For authors & aspiring writers (hard-learned best practices/I did your research for you :))
This is post is for aspiring writers or current authors. I’m no expert, but I’ve been working around the clock to try to figure it all out. I've done a ton of research--particularly into promotional opportunities, and want to share what I've learned and hopefully save you some time (it was terribly tedious and I wouldn't wish it upon anyone)! Feel free to comment with your own best practices or things that have worked and not worked.
I wanted to mention something up front: there are no shortcuts for hard work. Oprah isn't going to magically run across your book and be singing your praises. Your facebook friends aren't going to start a viral campaign that will catch on and make your book sales go through the roof. You can expect to make slow but steady process if you continually work hard to promote your book to to the right people.
Writing—pen or computer?
No contest for me. I can’t stand even hand writing a letter or filling out paperwork. If there ever is an EMP or anything that wipes out all electronic devices, I’m toast. I have serious co-dependency issues with my 11� MacBook Air and iPhone.
I use Scrivener for my writing (I couldn’t and wouldn’t go back to Word or equivalent, even if paid). It does have a learning curve and it’s a pain in the booty to move existing projects from Word. Benefits:
- Can outline entire book, chapter by chapter, scene by scene and makes it easy to move scenes and chapters around
- Auto generates table of contents
- Allows you to keep all notes and research (including pictures and links) with your book for easy access
- Compiles every imaginable electronic and hard copy book type for you (though be careful to review� often needs tweaking of the standard settings)
- Keeps track of statistics (word count, estimated page count, etc.)
You can check out Scrivener here (both Mac and Windows versions available): . Best of all� free trial and approximately $45 (USD) to purchase (cheaper for students).
Writing process
1) Read! If every author read every book in their genre (or at least the highly rated ones), there would be a lot less rehashed stories, better writing, and fresh concepts. I read 600 books in the last year. You can find my top 50+ favorites in my earlier blog post here: http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_....
2) Plot! Certainly, there have been some successful books written off the cuff, but to have good pacing, story development, character development, building of tension, etc. it typically takes good plotting.
3) Flexibility! Revise, revise, revise. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Don’t get so stuck on your initial concept that you reject an even better idea.
4) Edit! Editing is hard. I typically go through my book over a hundred times, looking for something different each pass.
5) Proofread! Yes, I list this separately from editing. Have someone (or even better, many someones)—other than you—someone with a sharp eye and very keen grasp of the English language, proofread your book. The brain compensates for missing words, extra words, etc. and they are very hard to find. If problems are found after publishing, fix and update. So, so many books these days are released without even moderate proofreading.
6) Work hard! If you thought the writing was time-consuming and hard, promoting your book takes as much, if not more time. Put in the hours.
7) Thicken your skin! It is unlikely you like every book you read, so you can’t expect everyone to like your book. I’ve adopted the saying: "If you're trying to please everyone, then you're not going to make anything that is honestly yours, I don't think, in the long run."--Viggo Mortensen.
8) Start writing the next one. Your chances increase exponentially of having a ‘hit�, the more offerings you have.
Pre-publishing
1. Work on cover, author bio, author picture, synopsis concurrently with doing your final editing and proofreading. CreateSpace and other self-publishing houses offer (pay for services) to help you create your cover and get your final product ready, if needed. This bears repeating. Do not proofread your own work.
2. Give out advance reading copies (ARCs)â€� You can do through Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ forums or to your Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ friends; Kindle forums; setup a blog launch tour and send ARCs out to reviewers as part of this; or to friends and family. This helps with a couple important thingsâ€� more eyes on it to look for inconsistencies and errors; you will have people ready to review at launch. Ask for fair and honest reviews. It only will hurt you in the long run if you have all your friends and family post bogus reviews that don’t match the general consensus.
Post-publishing
Sit back and relax and watch the books fly out the virtual door, right? Not even close. When you self-publish, you get to do all the promotion.
