As you may know, book marketing is a regular topic on my blog. I've been guerrilla marketing my books for almost a year now and have tried many strategies. To learn about other tips you can try parts 1, part 2, part 3, and part 4 at each respective link. 

Just when I thought I'd exhausted all avenues of book marketing, I've come across another technique that I've found quite useful. Based on the success of Wool and Susan Kaye Quinn's Mind Jacker Origins short stories, I decided to write a short story or novelette to use as a marketing technique. What follows are the results of my endeavors. 

Around December I decided to write a Breeders novella. The whole premise was to release something that I could put out for free, a sample so to speak of the larger product known as The Breeders. I polled my reading audience as to what character I should explore and surprisingly the crowd voted for Dr. Nessa Vandewater, a lead villain in my story. Writing the novella came so easily from there that it was almost scary. In one month the final product was ready to go. So, from start to end, one month is a super fast turn-over rate for a new piece of fiction. The product was around 34 pages, not quite long enough to call a novella, but hopefully long enough to give reader a taste. I order a snazzy cover and used several writer friends as beta readers. The whole thing cost me about $150 to produce (cheap compared to the 2.5K The Breeders cost me). Then I uploaded it and held my breath. 

At first I sold it for 99 cents. I had a couple hundred downloads in that first month and a half, enough to pay for most of its production costs. Once sales started to slow, I wanted to drop the price to free. Now, this is not as easy as it seems. Amazon won't just let you give items away for free. However, they do price match, so you must offer the title somewhere else for free. I put it up on Smashwords at the free price point and waited for Amazon to notice. And waited. And waited. Finally, I had a few friends report to Amazon that my book was selling for free. That did the trick. Now Nessa was free. I waited to see what that would do. 

In May, over three thousand people downloaded it for free. It has sat in the top ten free sci fi short stories for the entire time it has been listed. I loved seeing it next to Wool on that list. What awesome company to keep. And even though I wasn't making a dime, I knew that having it up was good exposure. 

The main question is does the story help sell The Breeders. I can say a resounding yes. Before the short story was released The Breeders sales were slipping. I had days when I dipped down to the 7000s on Amazon rankings. After the short story went free, I have been ranked in the 5000s ever since, some days even 4000s. People note that they found my series first with Nessa and went on to buy The Breeder after. 

Here's the breakdown stats of the short story.
Cost: $150
Time: One month, start to finish
Outside help: Cover designer, Beta readers
 Would I try this again?: Most definitely. I still have not seen the decline of the boost it has given my novel. I will definitely try this strategy with my next series. For the small cost and time output it is a marketing strategy I would recommend. 


Book Marketing Part Six - Book Bub

A few weeks ago I discussed book marketing strategies I’ve tried in a few posts linked here (part 1, part 2 and part 3). Since that time I’ve had the pleasure of trying out a paid blog tour and I wanted to take a minute to blog about my experiences for anyone who’s interested in trying it.

I used Kismet tours, recommended to me by the fabulous A.G. Henley, but there are many book tour sites to choose from. A few things to note with Kismet. You need to schedule the tour two months in advance. This is difficult for many indie writers because once a book is ready, they want to release it, not wait two months for a special release. I ended up doing the tour long after my book had released, so that aspect didn’t matter much to me. Also, the price is not cheap. I paid $320 for a review tour, but prices go up from there into $530 for the full package. For my review tour I was told I would get up to 30 reviews. It ended up being about 20. I was a little let down. 30 reviews was what I was hoping for, but I understand they cannot guarantee a certain number of reviewers will sign on. As the tour commenced, two of the reviewers pulled out, which dropped my number to about 18. I guess the cut off for the price you pay for is 15, so in the end, I still paid the full amount with the promise that those missing reviewers would try to post their reviews as soon as possible. I have not yet heard if they have done so.

The reviews went on without a hitch though and I got some great feedback and a lot to tweet about and post on Facebook. However, I was disappointed to learn that most reviewers did not post their reviews to Amazon. 15 to 20 more reviews on my Amazon numbers would really be helpful, but even when I contacted the reviewers directly they did not respond, nor did they post to Amazon. Since posting to Amazon takes about ten seconds I was really disappointed in this aspect of the tour.

On to social media. The site also hosts a giveaway and I donated 10 free e-copies that readers could win. To enter they needed to follow me on Facebook or Twitter or tweet about the giveaway. This garnered me a huge following on both sites. Here are the numbers Kismet supplied to me.

