 The Amazon algorithm hates spikes in book sales. There, now you know. Authors used to use a technique called the “book bomb” to get their books selling, but no one talks about those anymore. A book bomb was a splurge of advertising and promotions on a single day to send a book zooming up the sales rankings, so it would get noticed. But Amazon decided it didn’t like those sorts of spikes, because they weren’t sustainable in terms of sales. If all the marketing was happening on a single day, sales soon started to drop off on subsequent days. Part of that is because of the way that Amazon calculates sales rankings. A sale is counted as a whole number on the day it’s made, but the next day it is only counted as ½ a sale. The day after that it is a ¼ of a sale and so on until the fraction becomes so small it is meaningless.  That is why you can be riding high in the sales rankings one day and you’re pondlife the next. So, Indie authors had to find a new way of getting the Amazon algorithms working for them that didn’t create a spike but created a trend instead. What they came up with was the stacked promo, or promo stacking if you want to express it the other way around. A well-planned stacked promo campaign can gather you a lot of sales over a longer time period, which creates a trend and gets the attention of the Amazon algorithms. They can also be used in conjunction with Facebook and Amazon ads  That’s because Amazon wants to sell books because selling books makes them money. And the easiest books for Amazon to sell are the ones that are already selling because the author is promoting them. So, if your sales are creating an upward trend, as they should be over the period of a stacked promotion for a discounted book, the Amazon algorithms will do two things. The first is that they will start to include them in their recommendations listings. You know the ones in the carousels that appear on the sales page for books and act as competition. That’s the “recommended for you” list and the “also bought” list.  That’s basically free advertising for your book, as a lot of people buy from those lists because it saves them having to do more searches. The second thing it does only applies if your book is subscribed to Kindle Select, the driver behind Kindle Unlimited. A lot of “wide” authors don’t know this, but if your book is in Kindle Select and its starts to sell as an ebook, then it will be recommended to Kindle Unlimited subscribers for them to download. This is because Amazon assumes that if people are buying your book, other people will download it for free on KU and that justifies the subscription price Amazon charges. That is more free advertising and the majority of 6 figure earning authors make most of their money this way, not through sales of the ebook.  But if you just go for a sales spike, none of that happens. Do stacked promos work? All I can say is that we have just run one for our book The Magi and yes, it worked. How much does it cost? The most expensive book promo site is BookBub and their Featured Deals start at around $100 (£80) and can run as high as $1,000 for the most popular genres. I think it is fair to say that you need to be selling quite a lot of books already if you want to book a slot with them. But many sites offer far cheaper packages than that and they also have a significant reach. They start from around $20 and I don’t think any charge more than $100, but check their prices for yourself.  Unsurprisingly the best sites are much in demand, so plan ahead. You need to be looking at least 30 days ahead if you want to secure a slot on a specific day or in a particular week, but for some genres you might have to look as far ahead as 60 days. There are so many book promo sites, how do you know which are good, which are bad, and which are scammers? I’ll provide a link at the end of the blog to another blog by book marketing guru David Gaughran, that lists sites he has used personally, and we have also used some of them. You can trust all those sites. But by all means check with other sources if you don’t trust us or David Gaughran. In fact, I recommend that you do. So, there you have it. Stacked promos are great for promoting your back catalogue on a tight budget, but they also work well as a promotion for a new book in a series, where you can list Book 1 at a heavy discount (99c or even free), Book 2 at a higher price and the latest book at full price. Basically, you are building a pricing ladder to encourage the reader to climb down deep into your series and you can do that for anything from a 3 book series to a 10 book (or more) series.  RESOURCES
For David Gaughran’s blog on stacked promotions, including the best sites to use, click here. For more information on making the Amazon algorithms work for you, we recommend David Gaughran’s book “Amazon Decoded”. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.