1. If you want the professional review houses to review your book, get it sent out right away. Note, these all cost (a lot). These are hard-core reviewers, so make sure your book is ready for their scrutiny. And they require a long lead-time. Some allow you to expedite at extra cost, but still, don’t expect anything back for 4-6 weeks. If you are planning to use your (hopefully positive review) as support for a promotional campaign, plan accordingly. Kirkus Reviews, Blue Ink Review, and Foreward Reviews all do professional reviews for a fee, and you can submit your book to a Publisher’s Weekly supplement for a fee and they choose 25% to review from the submissions.
2. Facebook fan page for the book. Create one. To have a friendly name, need 25 fans.
*Special facebook note: harassing your friends and family to buy, read or review your book by facebook is *not* an effective promotional method. It's surely fine to invite them to read, let them know when the book is free, or offer them a free copy in exchange for a fair and honest review. You can share book successes by your facebook fan page to keep your book's name out there. But, there should be no expectation for facebook friends to do marketing for you. If they love your book and choose to share with others in the natural order of things, excellent!
3. Twitter. Use, but don't abuse. I am a definite twitter newbie, and to be honest the constant stream makes me a little nuts. Twitter can be an excellent networking tool and can get your book's name out there, but no need to tweet every minute imho.
4. Add your book to Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ and sign up for an author page. Schedule a giveaway of your paperback book (can do from your author dashboard)—this gets great exposure for your book and potential readers can add the book to their ‘to readâ€� shelf directly from the giveaway signup. Signed copies get more interest than unsigned copies.
5. Create an Amazon author page.
6. Schedule a blog tour (these cost). If you didn’t schedule one for your launch (like me), then schedule far enough out that a) you have a chunk of reviews up on Amazon and Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ, and b) you have professional reviews back. Note that the preparation for the blog tour for the few weeks prior is grueling as you are asked to prepare author interviews, character interviews, top ten lists, and guest posts on various topics.
7. Look for local opportunities to showcase your book. Does your library system showcase local authors? Are there any independent bookstores that will host signings or other author events?
Spend money to make money
Although I took a lot of English and literature classes in college, I was a business major. So this concept comes naturally to me—you can never expect to make money without investing money. Since your book isn’t on display at a local bookstore or on a giant Costco display, you have to work to get your book’s name in front of people. The hope is that after a lot of people have bought your book that you end up on the hallowed ‘Customers also bought� lists on Amazon or equivalent, and then your book sales become self-perpetuating. But to get there, you must promote. There are a number of places that allow you to post your book for free, but many of these places (for preferred placement, to be ‘Book of the Day�, etc.) require a $5 or 10 or $25 or $50 or more investment on your part. Do some research to figure out what will work best for your particular genre. There are a lot of different promotional and advertising options—from twitter campaigns, to facebook posts, to on-site advertising. Unless you have unlimited funds you’ll have to pick and choose. Things you can reasonably expect to spend money on are:
- Cover (if it isn’t eye catching, you lose a chunk of potential buyers right off the bat)
- Editing/proofreading
- Blog tour
- Promoting your ‘freebie�
- Promoting your ‘pay for� book
- Professional book reviews
Key influencers
- Bloggers. I am so incredibly impressed with the book blogging community. These gracious people will often read and review or otherwise promote your book (eg. author interviews, cover reveals, guest posts)� for free. They do it because they love reading, love discovering the hidden gems, and genuinely want to support authors. Please treat them with the utmost respect (regardless of whether they become your book’s biggest fan or not) and don’t make demands. Most of them have ‘to read� lists hundreds of books long. Unless you are part of a scheduled book tour, you cannot expect them to read and review on your timetable.
Each blog has hundreds to thousands of followers that respect that blogger’s opinion. So every time your book is featured on a blog your book is not only exposed to a lot of people, but the right people. First, their followers all read a lot of books! Second, they read your book’s genre. You can’t get a more highly targeted promotion than that.
- Professional reviewers. Professional reviews have a lot of sway, both with readers and with industry decision makers (from libraries, to agents and publishers). Definitely worth pursuing if you believe your book will merit positive reviews.
- Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ community. Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ is another excellent place to promote your book. Where else can you find millions of readers looking for their next purchase? Plus, through the various Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ forums (which are targeted to specific genres) you can find people willing to write a fair and honest review in exchange for a copy of your book. You can notify friends and fans of upcoming events (like a blog tour, signing, or new release). You can do book giveaways to help get exposure. And they have reasonably priced (you set a daily limit) self-serve, targeted advertising to drive people to your giveaway, place of purchase, or Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ book page so that people can add it to their bookshelf.
