Marketing a self published book?

[oOTomOo]

Hi,

I've had a quick flick through here and there look to be a few folk who have self published books on Amazon.

My wife has just done the same with a new romantic novel she has been writing and I was wondering if anyone had any top tips on how to go about promoting such a thing?

Any advice greatly appreciated.

Tom

[andyroo]

I wrote a blog post on a fellow author's blog detailing everything I did to launch my book, Vessel. I've since sold around 15,000 copies in 7 months, so hopefully there's some value in it!

Here's the post: http://www.michaelgrumley.com/guest-post-andrew-mo...

[oOTomOo]

Thanks Andy, that was a good read.

I think I'll look at updating the book description soon, I didn't think you could put HTML tags in there, but I have seen a couple with h2's and bold in there so will try and give it some more punch.

Out of interest, how did you use the Bookbub promotion?

Did you give it away for free or drop it to 99c?

There seems to be a split opinion on if it's best to give it away for free and have it appear later in a load of "People who bought this also bought" links after the promotion, or to charge a little for it so it goes up the paid charts. I understand free downloads no longer count towards the paid charts..
If you charge for it I see the bookbubb fee is also more.

[andyroo]

oOTomOo said:

Thanks Andy, that was a good read.

I think I'll look at updating the book description soon, I didn't think you could put HTML tags in there, but I have seen a couple with h2's and bold in there so will try and give it some more punch.

Out of interest, how did you use the Bookbub promotion?

Did you give it away for free or drop it to 99c?

There seems to be a split opinion on if it's best to give it away for free and have it appear later in a load of "People who bought this also bought" links after the promotion, or to charge a little for it so it goes up the paid charts. I understand free downloads no longer count towards the paid charts..
If you charge for it I see the bookbubb fee is also more.

I have used bookbub free on a previous book with impressive results, but they haven't accepted my current book for a paid promo as of yet. People who have had a bookbub have done very well from it though, so it's well worth the money. In terms of pricing, my strategy at the moment is to have my most current book at 99p to draw the numbers, and every other book (one at the moment) at £3.99 to soak up the follow on. Hopefully with a few books under my belt this should pay off and stop the old three month shelf life you get when you stick a new book up at full price and leave it to sink slowly down the charts.

[oOTomOo]

Cheers,

I think we'll take a punt at the free one first..

[R_U_LOCAL]

andyroo said:

15,000 copies in 7 months

Wow! That is impressive - I thought I'd done well shifting 250 in 2 months!

Out of interest, have you produced a print version of any of your books? I'm currently waiting for the first proof of mine to arrive via Createspace.

[andyroo]

oOTomOo said:

Cheers,

I think we'll take a punt at the free one first..

Best of luck. You can find the quality of readership goes down with people who download free books and you end up getting unnecessarily low reviews. you'd think people downloading freebies would be more lenient, but I'm not the only one who's had problems with the freebie stuff, plus it does nothing to affect your paid rank. I'd avoid it. If the bookbub rates are too expensive, I'd go for a 99p promo with some of the others promoters instead

[andyroo]

R_U_LOCAL said:

Wow! That is impressive - I thought I'd done well shifting 250 in 2 months!

Out of interest, have you produced a print version of any of your books? I'm currently waiting for the first proof of mine to arrive via Createspace.

250 is still very good, especially without promo.

I haven't, but I should. It's free money, really! I've got some other bits happening at the moment, but I've earmarked some time to get the print versions up and running after that.

[R_U_LOCAL]

andyroo said:

I haven't, but I should. It's free money, really! I've got some other bits happening at the moment, but I've earmarked some time to get the print versions up and running after that.

It was more difficult formatting for print than I expected and the cover required quite a lot of effort & some swearing at photoshop. I reckon it took me a full week to format, but I'm a complete beginner and next time it'll take me less than half that.

I'll post some pictures up of the Createspace proof when it arrives so you can judge the quality yourself.

On the subject of marketing, would you take a diffeent approach for a non-fiction book than you did with your novel?

[andyroo]

R_U_LOCAL said:

It was more difficult formatting for print than I expected and the cover required quite a lot of effort & some swearing at photoshop. I reckon it took me a full week to format, but I'm a complete beginner and next time it'll take me less than half that.

I'll post some pictures up of the Createspace proof when it arrives so you can judge the quality yourself.

On the subject of marketing, would you take a diffeent approach for a non-fiction book than you did with your novel?

That would great, thanks.

Probably not, but I don't know how many of the advertisers cater for non fiction. That'll be the sticking point.

[oOTomOo]

We put my Wife's book on create space. The interior was fairly easy to do - Create space did a good job of formatting the word doc we uploaded so I just spent a bit of time fiddling with the fonts.

The cover took more time because the cover she bought was only an eBook version and was a tiny resolution. I spent a full day re-making the cover, up scaling it and giving it a spine and a back cover. Again, create space give you templates for this which are the right size for your book. Then you just print to PDF and make sure the 'paper' size is what create space want. All in all it wasn't too painful.

For future books I'll be making the paperback cover first then taking the eBook version from that rather than vice versa!

[Adam B]

andyroo said:

Best of luck. You can find the quality of readership goes down with people who download free books and you end up getting unnecessarily low reviews. you'd think people downloading freebies would be more lenient, but I'm not the only one who's had problems with the freebie stuff, plus it does nothing to affect your paid rank. I'd avoid it. If the bookbub rates are too expensive, I'd go for a 99p promo with some of the others promoters instead

I have given a free book a poor review, I don't write many Amazon reviews TBH but I don't take into account the price when it comes to paperback as the cost is my time not the 99p vs 0p purchase price. The quality of books and accompanying reviews of cheap or free books (cheap classics or good promotions aside, I mean new authors) is so patchy I tend to avoid them now.

[CatfishCKY]

Page bookmarked.
I need to get something done with mine - I have two published on eBook and have only sold maybe 50 copies combined since last year

[andyroo]

Adam B said:

I have given a free book a poor review, I don't write many Amazon reviews TBH but I don't take into account the price when it comes to paperback as the cost is my time not the 99p vs 0p purchase price. The quality of books and accompanying reviews of cheap or free books (cheap classics or good promotions aside, I mean new authors) is so patchy I tend to avoid them now.

Based on my experiences, free promos result in lower ratings than paid promos. Other authors have mentioned the same. Of course, that isn't necessarily true of every single review!

[Adam B]

andyroo said:

Based on my experiences, free promos result in lower ratings than paid promos. Other authors have mentioned the same. Of course, that isn't necessarily true of every single review!

Oh I can well believe it, as you say the quality of the readership probably goes down, and the knuckle dragger quotient increases. I was just explaining why I wouldn't give a more favourable review for a cheap or free book, as the time wasted reading rubbish is much more precious than the 99p

[andyroo]

Adam B said:

Oh I can well believe it, as you say the quality of the readership probably goes down, and the knuckle dragger quotient increases. I was just explaining why I wouldn't give a more favourable review for a cheap or free book, as the time wasted reading rubbish is much more precious than the 99p

If only every reviewer were like you . . . Getting bad reviews from people who don't like the genre or haven't heard of British English or stupid stuff like that is far too commonplace!