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Book Marketing: What works and What doesn't (in my humble Opinion)

2/13/2013

12 Comments

 
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The Breeders is over six months old now and in that time I have done my share of trial and error marketing to let people know about my work. If you are like me, marketing sometimes feels like fumbling around in the dark, so I thought I'd take a moment and list the top ten marketing strategies that I have found to be successful in my experience. This is by no means and exhaustive list, but just some observations of someone who's been there. 

10. Google AdSence Advertising 
Ever see those little ads on the sides of your gmail account advertising anything from Mortgage Insurance to Free Copy-Editing? Well, I took twenty-five dollars and made a Google AdSence ad just to see if it might drum up interest. The nice thing about Google (or not so nice depending on your Big Brother view of it) is they read people's email  and tailor ads to fit potential clients. The bad new is that many people don't pay attention to those ads. I know I don't. 

The Result - I'm pretty sure nothing. In my opinion not worth the money. 

9. Blog Begging or "Can you please review my title?"
Every marketing book from here to Kingdom Come says you need reviews. You must get reviews for your book or it will languish and die faster than the plant in my office at work (seriously, I have a black thumb).  However, getting reviews is difficult, nay, nearly impossible. I spent hours sending out query emails to book bloggers for weeks on end. I'd say that 90% of the people ignored me. The bonus, I did get a few reviews and connected with some bloggers, but most blogs either won't read self-published or are swamped up to their pretty little eyeballs and cannot possibly take another book.

The Result - Too much time and energy for only a few reviews. 

8. Begging fans to review your book.
Once my random emails to book bloggers stopped working, I turned to my fan base. I made sure to put a request for reviews at the back of my book. I put a plea or two out on Facebook. I made sure to email everyone who wrote me on my sequel notification list (we'll get to that in a minute) and requested reviews. The upside was many responded and did so. The downside was some still ignored me.

The Result - Totally worth it because it require little energy or time. You may not get many reviews, but every little bit helps. The downside is you may feel a little bit like a pest, but you really have to get over that in today's business. 

7. Giveaways
I have tried two giveaways so far: one for signed copies of my book and one for a free amazon gift card. Both upped my twitter and facebook action and drew people to my blog. Both were pretty easy as I used Rafflecopter and that makes it exceedingly simple. The Amazon gift card raffle corresponded with the release of my new novelette in the hopes of drawing new people from Twitter to my site with the tag #free. Unfortunately there's about a million tweets a day with the tag #free. 

The Result - The blog traffic was nice, but each giveaway was expensive and only had about 30-50 entries a piece, most of which were already fans. I may try this again, but I hear the bigger the item, the more traffic you get. Maybe I'll try it with a fifty dollar gift card or a Kindle paper white. Spending that kind of money is risky, though. You may not get a return on your investment. 

6. Facebook Ads
Facebook offered me fifty dollars in free advertising a couple months back, and I am a sucker for free. At first I tried a straight-forward ad, something like "Katie French's book The Breeders, a Young Adult Dystopian yada yada yada." Nothing happened. No one clicked on it. The money just sat there. So I decided I'd try to be funny (not easy, but I have been known to make people laugh from time to time). I created this ad. "Nine of out ten dentists agree that liking my Author page helps fight gingivitis." Then I sent that puppy out. The amazing thing was people clicked on it. A LOT. I got about one hundred new likes with that fifty dollars.  Now the question is, how did that relate to sales? That's the hard part; I'm not sure. No one can say that any of those people have bought my title. But, the good news is, they hear from me a lot and the more they hear, the more likely they are to buy. 

The Result - I liked this strategy so much I'm trying it again. Funny ad is a must. If you can't be funny, I don't think it is worth it. 


Okay so there you have it. Tune in on Friday for the next five marketing strategies that are a must in self-promotion. So, what works for you? Leave your comments below. 

Book Marketing Part Two
Book Marketing Part Three
Book Marketing Part Four

12 Comments
LKWatts link
6/22/2014 01:13:19 am

Hi Katie,

I've read all your posts on marketing tips and I have to say the only things that have worked for me is blogging and KDP Select. Amazon has a lot more control over sales than authors would like to think. Therefore you need to work with them when you do your marketing. Going it alone is not effective.That's my experience anyway. I had major success and a place on the top 100 free books with Amazon when I did a promotion for my chick lit book. I had almost 5,000 downloads in two days. This lifted sales of all my other titles but the price you pay is bad reviews. It might be worth it though if it lifts your visibility.