Special promo tips (general and for KDP Select—The Freebie)
I naively assumed that if I signed up for KDP Select that Amazon would promote my book on my free days. Ha. Joke was on me. Below are both free and paid opportunities to post your freebie offer or pay-for book. Some listings are done day-of the freebie, but most have to be scheduled way in advance, so plan accordingly. And many require a minimum number of reviews on Amazon with an average rating of 4.0 or higher.
I recommend reading this w/r/t KDP Select (great post from an author who has very successfully used the KDP Select program):
Places to post KDP Select giveaway (some do more than freebies)
*=newly added
Addicted to Ebooks:
(Register. Need 5 reviews.)
Author Marketing Club:
(One of the most important links as it has submission forms for 19 different sites, though not all work through their site, so I’ve listed them all individually below)
EReader News Today:
The books that will be posted will be the books with the highest ratings and the most reviews. If your book has a small number of reviews (0 � 3) or low ratings (below 4.0) it will not be posted. We will not repost a free book within 60 days of the previous free book posting.
Pixel of Ink:
If your book will be listed as Free ($0.00) on Amazon.com in the next 30 days, then please let us know by filling out the form below.
Books on the Knob:
FreeBooksy $50 feature (50-60K reach). 48 hours notice.
Bargain eBook Hunter: $5 for guaranteed placement. Must be 3 days out and can not run same title more than once in 30 days.
Snickslist: List day it goes free and run for as many days as the promo! Tracks number of views.
Variety of sponsorships. $9.99 alert for freebies: Free alert: (did pick of the week $19.99; 5 days total)
Free Kindle fiction:
(guaranteed post $5)
(featured post $12)
Indie Book of the Day:
Nominate for Indie Book of the Day:
Free Book Dude:
Digital Book Today: variety of free and paid options $5 guaranteed post.
Awesome Gang: Also can post on their Facebook page, day of.
BookGoodies: $5 per day
(where submit book info) (done)
(to submit book for review) (done)
(author interview) (have not done)
(paid sponsorship) ($35 for two week home page sponsorship)
Kindle Book Promos:
eBooks Habit:
(free book form)
The eReader Cafe:
Book Goodies for Kids:
(Have not done)
Kindle Author Boards. Must create account. This link is to add a freebie:
Centsible: (have not done paid feature; think filled out free form)
(pretty sure they pull directly off Amazon & there is no form to fill out)
Flurries of Words: (did not do� need to do. Read down for very specific instructions). UK-based.
Free Books Daily: (can pay for guaranteed feature & book of the day $5)
Ask David:
Free Kindle Books & Tips: (must have average rating of 4+)
Kindle Finds: Needs 10 reviews average 4.0+
Can submit in advance
Kindle Mojo Free & Paid options
Black Caviar Book Club Can put up a free listing.
*Book Daily
*Daily Free EBooks
*Book Deal Hunter
*Zwoodle
Paid
The Frugal eReader: $50
Good Kindles: $7 or advertising
Kindle Nation Daily (highest reach, highest $$):
World Literary CAfe: ~$40
Book Tweeting Service: 50K followers; 1 day $29; 2 day $56; 3 day $81; 4 day $104; 5 day $125
All on Fire Social Media posts $19.99 for one day up to $149 for 7 days
*Story Finds
*Book Bub
Facebook sites to like and spam day of freebies
*
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1... (must join group)
Twitter (instructions on their profile page of how to tweet your freebie)
@EReaderblast
@Free_book_promo
An Incomplete List of Absolutely Awesome Bloggers (most for YA)
Please support them by visiting their blog and following via facebook, twitter, google+ or other methods listed.
(Sigh, serious html tag overload!)
I also highly recommend the . They list indie-friendly blogs by category that you can send review requests to.
This compilation of promotional sites & blogs took many, many hours to compile. I'm sharing it to help those who work full time or otherwise don't have time to do the vast amount of research (and trial and error) that I had to do. If you do choose to use the information, I invite (not require, of course) you to repay in kind by supporting my YA dystopian book, by purchasing a copy here. Cost is $3.99. Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ link to add to your bookshelf is here.
