Marketing Self-published Novels

tinkerdan said:
I might suggest this much::

If you just published the book you should start pushing right now in any of the many ways.
The reason I say this is that it doesn't take long for you to become buried by new releases and so right now you might be coming to the top of some searches by default ; where later without consciously searching for you or the book, your work will have less visibility. It seems like the first three months are the most important in determining how well a book will do.

After that I'd guess that you should work on the next book and when you release that you can renew interest in the first.

I think in some ways that's how it works well for the more prolific writers who have more than 10 titles and keep producing.

And though I have not yet done this-participation in CONventions is important for self promotion and exposure.
Click to expand...
Good advice.....a friend of a friend runs Comiccon in San Diego and he suggested that it would be a good idea to make the flight there for the promotion of my book.
 
mgilmour said:
Good advice.....a friend of a friend runs Comiccon in San Diego and he suggested that it would be a good idea to make the flight there for the promotion of my book.
Click to expand...

Deviant art always has a whole section at comic con. If you make a page there, on the deviant art forum, they welcome the members to join their section. Deviant art even has a printshop that you can get to prepare stuff from your book cover and photos to sell, there.( As coffee cups and tee-shirts too :))
And they have panels that you could join.
 
I self-published on Amazon (Kindle) and IngramSpark (PrintOnDemand) in October 2014

Marketing is a slog - I have no magic answers but a few of these may give you an idea

I took the following approach: Basic web-page; Twitter; Facebook; Amazon Author Page; GoodReads Author Page

Priority 1 - Get Reviews on Amazon and GoodReads - try to make them from SciFi enthusiasts
I wrote ~100 begging emails to SciFi Bloggers/Reviewers etc; I got about 5 Reviews... painful but about right for cold-calling

I also asked to be interviewed - and it worked once - I got interviewed by SF Signal - it did not translate into any great sales impact but it was awesome to do it

Google AdWords - I spend about £1 per day on this for the last month; I cannot be sure yet of its impact but it feels like a decent drip feed of publicity

Amazon Specific - I have not done Amazon "advertising"; and there are a bunch of blogs on Amazon Meta-Data... take a look in Kindle Forum

Good Reads Specific - Build up a network of like minded Writers - you will get to read great books - you will learn your craft - you may get improved Beta Readers for your next book - you can use the Goodread Giveaway

Discount Sites - I have considered these to be too expensive, but they do exist
https://www.bookbub.com/partners/requirements
http://bargainbooksy.com/sell-more-books/
http://fkbt.com/for-authors/
http://indie.kindlenationdaily.com/?page_id=832
http://booktweeters.com/

Online Magazine and Blog Advertisements - I tried this but it was ~£50 for an image for a month which got me 3 sales...
e.g., SciFi Now; SFX Magazine; Lightspeed Magazine -- not really recommended for Indies


Overall it sounds like you are well ahead of the curve, but you do need a plan for Amazon and GoodRead reviews

I am planning to
  • Write more books, your Amazon page (etc) looks much more professional if there are 3 or 4 books by you
  • Continue to work within communities of writers
  • (As Ralph says), try to get "up the lists on Amazon" this can be helped by judiciously choosing your meta-data
  • Try to associate your Twitter/Facebook feeds with "content" rather than pure product push... hard to do also - it takes time
  • Go and see the local bookshops who will often try to support Local Authors
I have no idea about Book Fairs, I suspect that Independent Authors won't get much attention from retailers; assuming your genre is SciFi my feeling is that online is the way to go --- but I know nothing

regards
FibE

 
Marketing is not an area that I have experience with, so I've been VERY slow to get my head in the game. I've been procrastinating by going into "study mode" so I bought several books on social media marketing and facebook for dummies, etc. I have looked at the Google website tutorials where they explain how Analytics work. I am learning new terms like "leads" and "conversions" and SEOs. Flow charts and graphs make me dizzy. Recently I've realized that all this gobbledygook is not helping me. I really have no frickin' idea what I'm doing! I'm planning to do some yoga on the weekend and try to cleanse my mind for starting over from scratch.
 
mgilmour said:
Good advice.....a friend of a friend runs Comiccon in San Diego and he suggested that it would be a good idea to make the flight there for the promotion of my book.
Click to expand...