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 When is a book not a book? When it is a Christmas Gift. This blog may be a little late for you to do anything with the content right now, but we hope that by passing on its message it gives you something to think about when marketing for the next year. If you already have a marketing plan, this is something that you can add in and if you haven’t – why not? Those books aren’t going to sell themselves! Fail to plan - plan to fail.  As regular readers will know, we are great advocates of advertising, both on Amazon and on Facebook, so we thought we’d like to share a bit of a success story with you. You could call this a “case study” but that makes it sound a bit fancier than it was. We have one book in our catalogue that makes it ideal for a certain type of person. We’ll get to the details in a moment, but we’ll start with the “back story” first. We noticed back in December 2023 that sales of the book picked up quite considerably and we sold more copies that month than we had during the previous 11. Being curious sorts of people, we wondered why.  We had almost no data that we could analyse, because the growth in sales was “organic”. We hadn’t advertised the book and we hadn’t even promoted it that much, so we had no idea who had bought it. But we did have one very important bit of data. All the copies sold were in paperback, not ebook format. That was what gave us our biggest clue. Asking a few contacts in the book marketing world brought us the suggestion that the copies were being sold not as books – but as Christmas gifts. Yes, of course they were books, but that wasn’t why they were being bought. They were being bought so that they could be wrapped up in nice Christmas paper, to be given to someone else. The buyer had no intention of reading the book themselves, which is very unusual in the book marketing world.  So, in our marketing plan for November and December 2024 we decided we would aim not at the book buying market, but at the gift giving market. Not all of it, of course. That market is huge and not everyone who buys gifts is going to buy a book as a gift. But there was still quite a large segment of the market that we could aim at. We estimated the market size to be in region of 2 million people. OK, so how did we arrive at that figure?  The book in question is aimed at golfers, of whom there is an estimated one million in the UK. But we weren’t going to be targeting the golfers, we were going to be targeting the people who would be buying Christmas gifts for golfers. That is likely to be a much larger figure, when you take into account spouses/partners, children, siblings and friends. In creating our ads, therefore, we didn’t use our normal approach of saying “This is a great book for all you golfers” We changed our approach entirely and said “This is the ideal gift for the golfer in your life”. That affected the way we targeted the book in our advertising. We are looking primarily at Facebook and Amazon ads here.  The crossover was in pricing. We reduced the book’s price to make it a little bit more attractive to gift givers who were on a tight budget. That would also make it more attractive for children to give to parents, uncles, aunties etc. In our Amazon keyword targeted ads we also used keywords related to Christmas gifts. Christmas and Xmas were included in all the keyword phrases we put into the ads. But on Facebook it meant we didn’t try to target golfers, as they weren’t the people we were trying to sell to. We left our targeting as wide as possible, so that anyone who was buying a gift for a golfer might consider it.  In terms of the graphics and the advertising text, we also focused on the gift giving opportunity. The image next to this para is one of the ones we used. As you can see, we magnified the gift giving potential of the book as well as pointing out the price reduction.* In the ad’s primary text, we also focused on the gift giving opportunity, making more of that than we did of the content of the book. Non golfers would hardly pay attention to the book’s content. They probably read little, if any, of it before they wrapped it up.  So, to the results of the advertising campaigns. Immediately after launching the ads at the beginning of December sales weren’t any better than they had been throughout the year, but they got better rapidly. As the month progressed and people started to run out of time to buy gifts for their loved ones, sales started to accelerate. In week 2 of the month sales doubled. In week 3 they quadrupled and hit their peak over the weekend of 20th/21st December, which was pretty much the latest date by which delivery could be guaranteed in time for Christmas. Part of the slow start to sales we experienced at the beginning of the month we think was down to the Facebook algorithm “learning” who it should show the ads to. After all, we hadn’t given it a target audience to work with. From its scan of the images and text we used it probably thought it should be showing the ad to golfers. But it would then have learnt that the audience was much wider, which was when we started to see the acceleration in sales.  So, the lessons we learnt:
While this blog has mainly been about marketing for Christmas, it also suggests opportunities for selling other genres of books at other times of the year. For example, selling romance books in the run up to Valentines Day, or selling books as birthday gifts at any time of the year. There are many different days throughout the year dedicated to particular causes or events (Hint: May The Fourth Be With You) and many of those offer opportunities for specially targeted sales campaigns. *Editor’s note: the book is no longer available at that price. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  In theory, anyone who can write their name can write a book. In theory. In practice it’s a very different story (pun intended). From the emails we get seeking advice and from the questions we see on social media, it’s clear that a lot of would-be authors get frustrated when they find out just how difficult it is to write a book. And then there are the emails and social media posts that ask how to get started as a writer and we weep in frustration at the sorts of replies we see from other authors. They are very often so encouraging without telling the questioner the truth, which is that writing is very hard work, publishing is harder and marketing a book is the hardest part of all. We have no problem with the idea of encouraging people to write, but we have to temper that advice with warnings about reality or we may do more harm than good.  