Thanks for visiting and I hope there's a nugget or two in here you found helpful. And again, feel free to comment with things I missed (I'm sure there are *many*--I'm still a newbie at this!). I will continue to update this post as I discover new ways to achieve success at self-publishing.
Megan
I wanted to mention something up front: there are no shortcuts for hard work. Oprah isn't going to magically run across your book and be singing your praises. Your facebook friends aren't going to start a viral campaign that will catch on and make your book sales go through the roof. You can expect to make slow but steady process if you continually work hard to promote your book to to the right people.
Writing—pen or computer?
No contest for me. I can’t stand even hand writing a letter or filling out paperwork. If there ever is an EMP or anything that wipes out all electronic devices, I’m toast. I have serious co-dependency issues with my 11� MacBook Air and iPhone.
I use Scrivener for my writing (I couldn’t and wouldn’t go back to Word or equivalent, even if paid). It does have a learning curve and it’s a pain in the booty to move existing projects from Word. Benefits:
- Can outline entire book, chapter by chapter, scene by scene and makes it easy to move scenes and chapters around
- Auto generates table of contents
- Allows you to keep all notes and research (including pictures and links) with your book for easy access
- Compiles every imaginable electronic and hard copy book type for you (though be careful to review� often needs tweaking of the standard settings)
- Keeps track of statistics (word count, estimated page count, etc.)
You can check out Scrivener here (both Mac and Windows versions available): . Best of all� free trial and approximately $45 (USD) to purchase (cheaper for students).
Writing process
1) Read! If every author read every book in their genre (or at least the highly rated ones), there would be a lot less rehashed stories, better writing, and fresh concepts. I read 600 books in the last year. You can find my top 50+ favorites in my earlier blog post here: http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_....
2) Plot! Certainly, there have been some successful books written off the cuff, but to have good pacing, story development, character development, building of tension, etc. it typically takes good plotting.
3) Flexibility! Revise, revise, revise. Rewrite, rewrite, rewrite. Don’t get so stuck on your initial concept that you reject an even better idea.
4) Edit! Editing is hard. I typically go through my book over a hundred times, looking for something different each pass.
5) Proofread! Yes, I list this separately from editing. Have someone (or even better, many someones)—other than you—someone with a sharp eye and very keen grasp of the English language, proofread your book. The brain compensates for missing words, extra words, etc. and they are very hard to find. If problems are found after publishing, fix and update. So, so many books these days are released without even moderate proofreading.
6) Work hard! If you thought the writing was time-consuming and hard, promoting your book takes as much, if not more time. Put in the hours.
7) Thicken your skin! It is unlikely you like every book you read, so you can’t expect everyone to like your book. I’ve adopted the saying: "If you're trying to please everyone, then you're not going to make anything that is honestly yours, I don't think, in the long run."--Viggo Mortensen.
8) Start writing the next one. Your chances increase exponentially of having a ‘hit�, the more offerings you have.
Pre-publishing
1. Work on cover, author bio, author picture, synopsis concurrently with doing your final editing and proofreading. CreateSpace and other self-publishing houses offer (pay for services) to help you create your cover and get your final product ready, if needed. This bears repeating. Do not proofread your own work.
2. Give out advance reading copies (ARCs)â€� You can do through Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ forums or to your Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ friends; Kindle forums; setup a blog launch tour and send ARCs out to reviewers as part of this; or to friends and family. This helps with a couple important thingsâ€� more eyes on it to look for inconsistencies and errors; you will have people ready to review at launch. Ask for fair and honest reviews. It only will hurt you in the long run if you have all your friends and family post bogus reviews that don’t match the general consensus.
Post-publishing
Sit back and relax and watch the books fly out the virtual door, right? Not even close. When you self-publish, you get to do all the promotion.
1. If you want the professional review houses to review your book, get it sent out right away. Note, these all cost (a lot). These are hard-core reviewers, so make sure your book is ready for their scrutiny. And they require a long lead-time. Some allow you to expedite at extra cost, but still, don’t expect anything back for 4-6 weeks. If you are planning to use your (hopefully positive review) as support for a promotional campaign, plan accordingly. Kirkus Reviews, Blue Ink Review, and Foreward Reviews all do professional reviews for a fee, and you can submit your book to a Publisher’s Weekly supplement for a fee and they choose 25% to review from the submissions.
