of a great bunch of authors that are always ready to help and will retweet and provide support for the CIR group. If you have flinch-free books, give CIR a try!! Here is a link to my CIR page so you can get an idea of what it’s like.

There are so many options out there for marketing opportunities. I tried to provide a bit of information in book marketing part 3. This small sampling and those from the previous posts cannot begin to list them all. In my next post, I’ll introduce some other opportunities of which I am aware. If you want to share what has worked for your and your marketing efforts, leave me a comment. I would love to check them out! Let’s all sell more books in 2015!

Connect with me:

Connect with me! Find me on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads! I always enjoy meeting new people and making new connections. If you have read any of The Gemstone Chronicles, I would love to know what you thought and would appreciate a review on Amazon, Goodreads, or Smashwords! Happy New Year and best wishes for a fantastic 2015!!

In the first of my posts relating to my experiences with book marketing, I talked about a few methods I discovered to help with my book marketing efforts. In this post, Book Marketing Part 2 – Onward Through the Fog, I will continue with more marketing opportunities I have found. Some of these I have used successfully and some not so successfully, but, as I have said before, authors have to find what works best for their books! I will start with blogs.

Blogs:

I highly recommend every author create a blog. Having a blog does a number of things for authors. First, it gives a place to discuss all things related to your books. On your blog, you can discuss upcoming releases, share reviews from readers, create the all-important relationships with readers, and generally improve writing skills. While a blog isn’t a novel, it’s still writing. Practice never hurts, and a blog is an opportunity to experiment with different styles or simply hone your normal style. And, a little shameless self promotion never hurts and since it is your site, promote away! Here is the cover of the first book of my series (my shameless self promotion):

I use my blog (as you have probably noticed) to write about more than The Gemstone Chronicles. I write posts on gemstone hunting, gold prospecting, vacations, my dream car (1973 Corvette Convertible), submarines, and other things that interest me. It isn’t that marketing my books aren’t important to me, but there are so many other things to talk about that I just included them. I used to post reviews on my blog, too, and I could go back to doing that, but I decided to post the reviews where they would help the authors more. My reviews now go on Amazon (in multiple countries since many of my author friends are in other countries and this gives them exposure in their markets), Goodreads, and Barnes and Noble.

Selling on my blog:

I know authors who sell their books through their site, post reviews for other authors, and have created an amazing fan base. A blog is fantastic for all of those and much more. Blogs don’t have to be a major monetary investment as there are a number of free hosting options out there. I spent a little bit of money on mine and have my own domain as it provides the option for selling ads or other revenue sources, should I choose to do that in the future. The WordPress Booktable plug-in allows me to list my books with links to sites that sell them. I do keep a few copies of each of my books on hand so that if someone asks for an autographed copy, I can send it right along.

Other blogs:

I don’t visit other blogs as often as I should, although I subscribe to a number of them and get a feed about their posts. I will visit them on occasion and take a look, but I don’t comment as much as I should. This is an untapped resource for me, but I want to make sure I am commenting because I enjoyed the information in the post. I don’t want to comment simply to try to gain favor with blogger. I rarely ask for reviews from bloggers, so I don’t think I’m in danger of that, but still, I want to make constructive comments. And don’t limit yourself to book review blogs. If you are interested in a blog, read it, comment, and help the blogger build an audience. Again, this is about relationships!

There are ways to use blogs, though, that will help book marketing. Blog tours are great and relatively inexpensive (and sometimes free). Check them out and see what they can do for you. Remember that bloggers are writers, too, so helping bloggers build audiences is helping out fellow writers. I know I try! Below are some blogs I follow:

Never Enough Thyme

Blogs-Of-A-Bookaholic

A Little Bit of R&R – Book Blog

Mark Brandon Allen

You can also find other blogs and sites I follow on my Links Tab!

I could go on and on about blogs, but I think you get the gist. Start blogging and meeting new bloggers, it’s worth the time and effort!

Shifting gears now to discuss one of my favorite sites, the Independent Author Network!

Independent Author Network (#IAN1):

One of the first sites I joined was the independent Author Network. It’s a one-time set up fee of $24.95 to join and list 1-6 of your books. You get an author page with links to selling sites. You can list your books in the IAN store, and you get to interact with some pretty amazing authors. There is a social network page for members only that is part of the membership. IAN tweets over 100 member pages per day, 7 days a week, so that is a ton of free exposure. Members also tweet other members pages and links to multiply the exposure. Using the #IAN1 will help, too. You can even post links to book trailers and radio interviews! Give IAN a try, but remember, you can help determine how many visitors your page gets each month. If you happen to have the most in a month, you win more free publicity, so give IAN a try! Find my IAN page here!

Indie Authors & Readers

Author Marketing Club

Book Marketing & Book Promotion

Book Reviewers

LinkedIn:

Most people know LinkedIn as a professional network that connects people in similar industries and similar occupations with others. It’s a great place for finding new opportunities for employment, making connections in new organizations, and finding help with business related questions. Authors are professionals and have many of the same networking and opportunity questions as those in other professions, so why not leverage LinkedIn as part of your marketing strategy. There are groups to follow, people to connect with, and professional sources to find – all with the click of the mouse on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Resources:

There are a ton of book reviewers, editors, authors, writing coaches, and publishers for you to connect with and tap into their knowledge base. One of the great things about LinkedIn is that you can find groups that match all of your interests. For instance, I joined groups about gold prospecting, submarines, Naval Nuclear Power, and business groups, as well as writing, publishing, book promotion, and reviews. This may seem redundant to some of the groups on Facebook and that may be true, but it seems to be a different set of people in these groups. I have found some of the best resources on LinkedIn and, like any of the other sites, the Indie authors are very helpful! Find me on LinkedIn here! I listed some of my favorite LinkedIn groups below.