All that encouragement gives these people a false sense of the reality of being a writer and I can’t help but feeling they end up asking “Why did no one tell me writing was this difficult?” And they usually say it just before they hit the “delete” key on their work and go and look for something easier to do. Which is a shame, because if they had been told the truth and been prepared for the journey from the start, they might have ended up being good writers. Now, the purpose of this blog is not to discourage anyone from becoming an author. It is a great life if you can do it, with a tremendous sense of achievement when your book starts to sell. If you think you can deal with everything that goes with it, then please do become an author. But this blog is a reality check for budding authors. If you think anything I say in the paragraphs that follow sounds too much like hard work for too little reward, then writing may not be for you.  Author and journalist Christopher Hitchens The problem started with author and journalist Christopher Hitchens (1949 – 1989) who said “Everyone has a book in them.” Why was this a problem? Because that isn’t actually what he said. What Hitchens actually said was ““Everyone has a book inside them, which is exactly where it should, I think, in most cases, remain.” He was having a conversation with friends, and he was being sarcastic, but somehow this quote escaped into the public awareness. So now everyone remembers the first bit of the quote and they don’t even know about the last bit. But, because of that misquote, whole generations of people think that they can write a book. Now, I’m not saying they can’t, but based on some of the submissions we get here at Selfishgenie Publishing, there is a chasm between wanting to write a book and having the talent and skills needed to actually do it.  The naturally talented Tiger Woods Yes, there is such a thing as raw (or natural) talent. But raw talent needs nurturing, which people forget. I’ll use the golfer Tiger Woods as an analogy. Tiger Woods didn’t go straight from hitting a golf ball at the age of 5, in his family’s back yard, to winning the US Masters at Augusta. He had raw talent, sure, but if he had just relied on that we would now be saying “Tiger who?” Between 1980, when Tiger was 5, and 1997, when he won his first Masters, was a 17 year journey of golf lessons, coaching, endless practicing and playing to upgrade his raw talent to a “Major” winning capability. And that is how it works with writing, too.  The fact you can write a half decent essay or report does not make you either a writer or an author. Creative writing, that which is necessary to write a novel, is a skill that has to be learnt. Universities know this, which is why they offer degrees in creative writing. I’m not saying that everyone who wants to be an author has to go to university (or college, if you prefer), but they do need to take their raw talent and develop it so that they can go from being someone who writes a good essay to someone who writes a best-selling novel. It is the same journey that Tiger Woods took, only without the necessity of carrying a bag of golf clubs around (Tiger Woods did go to college on a golfing scholarship, but that was a means to an end. There were other ways he could have completed his golfing education). So, Mr, Ms, Mrs or Miss wannabe author, are you willing to put some time into developing your talent?  Are you willing to take courses in creative writing? Are you willing to attend writers’ workshops? Are you willing to join writer’s groups (real ones, not virtual ones) to get feedback on your writing? Are you willing to sit and listen to feedback that says you could do it better? Are you willing to spend years practicing so that you can improve as a writer? Are you capable of dealing with the self-doubt and imposter syndrome that plagues many writers? And all before you write the first word of your first actual novel. OK, I’ll admit that some authors do have enough natural talent to make it big at the first attempt. But they are the exception, they are not the rule. The chances of being one of those prodigies, is extremely small.  But, thanks to modern technology, it is easy to find out if you are one of these prodgies. Join a Facebook writers’ group, post a piece of work on the page (anonymously) and ask for feedback. I can be pretty sure that what you receive back will not be overwhelmingly positive. Even though a lot of the feedback will be couched in positive language, it will be negative in its meaning. So, you’ve put the hard yards in, and your first novel is ready to be released into a world that couldn’t give a damn about it.  Because that is another lesson the newbie author has to learn. The world is not waiting with bated breath for their novel. This is when they find out that getting your book published is even harder than writing it. Querying (as it is known) is brutal. Most authors get rejection after rejection before they find an agent to represent their work to publishers. Are you ready for that? We speak from experience when we say that those rejections hurt, and the pain doesn’t get any less the more rejections you get. The biggest named authors in the world have all had at least one rejection. It’s on record that J K Rowling had ten before eventually landing a deal for her first Harry Potter book. Even getting an agent isn’t the end of the journey, because publishers don’t like taking risks on first time authors. Your agent may like your book and have faith in it, but it doesn’t mean they can sell it to a publisher. J K Rowling’s publisher had so little faith in her book that the first print run was only 5,650 copies. Most of those went to reviewers. So, how many rejections are you willing to accept before you call it a day? Actually, thanks to the internet and the mushroom like growth of self-publishing platforms, you don’t have to call it a day anymore. You can self-publish your book.  No one is going to stumble over your novel by accident! But that is just more hard work, You now have a whole new set of skills to learn, and they are called editing, cover design, formatting and marketing.
That last one, marketing, is the hardest of all. Sorry to have to tell you this, but no one is going to stumble over your book by accident. You have to take them by the hand and lead them to your book. With a lot of hard work, you may sell 1,000 copies of your book. That would put you into the top 10% of all authors. Yes, you read that right. Only 10% of all published authors sell more than 1,000 books in their lifetime. Here’s the breakdown.