2. Facebook fan page for the book. Create one. To have a friendly name, need 25 fans.
*Special facebook note: harassing your friends and family to buy, read or review your book by facebook is *not* an effective promotional method. It's surely fine to invite them to read, let them know when the book is free, or offer them a free copy in exchange for a fair and honest review. You can share book successes by your facebook fan page to keep your book's name out there. But, there should be no expectation for facebook friends to do marketing for you. If they love your book and choose to share with others in the natural order of things, excellent!
3. Twitter. Use, but don't abuse. I am a definite twitter newbie, and to be honest the constant stream makes me a little nuts. Twitter can be an excellent networking tool and can get your book's name out there, but no need to tweet every minute imho.
4. Add your book to Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ and sign up for an author page. Schedule a giveaway of your paperback book (can do from your author dashboard)—this gets great exposure for your book and potential readers can add the book to their ‘to readâ€� shelf directly from the giveaway signup. Signed copies get more interest than unsigned copies.
5. Create an Amazon author page.
6. Schedule a blog tour (these cost). If you didn’t schedule one for your launch (like me), then schedule far enough out that a) you have a chunk of reviews up on Amazon and Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ, and b) you have professional reviews back. Note that the preparation for the blog tour for the few weeks prior is grueling as you are asked to prepare author interviews, character interviews, top ten lists, and guest posts on various topics.
7. Look for local opportunities to showcase your book. Does your library system showcase local authors? Are there any independent bookstores that will host signings or other author events?
Spend money to make money
Although I took a lot of English and literature classes in college, I was a business major. So this concept comes naturally to me—you can never expect to make money without investing money. Since your book isn’t on display at a local bookstore or on a giant Costco display, you have to work to get your book’s name in front of people. The hope is that after a lot of people have bought your book that you end up on the hallowed ‘Customers also bought� lists on Amazon or equivalent, and then your book sales become self-perpetuating. But to get there, you must promote. There are a number of places that allow you to post your book for free, but many of these places (for preferred placement, to be ‘Book of the Day�, etc.) require a $5 or 10 or $25 or $50 or more investment on your part. Do some research to figure out what will work best for your particular genre. There are a lot of different promotional and advertising options—from twitter campaigns, to facebook posts, to on-site advertising. Unless you have unlimited funds you’ll have to pick and choose. Things you can reasonably expect to spend money on are:
- Cover (if it isn’t eye catching, you lose a chunk of potential buyers right off the bat)
- Editing/proofreading
- Blog tour
- Promoting your ‘freebie�
- Promoting your ‘pay for� book
- Professional book reviews
Key influencers
- Bloggers. I am so incredibly impressed with the book blogging community. These gracious people will often read and review or otherwise promote your book (eg. author interviews, cover reveals, guest posts)� for free. They do it because they love reading, love discovering the hidden gems, and genuinely want to support authors. Please treat them with the utmost respect (regardless of whether they become your book’s biggest fan or not) and don’t make demands. Most of them have ‘to read� lists hundreds of books long. Unless you are part of a scheduled book tour, you cannot expect them to read and review on your timetable.
Each blog has hundreds to thousands of followers that respect that blogger’s opinion. So every time your book is featured on a blog your book is not only exposed to a lot of people, but the right people. First, their followers all read a lot of books! Second, they read your book’s genre. You can’t get a more highly targeted promotion than that.
- Professional reviewers. Professional reviews have a lot of sway, both with readers and with industry decision makers (from libraries, to agents and publishers). Definitely worth pursuing if you believe your book will merit positive reviews.
- Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ community. Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ is another excellent place to promote your book. Where else can you find millions of readers looking for their next purchase? Plus, through the various Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ forums (which are targeted to specific genres) you can find people willing to write a fair and honest review in exchange for a copy of your book. You can notify friends and fans of upcoming events (like a blog tour, signing, or new release). You can do book giveaways to help get exposure. And they have reasonably priced (you set a daily limit) self-serve, targeted advertising to drive people to your giveaway, place of purchase, or Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ book page so that people can add it to their bookshelf.