The Breeders Goodreads Community Reviews 
Start of blog tour (3/24/13) - 391 Reviews/To-Reads
End of blog tour (4/16/13) - 476 Reviews/To-Reads
Percentage change - 22%

Twitter followers:
Start of blog tour (3/24/13) - 479 followers
End of blog tour (4/16/13) - 1,013 followers
Percentage change - 111%

Facebook Author page:
Start of blog tour (3/24/13) - 902 Likes
End of blog tour (4/16/13) - 1,533 Likes
Percentage change - 70%

The bottom line was how did this translate to sales? Well, I check my numbers pretty regularly and I have to say I did not see a change in sales. In fact, sales actually dropped a little during the tour. This is all just anecdotal evidence, but when you do a tour, you are hoping for a sales boost to offset your cost. I did not see that happen. 

Overall, the people at Kismet were very nice, very easy to reach and helpful. The reviewers for the most part posted their reviews, but most did not contact me and there was no relationship built, which is a detriment, especially if you want that reviewer to read your later works. The social media piece was good, but where it really counted -- sales -- I did not see the bump I was hoping for.

My conclusion: Next time, I’ll save the money and contact reviewers and bloggers myself. It may be a lot more work, but the price is too steep for the pay out.

So, what about you? What are your experiences with Blog Tours?

Book Marketing Part Five

One of the big tenets of Indie writing guru J.A. Konrath is a professional book cover is worth its weight in gold. I couldn’t agree more. Besides the book being recommended by a friend, a stunning cover is one of the top reasons someone buys your title over the rest. Readers need to see your cover (sometimes only in a thumbnail size) and feel drawn to it. They need to look at a slew of books and pick yours above the rest. Otherwise your book, no matter how brilliant it is, will be passed over time and time again.

Let’s take a look at a few examples. To preface, I hold no ill-will toward any books presented here. Nor am I affiliated with either author. I am only using the covers as examples. 

To the right you will see exhibit A. This is a book available for sale currently on Amazon. When you look at this cover, what strikes you? Would you think that this author spent a lot of time designing a cover trying to get the aspect ratio correct? Would you assume that this author might have spent the same amount of time trying to correct plot holes in her manuscript? 

Exhibit B is a self-published title hailing at a steep $6.99 price tag on Amazon. At first look, I would think this book is about a giant on the swim team. It again has some of the same issues as above in that it conveys a cheeply put together product. This is not the message you want to send, people. You've toiled for months, maybe years on your book. Don't blow it by slapping some stock photo into a Word document and calling it a day. Lazy cover art makes readers think you are selling a  lazily written book. First impressions matter. 

Now to exhibit C. The book below is also for sale on Amazon and it is the same price as the book A and half the cost of book B. Now, if you were interesting in buying a book and these three were sitting side by side, which do you think you'd drop $2.99 on?  This cover is compelling. It draws me in. I know instantly what genre the book is and I 

have an idea of what it will be about. It also tells me its author has spent considerable time and probably some money on making this the best quality cover it can be, which leads me to assume she did the same with her content.  

So, if you are pondering your own book cover, here are some elements to consider. 

1. Does it look professional? Would someone immediately categorize it as "self-published" just by looking at it?
2. Will the image hold up when shrunken down to a thumbnail?
3. Does the picture convey the genre, age group and tone you are going for?
4. Is there a gut reaction to the image? Will your readers be drawn toward the book because of it?
5. Is it legible? Does the title and author stand out from the image? 

If you've gotten my drift sufficiently, I think you'll conclude that it is worth spending some money on a cover. It doesn't have to cost you an arm and a leg, however. You can purchase a quality cover for around $300. The amount of sales your cover will bring you should make up that much and more. 

What about you? What do you think makes a good cover? 

When I look at that title above, it gives me chills. 800 books. I started this little adventure in August of this year thinking it would be great if a few people I didn't know read my book. How exhilarating to reach someone half way around country! As my sale began to pick up I thought, wouldn't it be cool to make a little bit of dough doing this? And, ta da! That started happening. What I could not predict is how much my sales have picked up since Christmas. I am on a tidal wave that just won't quit (hopefully it won't, please, please don't let it quit). But, I'm not here just to tout my success. I want to give you some tips to help you to sell right along with me if you aren't already. 