If you have a friend who is "in" the Comic-Con organizers, that's great! Otherwise, I would recommend against it. Comic-Con is huge and unless you are an established celebrity in t.v., film, or blockbuster novels, you're likely to get buried in the crowd. Depending on where you are, there must be some smaller local Cons to get your feet wet. The local cons are also more amenable to getting a signing table or volunteering to speak on panels. You'd get more visibility and photo ops of you looking like an author to post on your social media sites.
 
mgilmour said:
I'm new to this forum and so far I've thoroughly enjoyed reading the many posts made by the members here. There are a huge range of topics on writing but what has surprised me is that there doesn't seem to be a large amount on marketing your book once you have finally published. I'm talking about beyond the standard, items such as:
  • Have a website
  • Participate in a community
  • Do a press release etc.
What I'm really interested in is what has and has not worked for individuals. Last week I published my first novel (I'll withhold the title so that this doesn't look to be self promoting....as it's not) and I'm really interested in what sort of sales a typical self-published author should expect during the first week, month and year. Call it a way to benchmark my own forward progress and inspire me onwards. :)

To give you an idea, some of the things that I am doing are:
  • Building a video archive on youtube
  • Regularly tweeting and updating my facebook page.
  • Releasing the first ten chapters on a prominent scifi website
  • Endeavouring to partner with a sponsor to bundle the book with a game or other product offering.
Have any of you found that these type of activities have converted into sales for you?
Click to expand...

I've watched a friend of mine self publish a series of niche children's books over the past couple of years. It's been a beast of a challenge and a lot of investment. While her books are far different than science fiction novels, I think the leg work is probably fairly similar. She's traveled a lot of different shows. She's made a lot of partnerships. She gets her product in front of people. The most interesting thing to me is how she just decided to be a celebrity. She setup book signings even though I know she was signing at places where they had no idea who she was.

She's two or three years in and its finally paying off fairly big for her. She's not really self published anymore. She actually has one of the largest children's publishers in the country. But she wouldn't have landed that without the upfront work.
 
Is this a new trend or has the world always worked this way, and I've been too much of a starry eyed artist to notice? In my day job, where I am not starry eyed, I work in the high-tech hub of Silicon Valley in California. I've observed this trend for a long time. Entrepreneurs start up a new venture with big ideas and venture capital, they grow their business until it is sustainable and profitable, then some big corporate giant gobbles them up. Is it because the publishing industry is becoming more and more consolidated into a corporate core? Are the authors no longer in the role of vendors or manufacturers of raw product that the publishers take to market? Is the role of the author transforming into the entrepreneur start-up who does all the ground work to build a customer base and is eventually bought-up just before - or soon after - they go IPO?
 
That's an interesting analog:

Denise Tanaka said:
Is this a new trend or has the world always worked this way, and I've been too much of a starry eyed artist to notice? In my day job, where I am not starry eyed, I work in the high-tech hub of Silicon Valley in California. I've observed this trend for a long time. Entrepreneurs start up a new venture with big ideas and venture capital, they grow their business until it is sustainable and profitable, then some big corporate giant gobbles them up. Is it because the publishing industry is becoming more and more consolidated into a corporate core? Are the authors no longer in the role of vendors or manufacturers of raw product that the publishers take to market? Is the role of the author transforming into the entrepreneur start-up who does all the ground work to build a customer base and is eventually bought-up just before - or soon after - they go IPO?
Click to expand...

::It's probably not quite the same. What I mean by that is that it really isn't necessary to build it to that level if you turn it around in the proper fashion. Proper being if you run through all the hoops. It's only been recent that the venue for Author Entrepreneur has risen to a level where we are seeing a few standout authors who are then snatched up. Even then those are few and far between. As far as having to sell yourself or market yourself from what I've gathered from some traditional authors that has always been a part of this business. Often when an author is picked up his first book never sells enough to even pay the initial check the publisher gives him. One author even made note of the fact that he still has the three fans that read his first book.

So getting published doesn't really guarantee they are going to continue to take your work. That's where the self promotion comes in. So in a large way it has always worked that way. Plus if you get picked up by the big corporation[publisher] you may think its a nice pay off; but you will still have to work at the same job or they'll let that business die without you.
 
I am starting to see that the publishing world has always worked this way, but it has been largely understated to the fledgling wannabe writers like me. Most of the how-to writing books and workshops focus on the craft of writing and gives the (mistaken?) promise that if you write well your hard work will be rewarded with a big fat publishing contract. Rejection slips hurt because it makes me think my writing wasn't good enough, which inspires me to take more classes and workshops and do endless rewrites. I'm starting to realize that the big publishers are inclined to reject a no-name nobody even if the writing is stellar. They prefer a celebrity with a less polished book who is guaranteed to sell (50 Shades...) I have not seen much how-to advice for marketing yourself until recently.

My theory is that the publishers (who are business people and enjoy marketing things) have long assumed their authors would eagerly carry the publicity ball and felt very surprised that they didn't/couldn't. It's an awakening on both sides - the authors surprised they must do this hideous chore and the publishers surprised at how much the authors hate doing it. I saw an article on the IBPA website (Independent Book Publishers Association) on why authors hate marketing and how to get them to do it anyway. The article completely missed the point in the opening premise by stating that authors don't want to expose themselves on social media because old acquaintances will resurface from the past, etc. No, authors hate marketing because so many of us are terrible at it. There are specific skills and techniques for attracting the attention of an audience, holding that attention, and converting their interest into sales. It's a craft as much as writing a novel.
 