Special promo tips (general and for KDP Select—The Freebie)
I naively assumed that if I signed up for KDP Select that Amazon would promote my book on my free days. Ha. Joke was on me. Below are both free and paid opportunities to post your freebie offer or pay-for book. Some listings are done day-of the freebie, but most have to be scheduled way in advance, so plan accordingly. And many require a minimum number of reviews on Amazon with an average rating of 4.0 or higher.
I recommend reading this w/r/t KDP Select (great post from an author who has very successfully used the KDP Select program):
Places to post KDP Select giveaway (some do more than freebies)
*=newly added
Addicted to Ebooks:
(Register. Need 5 reviews.)
Author Marketing Club:
(One of the most important links as it has submission forms for 19 different sites, though not all work through their site, so I’ve listed them all individually below)
EReader News Today:
The books that will be posted will be the books with the highest ratings and the most reviews. If your book has a small number of reviews (0 � 3) or low ratings (below 4.0) it will not be posted. We will not repost a free book within 60 days of the previous free book posting.
Pixel of Ink:
If your book will be listed as Free ($0.00) on Amazon.com in the next 30 days, then please let us know by filling out the form below.
Books on the Knob:
FreeBooksy $50 feature (50-60K reach). 48 hours notice.
Bargain eBook Hunter: $5 for guaranteed placement. Must be 3 days out and can not run same title more than once in 30 days.
Snickslist: List day it goes free and run for as many days as the promo! Tracks number of views.
Variety of sponsorships. $9.99 alert for freebies: Free alert: (did pick of the week $19.99; 5 days total)
Free Kindle fiction:
(guaranteed post $5)
(featured post $12)
Indie Book of the Day:
Nominate for Indie Book of the Day:
Free Book Dude:
Digital Book Today: variety of free and paid options $5 guaranteed post.
Awesome Gang: Also can post on their Facebook page, day of.
BookGoodies: $5 per day
(where submit book info) (done)
(to submit book for review) (done)
(author interview) (have not done)
(paid sponsorship) ($35 for two week home page sponsorship)
Kindle Book Promos:
eBooks Habit:
(free book form)
The eReader Cafe:
Book Goodies for Kids:
(Have not done)
Kindle Author Boards. Must create account. This link is to add a freebie:
Centsible: (have not done paid feature; think filled out free form)
(pretty sure they pull directly off Amazon & there is no form to fill out)
Flurries of Words: (did not do� need to do. Read down for very specific instructions). UK-based.
Free Books Daily: (can pay for guaranteed feature & book of the day $5)
Ask David:
Free Kindle Books & Tips: (must have average rating of 4+)
Kindle Finds: Needs 10 reviews average 4.0+
Can submit in advance
Kindle Mojo Free & Paid options
Black Caviar Book Club Can put up a free listing.
*Book Daily
*Daily Free EBooks
*Book Deal Hunter
*Zwoodle
Paid
The Frugal eReader: $50
Good Kindles: $7 or advertising
Kindle Nation Daily (highest reach, highest $$):
World Literary CAfe: ~$40
Book Tweeting Service: 50K followers; 1 day $29; 2 day $56; 3 day $81; 4 day $104; 5 day $125
All on Fire Social Media posts $19.99 for one day up to $149 for 7 days
*Story Finds
*Book Bub
Facebook sites to like and spam day of freebies
*
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1... (must join group)
Twitter (instructions on their profile page of how to tweet your freebie)
@EReaderblast
@Free_book_promo
An Incomplete List of Absolutely Awesome Bloggers (most for YA)
Please support them by visiting their blog and following via facebook, twitter, google+ or other methods listed.
(Sigh, serious html tag overload!)
I also highly recommend the . They list indie-friendly blogs by category that you can send review requests to.
This compilation of promotional sites & blogs took many, many hours to compile. I'm sharing it to help those who work full time or otherwise don't have time to do the vast amount of research (and trial and error) that I had to do. If you do choose to use the information, I invite (not require, of course) you to repay in kind by supporting my YA dystopian book, by purchasing a copy here. Cost is $3.99. Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ link to add to your bookshelf is here.