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Fleur link
5/14/2015 09:50:49 pm

I'm new to promoting but I've seen a couple of examples where authors give away a Kindle paper white with good results. Except, what they've done differently is they have to write a review on Amazon on their book first, then include the link to the review to be entered in the drawing. (The book is either free, or .99 cents.) I think this is a great idea because you get the reviews first plus people are more likely to be more thoughtful when they write your review.
I've never done this but I certainly plan on doing it when I get more books out.
Thanks for all your advice! I'm love to learn through your experiences.

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Stephen
11/19/2015 08:41:50 pm

Hi Katie (and other indie authors)

I'm on my 5th self pub book now and have had two books that have sold over 10,000 copies each at full price (no freebies). Most of my books have made it into the top 100 for their genre, one even got to 6 in its genre on Amazon.com. Even so, it's been a bumpy ride. From all this, I found the following works (after doing your best to write a top quality professional book, which is always the most important thing you can do):

1. A great book cover. The better the cover the better the sales. People do judge a book by its cover so if you have only $500-$1000 to spend on promotion, pay a good cover designer. Get the absolute best cover you can that is eye catching and immediately tells the customer what you are selling. But don't be prescriptive to the designer about an image you want created or you'll mess it up. Find a great cover artist and let him/her do their thing.

2. A Kirkus Review. Hopefully it will be favorable and you can grab a tag line from the review as a headline to promote your book. You don't need much, but you NEED something. Kirkus Reviews can be tough, but if the book really is good, they will give you something to show prospective buyers. The tag must be a full sentence, not one word.

3. A goodreads giveaway. I only give 2 signed copies away at launch and I usually run it 8 weeks. Goodreads tell you 10 copies for 4 weeks (I think), but you only need to give away 2 copies because you are NOT giving away copies to get reviews. You are announcing your book, using goodreads as an advertising service which costs you 2 books. Also, lots of peeps who like the look of your book will buy it as soon as they see it on the giveaway, not wait to see if they win. Lots will also book it to read, and some will, eventually. The two critical weeks in the giveaway are the first week and (most importantly) the last week. These boost sales. The 8 week duration is because you want real paying readers to have time to write genuine reviews before someone who takes a freebie can write something, because freebie book reviews are not always positive, mostly because people who want free books don't necessarily like the idea of the book, just the idea of getting something for free. I had one goodreads giveaway review come in a year after I sent it out,which was ok, because it was a good review.

As an indie, we really don't have the resources to do much except pray for miracles. :) Although I love your Ad idea, but the downside is people might click it for laughs, not because they want to read your book. You might be better off to write something catchy that relates to your book.

As for giving lots of free downloads away, I suggest this is a terrible idea, because it creates a value perception in people's minds that they just have to wait for your books to be given away for free. I'm in the business of selling books, not giving them away. My value perception is always full price, never for free, never discounted (except for what Amazon do out of my control). It is a mistake to think success comes with free giveaways. Success comes from actual sales for money in the bank.

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6/5/2016 07:57:24 am

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David Dickie
1/21/2018 01:22:58 pm

Hey, thanks for this. I started at the tale end (looking for whether netgallery works or not) and now I'm working through these one by one. The problem with the information age is that you get information... a lot of it, without any indication of whether it is accurate or not. So most of the stuff that comes back when you look at advertising indie books is "pay for this service" kind of stuff. Oddly enough, everyone one of them says that the service is INCREDIBLE SUCCESSFUL. Go figure. So I picked on on a recommendation, and one of the things they offered was a workaround to the anti-quid-pro-quo amazon policy on reviews; you sign up to review someone's book from the group, you post your review, someone at random reviews your book. After starting a dozen or more books, I found one that wasn't terrible... but I probably would have given it a two star review if I was being honest. I forced my way through it, gave it four stars, and dropped out... frankly, the quality of the writing was so bad it's not a group I would really want to be associated with. I'm not Ernest Hemingway, but at least I paid for an editor and had enough feedback to know my books are worth reading. Anyway, nice to have someone that's gone out and tried the stuff actually give some honest feedback on what works and what doesn't. Thanks!

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5/9/2018 05:27:03 am

thanks for a good, informative and important useful post, the Internet has long been turned into a dump in which such posts are rare

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    Katie French is the author of The Breeders, a Young Adult dystopian adventure and Eyes Ever to the Sky, a sci fi romance. Nessa: A Breeders Story, a prequel novelette is available on Amazon for FREE. Sign up for notifications, or like her on Facebook. 

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