If an author wants to sell their book, they must first learn how to market it if they want to eat regularly. So, do you still want to be a writer? I hope so, because there is room in the world for you. But don’t believe that it is an easy path to fame and fortune, because anyone who says it is, is a liar. Yes, maybe anyone can become a writer. But not every writer will be good at it and not every good writer will be successful. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so. This week we have a guest blog from Gene Ramsey. Gene , a seasoned marketing professional, is sharing his downsizing adventure. After his youngest son, Jacob, recently got married and left home, Gene and his wife found themselves in an empty nest. Recognizing the marketing principles of consumer behaviour and market segmentation, Gene and his wife embarked on a strategic downsizing journey. With "Downsizing Dad", Gene shares the ups and downs of their experience, offering valuable insights for others considering a similar lifestyle change. He demonstrates how his marketing background informed their decision-making process, from identifying their needs and preferences to effectively navigating the complexities of the downsizing market. In this blog Gene adapts his approach to strategic decision making to show how it can be used by the Indie book publisher. All images courtesy of Pexels.  In today’s vibrant digital landscape, creatives such as artists, fashion designers, and writers have unprecedented opportunities to showcase their work and carve out a unique space. However, the vast sea of talent also poses a challenge: standing out. This article from delves into robust strategies to not only capture attention but also sustain a growing audience in your creative endeavours. Harness the Power of Social Media  You must consider social media platforms as your digital stage. Platforms like Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok cater specifically to visual and creative content, making them ideal for displaying your work. Build a following by consistently posting high-quality images, engaging videos, and insightful stories about your creative process. Engage actively with your followers by responding to comments and messages. This interaction fosters a community around your work, enhancing your visibility and appeal. Seek Wisdom Through Mentorship  Navigating the creative industry can be daunting without guidance. Seek out mentors who have successfully carved a niche in your field. These relationships provide you with a wealth of knowledge on navigating market trends, pricing, and consumer behaviour. Mentors can also introduce you to networks and opportunities that were previously out of reach, accelerating your growth and helping you avoid common pitfalls. Kickstart with Crowdfunding  Crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo offer more than just funding—they provide a platform to validate your ideas in the real market. Launch a campaign for a new project or collection, and you’ll gather not only funds but also a base of supporters who believe in your vision. This initial validation is crucial and can serve as a springboard for future endeavours. Craft a Comprehensive Business Plan  To ensure your creative talent flourishes, anchor it with a robust business strategy. Your business plan should detail your vision, analyze the market landscape, define your marketing approaches, and project financial outcomes, serving as a comprehensive roadmap for success. This pivotal document not only steers your creative projects but also attracts the investors or partners necessary to expand your reach and impact. Personalize with Email Marketing  Through email marketing, you can forge a direct and intimate link with your audience, turning casual viewers into dedicated followers. By sending out newsletters filled with exclusive content, sneak peeks, and early access to new releases, you invite your subscribers into the inner circle of your creative process. This approach not only deepens customer loyalty but also continuously re-engages your audience, keeping their enthusiasm for your work alive and vibrant. Market Your Masterpiece  For writers, understanding how to market your books effectively is essential. Develop a marketing plan that includes book signings, readings, online promotions, and collaborations with other artists. Utilizing platforms like Goodreads for writers or Etsy for crafters can also help you reach audiences looking for your specific creative niche. Optimize for Visibility  As a creative, using SEO techniques to sprinkle relevant keywords throughout your online content can significantly boost your visibility. By optimizing your portfolio, blog, or online store, you ensure your work ranks higher in search results, capturing the attention of more potential fans and customers. This strategic visibility not only draws increased traffic but also connects your art with audiences that are actively seeking your unique expressions. Educate Through Workshops  Conducting workshops or online courses elevates your status as an expert while drawing in an audience eager to learn from your expertise. As you share your skills, you simultaneously open a new revenue stream that benefits both you and your participants. These learners often become advocates for your work, spreading the word through their own social channels and broadening your influence. This ripple effect not only increases your exposure but also solidifies your position as a leader in your creative domain.