FibonacciEddie said:
I self-published on Amazon (Kindle) and IngramSpark (PrintOnDemand) in October 2014

Marketing is a slog - I have no magic answers but a few of these may give you an idea

I took the following approach: Basic web-page; Twitter; Facebook; Amazon Author Page; GoodReads Author Page

Priority 1 - Get Reviews on Amazon and GoodReads - try to make them from SciFi enthusiasts
I wrote ~100 begging emails to SciFi Bloggers/Reviewers etc; I got about 5 Reviews... painful but about right for cold-calling

I also asked to be interviewed - and it worked once - I got interviewed by SF Signal - it did not translate into any great sales impact but it was awesome to do it

Google AdWords - I spend about £1 per day on this for the last month; I cannot be sure yet of its impact but it feels like a decent drip feed of publicity

Amazon Specific - I have not done Amazon "advertising"; and there are a bunch of blogs on Amazon Meta-Data... take a look in Kindle Forum

Good Reads Specific - Build up a network of like minded Writers - you will get to read great books - you will learn your craft - you may get improved Beta Readers for your next book - you can use the Goodread Giveaway

Discount Sites - I have considered these to be too expensive, but they do exist
https://www.bookbub.com/partners/requirements
http://bargainbooksy.com/sell-more-books/
http://fkbt.com/for-authors/
http://indie.kindlenationdaily.com/?page_id=832
http://booktweeters.com/

Online Magazine and Blog Advertisements - I tried this but it was ~£50 for an image for a month which got me 3 sales...
e.g., SciFi Now; SFX Magazine; Lightspeed Magazine -- not really recommended for Indies


Overall it sounds like you are well ahead of the curve, but you do need a plan for Amazon and GoodRead reviews

I am planning to
  • Write more books, your Amazon page (etc) looks much more professional if there are 3 or 4 books by you
  • Continue to work within communities of writers
  • (As Ralph says), try to get "up the lists on Amazon" this can be helped by judiciously choosing your meta-data
  • Try to associate your Twitter/Facebook feeds with "content" rather than pure product push... hard to do also - it takes time
  • Go and see the local bookshops who will often try to support Local Authors
I have no idea about Book Fairs, I suspect that Independent Authors won't get much attention from retailers; assuming your genre is SciFi my feeling is that online is the way to go --- but I know nothing

regards
FibE
Click to expand...
Great list of sites and advice!
How long does it typically take to get reviews coming through on Amazon?
I'm working on book 2 in my series.....just got to keep on plodding away LOL!
 
Richard Thomas said:
I've watched a friend of mine self publish a series of niche children's books over the past couple of years. It's been a beast of a challenge and a lot of investment. While her books are far different than science fiction novels, I think the leg work is probably fairly similar. She's traveled a lot of different shows. She's made a lot of partnerships. She gets her product in front of people. The most interesting thing to me is how she just decided to be a celebrity. She setup book signings even though I know she was signing at places where they had no idea who she was.

She's two or three years in and its finally paying off fairly big for her. She's not really self published anymore. She actually has one of the largest children's publishers in the country. But she wouldn't have landed that without the upfront work.
Click to expand...
What a great story! I'm a firm believer in doing just a little bit each day and in the end you'll get to your destination. The challenge is to make sure that you do that little bit. It seems like your friend was very disciplined!
 
Denise Tanaka said:
I am starting to see that the publishing world has always worked this way, but it has been largely understated to the fledgling wannabe writers like me. Most of the how-to writing books and workshops focus on the craft of writing and gives the (mistaken?) promise that if you write well your hard work will be rewarded with a big fat publishing contract. Rejection slips hurt because it makes me think my writing wasn't good enough, which inspires me to take more classes and workshops and do endless rewrites. I'm starting to realize that the big publishers are inclined to reject a no-name nobody even if the writing is stellar. They prefer a celebrity with a less polished book who is guaranteed to sell (50 Shades...) I have not seen much how-to advice for marketing yourself until recently.

My theory is that the publishers (who are business people and enjoy marketing things) have long assumed their authors would eagerly carry the publicity ball and felt very surprised that they didn't/couldn't. It's an awakening on both sides - the authors surprised they must do this hideous chore and the publishers surprised at how much the authors hate doing it. I saw an article on the IBPA website (Independent Book Publishers Association) on why authors hate marketing and how to get them to do it anyway. The article completely missed the point in the opening premise by stating that authors don't want to expose themselves on social media because old acquaintances will resurface from the past, etc. No, authors hate marketing because so many of us are terrible at it. There are specific skills and techniques for attracting the attention of an audience, holding that attention, and converting their interest into sales. It's a craft as much as writing a novel.
Click to expand...
Completely agree with you....marketing is a completely different skill set. One of the challenges that I've faced is that although I understand the numbers of marketing building my skill set as an author has been tough...!
Thank goodness for places like here....I think that I've read just about every thread on grammar!