First of all, let's start with the numbers. Here's the breakdown of sales for February. The Breeders sold 552 and had 78 Amazon Prime borrows. Nessa sold 250. So, with only two titles on Amazon and one of them a novelette, I made roughly $1500. If I were to add one more title that sells like The Breeders, well, as Mater from the movie Cars would say, "Dag gum, dems some job quittin' numbers right dere." 

So, I'm selling well. The question is how? Well, I have a few good guesses as to why I'm doing well right now. I'll lay out the top five to give you an idea of what I think put me over the top. 

1. Write something people want to read. The Breeders is a cross-over YA/Adult dystopia. People are still out there looking for YA dystopias. So I am riding the crest of a Hunger Games wave and the odds are ever in my favor. I know other authors having similar success in genres like SciFi, Paranormal Romance and Erotica. That is the bonus of being an indie author. If you spot a trend that you are already comfortable in, you can write, edit and produce a book fast enough to ride the wave. Bottom line is no matter how good a book, if people aren't reading that genre, it won't get sold. 

2. Put out your best book. I took 18 months with The Breeders. I must've revised it 100 times. I am not exaggerating when I state that figure. I think I reread and changed that draft about 100 times. I had critic partners that were writers. I hired an editor and she did three passes on it. I have read a lot of self-published titles with my stint as reviewer for Underground Book Reviews. Most of them do not read like a book that has been revised 100 times. If you want a book to sell, it has to be as good as something sitting on a bookstore shelf. No short cuts. 

3. Reviews, reviews, reviews. I now have close to 80 reviews for my book. It has been a slow build, but now that I have amassed those numbers, the book is selling itself. This is something that takes time. Once you write the best book you can, be patient. If it's good, people will review it and momentum will build. 

4. Building platform. I read a great book called Platform by Michael Hyatt. I recommend it for any creative type that is trying to wheel and deal. From Michael's ideas I've been doing some major consideration in regard to my platform. I've tightened up my blog, posted more content and thought deeply about what topics might draw readers. I've started tweeting even though I didn't understand it. I've build a decent following on Facebook using an ad I bought for $50. I've also been reaching out to other authors in my genre, talking, sharing and cross-promoting. It's taken a lot of hard work, but I think I'm starting to see the fruits of my labor. Platform matters. 

5. Put out more titles. Nessa was an experiment to see if I could put out a quality short that would help sell my main title. As a novelette, or 30,000 words, it was quick to write (about a month) and it only cost me $100 for the cover art. I'm hoping since it is priced at 99 cents people will pick it up on impulse. I'm also hoping they'll like it and buy The Breeders or vice versa. So, each book is helping sell the other. Magic. 

So, there you have it, five ways I've found success selling books through Amazon. What about you, what's helped you make headway in selling your titles? 

In case you missed it, I began this series last week on my many experiments with marketing and my take on what works and what doesn't. You can find part one here and part two here. There is one very important marketing tool that I think may have been the single most important technique, so important I thought it deserved its own post. Are you ready for this mind-blowing secret? Here it is: giving your book away for free. 

The brain child for using this technique came when I began working with my super agent, Amanda Luedeke. She suggested that I try to increase sales numbers and rankings before we went to submission on The Breeders. I am always game for something that will make more money and create more visability, so I told her I was game for any idea she had. She suggested a five day giveaway through KDP Select. If you haven't heard, KDP Select is Amazon's book sharing program. If you opt in to KDP you agree to offer your e-books nowhere but Amazon. The upside is Prime Members can borrow your book for free. The down side is that Kobo, Barnes and Noble and Apple customers get no e-book love. I opted into KDP pretty early on in my writing adventure. It was clear from the start that Amazon was where I was selling and nothing was going on anywhere else. KDP worked well, allowing people to try my book for free through Amazon Prime. And I get paid a hunk of the money Amazon shares out for its KDP authors (roughly $2). 

Another thing KDP offers are promotional days where you can set your content for free. I had tried this before and given away a good number of free books. Each time I saw a little spike in ratings that would eventually slide back down. I had never tried a five day giveaway before, so I decided it was time and started to plan.

The interesting thing was we were approaching Christmas, a booming time for ebooks. Everyone gets sparkling new Kindles or Amazon gift cards in their stockings. I thought it might be a good idea to run the giveaway the week before Christmas and then return my book to $2.99, on the 23rd right before the sales boom. So, I set my five days up and held my breath. 

The result was tremendous. I gave away 2200 books in 5 days. I got a ton of reviews, sequel notification emails and Facebook friends. My book rating sky-rocketed (from 15,000 to 6,000) and I began selling quite a few more titles each day. I went from selling five books a day before Christmas to selling 15 a day after the promotion. And the wave still hasn't peaked. This month I am selling twenty-five books a day with little to no promotional leg work. 