Achieving prominence in your creative career goes beyond mere talent; it calls for an active engagement with both digital tools and traditional tactics. Each piece of content you create and every interaction you have are integral to constructing your legacy in the arts. By embracing these tools today, you can forge a path that will lead audiences worldwide to recognize and celebrate your work. Engage relentlessly, innovate consistently, and watch as your efforts transform into a celebrated artistic journey. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  This week’s blog owes its origins to Facebook writers’ groups once more. A common question for consideration is “How do you writers find time to do a full time job, look after your family AND write?” Well, the simple answer is “time management”. When I still worked in business, time management was identified as a skill that some colleagues didn’t possess. They got behind with their work, missed deadlines, suffered with stress and a whole lot of other issues that degraded their performance. When this was discussed at reviews, the answer those colleagues gave was always “I just don’t have enough time!”. However, when the discussion was opened up to discover why the colleague didn’t have enough time, it wasn’t that they were overloaded with work, it was more that they managed their time poorly, which meant that a lot of time in the day was wasted. And this is the difference between writers who manage their time so that they can write, and people who want to write but can’t find the time to do it. We are all the same in many respects – we all have things going on in our lives other than just writing. The difference is how we manage our time so that everything gets done, including our writing. Because the time management issues that act as a barrier in the workplace, can also act as a barrier in the rest of a person’s life. The reasons for this break down to some common areas and I’ll address them under their headings.  Time Bandits At work, Time Bandits are the people who steal time from your working day so that you don’t have enough to do whatever it is that you want (or need) to do. It is the colleague who comes and perches on the corner of your desk and starts to talk about what was on TV last night, or who wants to talk about their troubled love life, or whatever it is they want to unload onto you. It is also the colleague who comes to you looking for a favour, because “they haven’t got time to do it themselves”. We’ve all met these people in the workplace. The key to getting rid of them is to remember that THEIR problems are not YOUR problems. You don’t have to sit there and listen to them. You don’t have to do their work for them. You can ask them to go away. You can even insist by pointing out that you have work to do, even if they don’t seem to have any, and you want to get on with it.  Translating that into home life, it may be the neighbour who stops you outside your house and, instead of just exchanging polite hellos, they start to unburden themselves on you and before you know it, half the day has slipped away. Or maybe the neighbour that pops by “just for a coffee and a chin-wag”. I’m not suggesting that you should be rude to these people. After all, we all have to live side by side, but you do have to find a way to extricate yourself from the situation without causing offence. The easiest way is to invent an urgent engagement. “Sorry, I’d love to stay and listen to your problem, but I have to be at the (whatever) in ten minutes and I’m running late.” Or you can invent something happening inside your home, such as a running tap that needs to be turned off, or a casserole that needs to be attended to. Whatever it is, put a smile on your face and suggest that you really would like to stay and listen to the story about how their bunion operation went, but you really do have to go and turn that tap off. And it isn’t just the people in the street. It’s the phone calls, emails and social media that suck you in to lengthy conversations that you just don’t need to get sucked into. Just don’t allow it. Take control and prevent the Time Bandits from robbing you of valuable writing time.  Distractions Distractions take many forms. Social media is perhaps the greatest distraction of our age, with FOMO dragging us in to make sure we don’t miss the latest video of a cat playing a piano. I am guilty of this one myself. Many’s the time I’ve logged on to social media with the intention of taking a “quick look” only to find myself, 3 hours later, trying to win an argument over which actor was the best James Bond (Sean Connery, obvs). But there are other distractions in our lives, and we have to learn how to deal with them and prevent them from taking up our valuable time. For social media I now set a countdown timer on my phone for the amount of time I can afford to allow myself to be on there. Typically, that is 15 minutes in a day, per social media channel that I use (mainly Facebook and X), so for me that is 30 minutes a day. When the timer runs out and plays its little tune, I then stop whatever I’m doing on social media and get back to doing something more important. Other distractions include TV, YouTube, streaming services (Netflix et al), gaming and more. But here’s the great thing about these distractions – they are inanimate. If you stop doing them abruptly, no one is going to be offended. I now use these sorts of things as rewards for hitting a word count or editing target and similar. That way I can justify my half hour of TV soaps without feeling guilty. But it is only half an hour!  Task Overload This is all about working out what is actually important in your life and what you can get rid of. A lot of the things we do, we do out of habit. If we thought about them we could cut some of them out of our lives completely, or at least reduce the amount of time we spend doing them. A “time management journal” is great to help you sort this out. At the end of each day, take 10 minutes to write down all the things you did that day, and how long you spent doing it. And I do mean everything. Yes, even that 5 minutes you spent making coffee (multiplied by however many cups of coffee you drink each day) and the ten minutes you spent completing your time management journal.. You don’t have to be 100% accurate in your time keeping. If you can approximate to the nearest 15 minutes that is fine. Do that for about a month, then open a spreadsheet on your PC or laptop and create 6 columns. Head 3 of the columns “Essential”, “Desirable” and “Could Live Without” The adjacent column to each of those headings is where you insert the amount of time you spent on each activity each day, and you can total that up at the bottom to show you how much time you spent doing each activity each month..  