If everything was about the product being really good then we would have chosen beta over vhs for our video tape standard (which is now dvd LOL). Beta was technically a lot better but VHS won that war through clever marketing....even though it was an inferior standard.
 
mgilmour said:
Completely agree with you....marketing is a completely different skill set. One of the challenges that I've faced is that although I understand the numbers of marketing building my skill set as an author has been tough...!
Thank goodness for places like here....I think that I've read just about every thread on grammar!

If everything was about the product being really good then we would have chosen beta over vhs for our video tape standard (which is now dvd LOL). Beta was technically a lot better but VHS won that war through clever marketing....even though it was an inferior standard.
Click to expand...

I remember Sony beta-max! LOL.

Lately I've been thinking about a children's book, The Dog of Flanders, about an orphan peasant boy who is a self-taught artist sketching with charcoal on sheets of tree bark. He is befriended by a patron of the arts who lets him use the studio and real art supplies. The peasant boy produces a great oil painting that the patron enters into a contest anonymously. The painting is clearly superior to all the other entries, but - if I recall correctly - the blue ribbon goes to the son of the richest man in town. So yes, I understand the world has always worked this way.

I wonder if it's really possible to master the 2 skill sets? Someone with marketing savvy told me that she observed non-fiction writers understood publicity more easily, and writers of some genres like romance or thrillers or contemporary fiction eventually came around to 'getting it." I felt like the stupidest person on earth talking to her because every time I had a great idea for a promotional activity, she rejected it as weak and ineffective. I'm developing a theory that the F/SF genre - especially the other-world stuff - is a very esoteric medium of artistic expression. In order to produce these weird stories, a writer must disassociate from the "real" world and go off into an abstract meditative state. Writers like me observe the world with a scientific eye. I don't see what's in front of me, I see inspiration for what might be. It's necessary to be removed and imagine what if.... It's a real knock in the head to come down and engage with actual people.
 
Denise Tanaka said:
I wonder if it's really possible to master the 2 skill sets?
Click to expand...

It's simply a case of experience - to learn to do anything well, you ideally need to dedicate at least a few years to the subject. However, authors don't really need to know everything about marketing - only what applies to their specific needs. It's basic common sense, really - become an active part of the SFF community; be polite, friendly, and accessible; and just keep your visibility up. Most authors see success through slow burn, not least through regular book releases to create a following. Even big names such as JK Rowling and George R R Martin were not overnight successes.

If you did want to learn more about marketing, the standard book on the subject - IIRC - is Marketing Management by Kotler. If you want a more internet-focused "new marketing" approach then any Seth Godin is usually a good, if sometimes idealistic rather than pragmatic, read.
 
I agree with Brian...marketing is just another skill that can be learned. I'm also a firm believer that it's very rare that someone becomes an overnight success. I've said to my kids that it's relatively easy to become successful online.....just keep on putting out quality content that people want to read....day in and day out. Eventually, people will begin to notice you and start reading.
The challenge for many of us is that now we have a product (ie. our book) what is the fastest way to grow the audience? Brian is right about not stopping at one novel but continuing to right....the more products you have the more likely you are to sell one. It's like putting more fishing lines in the water.
Once I reach my 100 posts I will be more up front in what I've been doing to market my own book. What I find is working for me and what I find isn't. What I'm constantly looking for is a seam of gold that yields results. So far, I'm managing to sell a number of books per day....which isn't too bad. I'm not fussed as everything starts off small and grows bigger over time if you just keep on adding to it.
 
mgilmour said:
Great list of sites and advice!
How long does it typically take to get reviews coming through on Amazon?
I'm working on book 2 in my series.....just got to keep on plodding away LOL!
Click to expand...

not really sure there is a hard rule... I think that the rule of thumb is that you get 1 spontaneous review for every 100 sales;
but you need to augment that with begging emails to: people you know, SciFi Bloggers, Independent Review sites, etc.

the word on the street is that Amazon removes reviews that it thinks may have been paid for... I have no idea how they police that

I have about 50 reviews on my book (Emergence) across Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com of which 0 are paid for, but about 50% are from people that I know... still leaves 25 independent reviews
 
I'd suggest around 1 unsolicited review per 100 sales too. Although, at the start they seemed to come though at a better ratio. 1 per 10 or so and then slowly winding down to 1/100 where they seem to have held.

With the latest and last edition coming out in a few weeks for Endeavour, it will be time to get on the soliciting bandwagon with some magazines etc. My intention would be to place those reviews in the main text of the book description rather than having them go through Amazon's review system.
 
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