Book Reviewers

Book Marketing

Self Published and Indie Author Networking Group

Book Writing, Self Publishing, and Marketing for Business People

I hope some of these sites and groups will help you with your marketing plan and branding of your books! I know they have helped me tremendously. But, that begs a question: what sites, blogs, or groups have helped you discover and create effective marketing plans? Leave me a comment and let me know. I’m always willing to learn new things!!

Connect with me:

Find me on Twitter, Facebook, and Goodreads! I look forward to meeting you!

As I promised in my post from last week, I’m doing a post on book marketing. As an indie author, I don’t have a large marketing budget (or any marketing budget), a staff to do the work, or some high-powered PR firm working on my behalf. What do I have, then, that I can use to market The Gemstone Chronicles and try to make readers aware of the series? This is where the book marketing confusion sets in! Book marketing is a lot more than posting links and pictures of your books (like this):

In this post and subsequent posts, I will try to relate the things I have tried and things I want to try. I’ve never been on any of the bestseller lists, so I may not have all of the answers (OK, I may not have any of the answers), but here goes!

First, don’t let the idea of marketing scare you! There are many different forms of marketing, so it’s not like you have to get out there and knock on people’s doors or make cold calls. The internet is a great resource for finding readers or finding advice on how to find readers. There are sites that you can pay to promote your books and there are sites that offer free publicity. There are blog tours, your own blog, your friends blogs, Facebook groups, Twitter, and a ton of other options.

With all of the choices out there, it can be overwhelming. To try to make some sense of it all, I’ll try to break down the categories into manageable chunks! This will be the first of  a few posts about book marketing options. There are books written about book marketing, so I certainly can’t cover them all in a few posts, but I will try to give an overview.

Facebook:

Let’s start with Facebook. The first thing I recommend is that you create a page for your book. I also recommend that you keep it separate from your personal page. Use your book page to promote your book. Find other authors in the same or similar genre and develop relationships with them. Visit their pages, leave likes and comments, and share and like there posts about their books. Don’t do it gratuitously, do it sincerely.

They will help you in return, but no one likes a fraud. Don’t send out post after post screaming for people to buy your book. Just like telemarketing, it is annoying and will turn off potential readers and friends! Here is the link to my page on Facebook. It probably isn’t the best example to use, but it will give you a general idea of what I am trying to demonstrate!

Another great thing about Facebook are the great groups out there! There are groups that allow shameless self promotion and there are others that allow limited promotion and still others that don’t allow promotion at all. Many of these groups are closed groups, meaning that you will have to request to join the groups, but they are definitely worth it (IMHO)! The groups that shows as closed groups require permission to join. Some of my favorites (with links) are:

Book Review Depot (closed group)

Clean Indie Reads (closed group)

Authors, Reviewer, & Book Lovers (closed group)

Indie Author Book Promotion Page

I’m sure there are tons of others (and I’m a member of some of them), so you have to find the groups you feel comfortable in and become active in the groups. You can learn a lot and meet some really great people, so give it a try!

Goodreads:

Goodreads is a great resource for both authors and readers. The site is basically a giant book club with millions of members. For authors, there are lots of different options to promote books. Similar to Facebook, you can join groups of members with similar interests, find groups that allow book promotion, offer books to readers for review, post reviews, and many other activities. Goodreads even has a walk-through for authors to give them ideas about how to use Goodreads for book marketing and promotion. As with Facebook, join groups, participate, and grow your network of readers and writers. You can meet great people at Goodreads, find great books to read, and maybe learn a thing or two! You can find me on Goodreads here and I welcome new friends!

Twitter:

Twitter is the place to do microblogging. On Twitter, you can tweet about anything as long as it is 140 characters or less. You learn to become very creative to fit what you want to say into 140 characters. Hashtags are a must in Twitter, so learn to use them well. For authors, hashtags are great to get retweets of your tweets, but like everything else, don’t just hammer out posts that scream “BUY MY BOOK!” That will turn off potential followers (who are potential readers). Instead, get to know other authors and readers, tweet about them and their books and reviews, and occasionally post tweets about your own work. I’ve found that the more you help others, the more help you receive, but again, I urge you to be genuine about it. Book marketing is hard enough, but being insincere can make it a lot harder! I can be found here if you want to connect with me on Twitter! Some of my favorite hashtags are #BYNR (Book Your Next Read), #CR4U (Clean Reads for You), #amwriting, #IAN1 (Independent Author Network) and #thegemstonechronicles.

iAuthor:

iAuthor is fairly new to me. On iAuthor, you create on own advertisement for your book(s). It’s free, which as an Indie author without an advertising budget, is great. The site gives you an option to add your books to existing themes, or you can create your own theme. Themes can be just about anything. For example, I have two adverts on iAuthor for Book One: The Carnelian and Book Two: The Amethyst. They are in multiple themes including Indie Books Looking for Reviewers, Books from a Series, Children’s books that will also engage adults, and Books by members of the Independent Author Network.

As an author, you get a dashboard that shows you where views of your adverts activity occurred and will help you tailor campaigns where you are getting the most activity. I like that you can follow authors, like covers, read samples, like and follow themes, and many other things. Give iAuthor a try!

I’ll stop here for this post. In the next post of this series, I’ll discuss blogs, the Independent Author Network, Kindle, KDP, Kindle Unlimited, Kindle Select, and a few other things, so stay tuned! Hopefully, by the time I’m done, we will all learn some new things about book marketing.

If you are an author, what book marketing techniques do you use that work for you and what hasn’t worked? If you are a reader, how do you find books to read? What is your opinion of Indie authors and their books? Leave me a comment and let me know!! I always look forward to comments and shares!