The aim from here is to move activities out of the “Essential” column and into the “Desirable” column, and from “Desirable” into “Could Live Without”. Now, when it comes to essentials, everyone’s lives are different. Some people have frail family members to look after. Some have children to raise. Some people have to do 2 jobs just to live. Some people are in relationships and others aren’t and have no desire to be. So, what is essential to one person is not necessarily going to be essential to another. You have to decide what is really essential to your life and therefore can’t be moved out of that column. But you don’t have to move an item out of the “Essential” column to benefit. You can reduce the amount of time spent on an activity. My wife assures me that doing the laundry is essential, and I’m not going to risk my life by arguing with her. But ironing sheets is not essential. Nor is ironing towels, socks, underwear and some other types of laundry. By taking my approach to ironing I was able to save nearly 30 minutes a week (2 hours a month) on the laundry task the last time I undertook it. My wife didn’t approve, of course, but she was unable to come up with a valid reason for ironing towels (I think she went back and ironed them later, when I wasn’t around – but that was her time, not mine). The same applies to the “Desirable” column.  I can agree that it is desirable to meet up with friends, but it doesn’t have to be every day (or 2 days, or each week). It also doesn’t have to be with “friends” you don’t actually like that much. Evaluate these activities objectively and ask yourself what you would lose if you were to move them to the “Can Live Without” column, or if you were to reduce the amount of time you spend doing them.. You will be surprised what you can actually live without when you start to take a critical look at your life. I’m not suggesting that you should cut all entertainment out of your life. As we all know, all work and no play makes Jack (or Jill) a dull boy (or girl). Everyone needs to relax and let off steam from time to time. But you may not need quite as much time as you take. That “quick drink” after work that ends up 3 hours later really can be just a quick drink. That trip to the shopping mall with a friend to buy new shoes doesn’t have to take all day. So, at the end of the exercise you have to look at the “Can Live Without” column and, in particular, the total number of minutes that you spend on those activities. That is the amount of time you can free up to do your writing because if you can live without them, you can cut them out without losing anything from your life. Get rid of those things from your life and you WILL have time to write as well as to do the essentials and the desirables. The last time I undertook this exercise (I do it about once every 2 years, because new habits develop without us noticing them) I was able to free up around 10 hours a month from my life. That’s about the time I need to write 10,000 words of a novel.  Dead Time Not all the time we save is in nice chunks like 1 hour. Some of them are a few minutes here and a few minutes there. Those few minutes are “dead time” because they are too little to use productively. Or are they? At the same time there are things we do that have “dead time” included in them. Dead time is also time we spend waiting for something else to happen. Typically, this is things like waiting for buses or trains or waiting for the washing machine to finish its cycle. But that is time that can be used for something else. So, there is one final thing we have to do and that is to plan our lives a little bit better, so we can make use of dead time, or so that we can add those odd minutes of time together to make longer periods.  I discussed laundry a few paras ago, but our washing machine takes about an hour to run the cycle we use, so that’s an hour I could be using to clean the bathroom, for example. Or maybe I could use that hour to work out the plan for the next chapter I’m going to write, Or maybe I can research deadly poisons for use in the murder mystery I’m going to write. You get the idea. The same applies to the time spent waiting for the bus or sitting on the bus. In fact, the only commuting time that can’t be used is if you have to drive yourself. That’s where car shares come in handy, if you can arrange one. It’s also better for the environment. Doing the school run? Maybe you could arrange to take turns with another parent, so they do it one week, and you do it the next. How much more time would that add to your day?  Whatever remains in your “essential” and “desirable” column needs to be planned out and scheduled in, so that you can maximise the “free” time you need to write. Fail to plan – plan to fail!
This is not rocket science. Lots of people have learnt how to do this and, while I can’t claim to have covered every time management technique you may need, I have given you some basics to work with. But the most valuable technique by far is that time management journal. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  When you try to do something, whether it is new to you or familiar, it is always useful to know how the process works. So, it is with selling a book. But to understand how the selling process works, you have to understand it from the point of view of the buyer – which could be you. Imagine you go to a shoe shop to buy new shoes. You may not realise it, but before you even enter the shop you have already made some critical decisions. For example, why did you choose that particular shop and not a different one? Now you are inside the shop, you browse the styles available, and you pick one out. Why did you pick that particular style and not of the hundreds of others on display? What drew you to it? You may not end up buying that shoe, but something about it captured your interest, if only fleetingly. Now, fast forward to the point where you are at the checkout, paying for the shoes you have selected. In terms of decision making, how did you get from picking a style to actually handing over your money? As you can see, from deciding you need new shoes to actually walking out of the shop with your new shoes in your hands, you have gone on a decision making journey. And you go on that same journey no matter what you are buying.  