So, the result is free days work, especially when they are timed right. Now, I know you'll have to wait a whole eight months before you can take advantage of the Christmas boom, but I think that any special event will help (i.e. the release of a new title or a marketing promo you are running). The free books you give away will likely translate into sales that will quickly make up for any lost revenue on those free days. 

So, there you have it, the not so big secret that has brought me success. What about you? How have KDP free days worked for you?

Book Marketing Part Four

On Wednesday I began this post on what works and what doesn't in self-promotion and marketing for authors. You can find part one here. The next five strategies are those that I have found most effective. Again, these are just my own personal experiences and not an exhaustive list. 

5. Sequel Notification List or Newsletter
I saw my good friend and awesome writer A.G. Henley use this and picked it up immediately. She had a sequel notification sign-up on her blog and mentioned it in the back material of her book, The Scourge (seriously, if you haven't read it, you need to). I have found this to be exceedingly helpful. I used Feedburner to create the widget on my website. It took a little bit of reading and tinkering, but for a girl who isn't particularly tech savvy, I was able to pull it off. 

The Result- I have a sequel notification list about fifty readers long so far. This is an invaluable tool and once it is set up, it runs itself. DO IT. 

4. Kismet Review Blog Tour
This one is hard to recommend because I haven't actually participated in it yet. I am signed up for a Kismet Review Blog Tour in March. Kismet is a top notch review site that puts on blog tours, review tours and the like. A.G. Henley introduced this one to me, as well. She said she really enjoyed it and got over twenty great reviews (remember, review numbers count) and had a lot to tweet about. The price isn't for the faint of heart, however, so if I don't see a lot of increase in sales this will definitely be a bust. 

The Result - Hard to say, but this one is a gamble because of the high price. I'll have to follow up to let you know if I think it was worth it or not. 

3. Blogging
This goes without saying, but blogging is huge. It draws people to your content, your website and your books. I maintain two blogs (scary, I know). The first blog is a review site dedicated to Indie Publishing. We get a ton of hits every day (upwards of 1500) from writers just like you and I who want reviews. How many of those readers go on to buy my book? Again, it is hard to say, but it is definitely nice to be able to do an announcement post and know that at least one thousand people are likely to stumble on it that day. 

My blog gets far less traffic and it is much newer. The nice thing about having my own blog is I can post whatever I want. I can do giveaways, host guest and ramble. The drawback is writing content. It is not easy to find time. 

The Result - Every writer needs a blog. Not an option. DO IT. 

2. Social Media
I was already on Facebook before I became an author, so I decided it would be easy to create an author Facebook page. I like having a separate profile for my writing so I am not inundating my friends and family who aren't interested in hearing about my book twenty-four/seven. It may be a bit more work to maintain both, but not much. I check in on Facebook a few times a day to post, respond to a few comments and get out of there. It can be a time-suck, so I keep one eye on the clock. So far I have 340 fans. It's nice to have numbers like that when you are releasing something new. 

Twitter is newer for me, and not as user-friendly in my opinion. I am using it, though. I know many people prefer it as their new method of online interaction and I need to be where they are. It doesn't come as easily, but a post once a day is fine and easy to fit into my schedule. 

The Result - Having 340 Facebook fans and 70 Twitter followers is better than having none. I am sure the more I'm on there, the more people I will reach. 

1. Writing New Content
Nothing drives people to your work better than liking something else you wrote. I am sure you've heard the more you can publish the better. I'd like to think that the more WELL-WRITTEN work you can publish the better. Sure, you can churn out content like a madman, but all these suggestions cannot make a bad book into a good one. Marketing a bad book will only make it fail faster. So, write good content and write it fast. (Ha! That's like saying, just don't eat cake to someone who wants to lose weight.) 

The Result - My new novelette is selling well and The Breeders continues to sell well (5500 on the Amazon rankings today). I hope to have a new book published in May and hopefully the sequel to The Breeders in August or September. The bottom line is, if you want to make it as an indie author you have to write a lot. No excuses. Then you will see results. 

So, there you have it. Ten marketing strategies and their pros and cons as I see them. I'm always reading, tweaking and revising and I'd love to hear from some of you as to what works and what doesn't in the comments below. So, in regard to marketing, what works for you?

Book Marketing Part Three 
Book Marketing Part Four

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