Thanks for visiting and I hope there's a nugget or two in here you found helpful. And again, feel free to comment with things I missed (I'm sure there are *many*--I'm still a newbie at this!). I will continue to update this post as I discover new ways to achieve success at self-publishing.
Megan
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message 1:
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Tor
(new)
Jan 21, 2013 11:30PM
Thanks Megan. What a useful post! What great lists! Much appreciated.
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Megan, This post is crucial! Thank you so much for it. I've done three books self-pubbed and I'm genuinely impressed with how hardcore you've been with just ONE. I'm looking forward to reading your book. Nice work! And I concur, Scrivener is a LIFE-SAVER. I LOVE it. It's like my relationship with my credit union, which I also love and on whose behalf I would do testimonial after free testimonial. I got Scrivener a few years ago and my productivity went up like a thousand percent. Word is like the spawn of Satan in comparison to Scrivener, as a tool for writing, that is. ;) And I'm like a missionary for Scrivener.
So I found your book because my YA sci-fi romance can't beat yours for the number one free book in teen sci-fi! So I obviously need to read your book. It's on my iPhone Kindle. Looking forward to reading it.
@Tor, I'm also writing up all my notes and experiences for my blog tour and promo push. Very interesting to see what works and doesn't work!@Nicole... I'm right there with you re: Scrivener! And, what a crazy couple days. I'm floored by the number of people downloading. I guess FREE is a little more appealing than PAY lol :). Do not fear... only one more day of free and then daynight can go back to relative obscurity :). Note that I had a book blast going yesterday & a lot of promo posts (from the links above) and my blog tour kicked off today with a really nice 5 star review from Lust for Stories. Kathy from I am not a Writer, I am a Reader is a miracle worker on the book blast/blog tour stuff. I don't have a lot of promo stuff going today, but the download numbers are still high. I'm being OCD analytical in trying to figure out what works and doesn't work. I will definitely write it up so others can benefit.
No, don't go into obscurity! Today is my last free day for a while on that one too. I'm sure you've checked him out, but in case you haven't, Joe Konrath has a great and useful blog. Newbie's Guide to Publishing. He's been writing for a while and self-publishing for a few years. I AM interested in what works for you. And I can't tell if you have a website or blog (besides this one). Is that on your to-do list?
Haha... I won't go into obscurity intentionally :). It's just a lot harder to stay up high on the list when the book isn't free. That's my next project... figuring out ongoing (affordable) promotion.I have likely seen Joe's stuff, but will look it up in case I missed it in my research.
I'll definitely do a post-mortem on the freebie & blog tour. It is definitely fascinating. I added a few more links I found to the post above (some that I wish I had found before my freebie).
And alas, no other blog or website right now. Trying to spend my time writing (but have had to take off a couple weeks for the blog tour prep, which reminds me of the 80-100 hour weeks I used to work in my previous career :)). Very time consuming, but quite worth it (the book blast/blog tour). Definitely check out . Kathy is awesome. The book blast alone added hundreds of facebook fan page likes, twitter adds, goodreads adds, etc.
I will post reviews on Amazon and goodreads of your book when I'm finished... haven't gotten too far (kid activities prevailed), but so far I can tell we have similar senses of humor, so I'm enjoying :).
Nicole wrote: "No, don't go into obscurity! Today is my last free day for a while on that one too.
I'm sure you've checked him out, but in case you haven't, Joe Konrath has a great and useful blog. Newbie's Gu..."
Megan, this research is fabulous. I've been self-teaching myself e-book marketing tactics, (I have author friends who are willing to pay me to do some of the dirty work... one of them is actually in touch with you on the Author Marketing Club), and I found this reassuring and useful.
Are you on Google + or Facebook? Or is email best for networking purposes? I'd like to share ideas and ask you a few questions about book marketing.
(my FB info: Kat Sylwester ... my Google Plus/Email [email protected])
Thanks!
-Kat
On both Google+ and Facebook (meganthomason), but don't check Google+ much (I'm a facebook junkie & trying to adapt to twitter). You can email me at [email protected].Thanks,
Megan