More importantly for you as an author, when readers want to buy a new book they go on that same decision making journey. Your job, as an Indie author, is to guide them through that journey so that it is your book that they buy and not one by another author. It is your job to make sure they buy your Nikes and not someone else’s Adidas. BTW, I’ll be providing some links to useful resources at the end of the blog (for selling books, not shoes) Fortunately, psychologists and experts in sales have mapped out the selling journey for you so that you can learn the path. Unfortunately for you, knowing the path by itself is not enough. You have to do some practical things in order to ensure that the path you know is the same as the path your readers will take. But the path on the map can be described using a simple acronym: AIDA*.  A – Attraction. I – Interest D – Desire A – Action. Those four words make up the “sales funnel” as it is known. That’s the path someone takes while making buying decisions. And we do it every time we buy something, whether we realise we are doing it or not. It is so ingrained in us that a lot of the decisions we make while going through the sales funnel have actually become subconscious. OK, those four words by themselves don’t mean a lot, so I’ll now expand on each in turn to describe what you have to do in practical terms.  Attraction Returning to our shoe shop analogy for the moment, you have to attract the buyer to your shop and make sure they don’t go to another shop instead. In terms of your book that means attracting them to wherever you sell your book. Generally speaking that means the Amazon sales page for whatever book you are trying to sell. But if you don’t sell on Amazon, the same techniques apply. This is about how you communicate with your readers to tell them what book you are selling and where you are selling it. This communication can take many forms, but typically they are social media posts, email newsletters or advertisements. Making these things as attractive as possible is key to the “A” in the sales funnel. So, you need professional standard graphics for your social media posts, newsletters and emails. But the graphics are going to feature your product, which means that your book cover has to be attractive too. And if the reader is attracted by what you have done, they will click the link to find out more about the book. The same applies if the book shows up in search results (I’m not going to get into keywords. If you don’t know about them by now then search the archives for past blogs on the subject). However, in search results the reader will only have the book’s cover and title to work with, which means they have to do an even better job.  Interest OK, you’ve got the reader into your shop - onto the Amazon page (or wherever you sell) for your book. Now you have to turn attraction into interest and that is the job of your blurb. Many authors think that the blurb actually sells the book. It doesn’t. It just nudges the reader through the sales funnel to the next stage. That doesn’t diminish the importance of the blurb, because if it doesn’t pique the reader’s interest, they won’t take that next step and the sale will be lost. So, learning how to write a good blurb is a critical skill in marketing your book. And once you have learnt how to do it, you need to test the blurb to find out if it is as good as you think it is. But the important thing to remember about the blurb is that it has to make the reader want to know more about the book. So, trying to tell the story in your blurb isn’t a very good idea, because if the reader knows the story, they don’t have to buy the book. A lot of blurbs read more like flash fiction than they do a sales pitch. A good blurb stimulates questions, and the reader has to move along the sales funnel in order to get the answers. If you provide the answers in your blurb the reader doesn’t have to buy the book. So, you have to tease the reader. There are just four things you need to tell the reader within the blurb.
Nothing else really matters, so:
But above all, it has to sound exciting, it has to engage with the reader at an emotional level, and it has to leave the reader wanting to know answers to questions they have asked themselves subliminally! When it comes to blurbs, always leave the reader wanting more.  Desire If your blurb has piqued the reader’s interest, they will move along the sales funnel to the next step, which is to desire the book. Many of us will have experienced this in our purchasing lives, that moment where we say “I must have that” about a product. For me it’s usually golf related, for some people it's shoes, for some it's a particular model of car. But for readers it has to be your book! But for your reader it has to be your book. Desire comes from one of two sources and is often a combination of both. Social proof stimulates desire. If other readers are saying your book is a great read, then a new reader will feel confident about buying it. They may buy on the strength of that social proof alone, or they may move on to the other part of the desire equation, which I’ll return to in a moment. On a sales page, social proof comes in the form of reviews. Good strong reviews at 4 stars or better reassures the reader that they are on the right track. This is why reviews have such an impact. I a reader is saying "I loved this book" then other readers will be influenced by that. OK, a brand new book may not have many (or any) reviews, but all is not lost. The other place where desire is stimulated is in the “free sample” (aka “look inside”). Let’s travel back in time to the days when people still went into bookstores to buy books. They didn’t just walk into a bookstore, grab a book and go and pay for it. No, they picked it up, read the blurb on the back cover and, if they were interested, they opened the book and started to read the first few pages. If they got to the point where they ran out of time, there was no way they could put the book back on the shelf. They had to buy it in order to keep reading. The modern day equivalent is the free sample, and it works exactly the same way. If, by the end of the sample, the reader just has to keep reading, they are bound to buy. They may actually reach that point before getting to the end of the sample, which is even better. So those first few thousand words of your book, the ones that are going to be in the free sample, have a lot of work to do to close the deal. If you start off with an info dump about your world, or page after page of backstory, then it is likely that the reader won’t want to carry on reading. Never before has the start of a book been so important.  Action.
