Once a self-published, indie book is on a platform, the next step is marketing, which was discussed in earlier posts on this blog and is closely tied to distribution. There are many helpful promotion sites.
My recommendation is to get to aggregates sites, lists with addresses of FREE sites that will help promote your book and try them out. But keep track of what works for your book or you will be creating and recreating the wheel.
It is almost impossible to keep up with this if solo, yet some of us try our hand at various marketing avenues. As long as you keep track of at least what does NOT work for your book, you will avoid reinventing the wheel. In the end, "Distribution is King" as long as your book can be found easily.
If key metadata like title and conventional author are missing, it will be more difficult for others
to find the book -- even Facebook does not accept a book on my favorite's list if no author name
provided. Currently, they do not accept editors in the author field, using anything but a true author's name leads to a search error. Same goes for other metadata, try to search titles before you select one. It is probably impossible to have a unique title for long, but hopefully customers can find your book by the name of the author. If you can not use your name for some reason, try a "Pen" name, but try to avoid initials or shortcuts. If you can not fill in a name in the author field, maybe self-publishing is NOT the best route for you at this time, but do not give up as once again in the end "Distribution is King." and books are recommended by word of mouth.
If solo, without anyone helping or paying any third parties, which is the case for many of us, one may have to choose between writing content or marketing, thus aggregate sites like Crosbie's List on Indies Unlimited helps save time.
One of my 2014 favorites websites that "celebrate, educate, and promote independent authors" is Crosbie’s List of Book Promo Sites – 2014 on Indies Unlimited at
http://www.indiesunlimited.com/book-promo-sites/
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Monday, October 8, 2012
Marketing Your Ebook: Part 1
Many say that writing the book is the easy part, but marketing is the real challenge.
My book, Walk Forward, was published on Amazon Kindle Select on September 25, 2012. I told family and friends about the book, which because of some early purchases, had a high rating in its very narrow subject area of non fiction, historical, holocaust, young adult, and adult categories.
The reason the numbers were high on first publication was because family and friends purchased several copies, and because the book is in a very narrow subject area.
In hindsight, I discovered the secret of a preliminary high rating, a few sales in a narrow subject area, where relatively few publish. My subject areas not being in the mass market, nor would the masses have interest in my topic.
My book is about the search for my lost sister. A newly found relative read the book and emailed me that I left my great-uncle out of the book. I quickly added him and sent the book to Amazon to update.
Updating is easy, but for one problem. The author can not purchase more than one copy of a book, even if it is an update. I understand that this is true for everyone, one can not buy the original copy of a book and the update, a week or two later! Amazon will send the author the updated version, update the version of the book in the Amazon Cloud, but this might take a few days. Thus, it takes some time to see if the live links to websites included in a book, actually work.
Amazon is aware of the problem with readers wanting to purchase updates of books and I hope this issue is resolved quickly as in the case of my ongoing search for my sister, as more information is found, I hope to include it in updates to the book.
Since I had uploaded a MOBI file, the "preview" module does not include the option of seeing the HTML of the uploaded book. When I click on a live link in the book in "preview" mode, it links to the cover of my book, rather than going out to the link.
To revise a MOBI file, one has to recreate the MOBI file and upload the book once again.
Per updates, I emailed Amazon to find out if I could load a book in MOBI and update in HTML, for example, and they replied "Yes," but I decided to continue with MOBI, which was Amazon Kindle's native file, once-upon-a-time.
The "Look Inside" was immediately updated and Amazon sent me an email saying that my book, meaning my revision, was published. New customers purchasing the book would receive the revised book.
Come back to read "Marketing Your Ebook: Part 2," and follow my journey into the secrets and adventures in ebook publishing as it happens!
My book, Walk Forward, was published on Amazon Kindle Select on September 25, 2012. I told family and friends about the book, which because of some early purchases, had a high rating in its very narrow subject area of non fiction, historical, holocaust, young adult, and adult categories.
The reason the numbers were high on first publication was because family and friends purchased several copies, and because the book is in a very narrow subject area.
In hindsight, I discovered the secret of a preliminary high rating, a few sales in a narrow subject area, where relatively few publish. My subject areas not being in the mass market, nor would the masses have interest in my topic.
My book is about the search for my lost sister. A newly found relative read the book and emailed me that I left my great-uncle out of the book. I quickly added him and sent the book to Amazon to update.
Updating is easy, but for one problem. The author can not purchase more than one copy of a book, even if it is an update. I understand that this is true for everyone, one can not buy the original copy of a book and the update, a week or two later! Amazon will send the author the updated version, update the version of the book in the Amazon Cloud, but this might take a few days. Thus, it takes some time to see if the live links to websites included in a book, actually work.
Amazon is aware of the problem with readers wanting to purchase updates of books and I hope this issue is resolved quickly as in the case of my ongoing search for my sister, as more information is found, I hope to include it in updates to the book.
Since I had uploaded a MOBI file, the "preview" module does not include the option of seeing the HTML of the uploaded book. When I click on a live link in the book in "preview" mode, it links to the cover of my book, rather than going out to the link.
To revise a MOBI file, one has to recreate the MOBI file and upload the book once again.
Per updates, I emailed Amazon to find out if I could load a book in MOBI and update in HTML, for example, and they replied "Yes," but I decided to continue with MOBI, which was Amazon Kindle's native file, once-upon-a-time.
The "Look Inside" was immediately updated and Amazon sent me an email saying that my book, meaning my revision, was published. New customers purchasing the book would receive the revised book.
Come back to read "Marketing Your Ebook: Part 2," and follow my journey into the secrets and adventures in ebook publishing as it happens!
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