This is the “call to action “ or CTA. Fortunately, the retail sites take care of this for us. On Amazon there is a CTA at the end of the free sample, and even if the reader has made up their mind before reaching the end, there is a nice big CTA on the sales page anyway. But your reader has to reach the point where they desire the book, or they won’t respond to the CTA and all the work (and possibly money) you expended on the attraction and interest phases has gone to waste. So, there we have it, the sales funnel from start to finish. If your book isn’t selling, then you have to ask yourself which bit of the sales funnel is letting you down. You then have to ask yourself how to fix it, which is where the resources below may help. For a video on how to make some great graphics for your book, click here. The focus is on Facebook ad graphics, but the same lessons apply to all graphics. The best guide to creating book blurbs I’ve read (and I’ve read a lot of them) is Robert J Ryan’s book “Book Blurbs Unleashed”. It really gets into the psychology of blurb writing and once you understand that it will help you to create really effective blurbs. And, bonus, it’s free on KindleUnlimited. Click here to find out more. * The name of a Verdi opera set in Ancient Egypt. If you have never seen it, it’s very good, If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so. We're away enjoying the Christmas and New Year festivities, but we'll be back with a new blog on 4th January 2025.  Is it worth Indie authors entering book award contests? If I tell you that none of the book marketing gurus suggest it as a way of marketing books, then you can probably guess the answer. If book awards/contests sold books, then the marketing gurus would be all over them. The biggest awards, eg The Booker Prize or Pulitzer Prize, sell a lot of books but we’re talking about Indie authors here and none of us are going to get close to a nomination for those levels of awards! But even those levels of awards don’t sell more books for many of their nominees. We can probably all name a Booker Prize or Pulitzer Prize winner, but how many people can name the runners up? Even fewer people can name any nominees? At the most basic level, book contests appeal to the vanity of authors. They say “you know your book is good, so why not come and claim your prize, because winning is a foregone conclusion.” Well, get over yourself. It is readers who decide if a book is any good, not authors.  But I guess all Indies feel tempted to enter book contests from time to time, on the basis that being able to claim that your book is a prize winner will sell you more books. However, sales data doesn’t back that up. Data suggests that being able to put “Winner of the (whatever) Book Award” in your book blurb has very little impact on sales. Being able to put a good quote from a reader’s review in the blurb is far more effective., OK. Maybe winning an award might sell you a few more copies, but what are your chances of winning? The websites that run these awards are businesses and they make money from them, so they want as many entrants as possible. Entry fees can range from as low as $20 (£18 approx) up to several hundred dollars. So, it can be a big money earner for the websites. Let’s say that they manage to attract 1,000 entries. The only books that the readers may be interested in are the winners – or at least the top three. So, you have something like a 999 to one chance of your book winning.  I wouldn’t back a horse at those odds – would you? All the other entrants remain unknown to readers, even if they get a place on the website. They just get lost amongst the other 1,000 entrants that the website attracted to enter the contest. OK, some contests award prizes for the best books in a range of genres. This makes it more likely that an author can win a prize, especially in a niche genre. There are generally recognised to be around 50 genres* (publishers disagree on how many exactly). If you rule out non-fiction, the number of genres shrinks considerably to around 30. But let’s stick with 50. So, 50 winners, and another 100 in second and third places. Add in the overall winners and runners up and that gives you 153 prize winners. But that still leaves 847 entrants without anything to say on their blurb despite having paid their entry fee. And a lot of book contests are considerably bigger than 1,000 entrants, so the probability of winning a prize gets even more remote.  There are book “contests” which, if you pay a large enough entry fee, you are guaranteed to win a prize. You are buying the prize, not winning it.
But readers generally aren’t fooled by those. If they haven’t heard of the prize, they won’t be suckered in by a fake like that. OK, at the end of the day it’s your money. If you want to spend it on entry fees for a book awards, real or phoney, that’s your business. But in terms of increasing sales, you would be better off putting that money towards an advertising campaign. The probability of increasing sales is considerably higher. * Genres are different from book categories. Amazon has thousands of book categories which are created by slicing and dicing the main genres until they are so niche that some have hardly any books in them.. Genres can often be subdivided, eg Fantasy alone subdivides into a dozen different sub-genres, but the overall genre is still fantasy and that is the level at which book contests award prizes. After all, they want to hang onto the entry fees, not pay them out by awarding lots of prizes. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  I have always believed that everything we use in our lives can be used for more than one purpose. A screwdriver is great for driving screws, of course, but it can also be used as a lever to get the lids off of paint tins. And the same applies to the Bookfunnel website - not the paint tin thing, but other book marketing purposes. Many Indie authors will be familiar with Bookfunnel’s original purpose, which is to deliver free content to readers in exchange for their email addresses. It is a vital tool for people trying to build email lists. It can also be used for delivering free content to existing email subscribers and ARC* readers. So, it is already a multipurpose tool.  But did you know you can also use Bookfunnel to sell your books, using the power of “group promos”? And, importantly, if you are already a subscriber it won’t cost you a penny. In terms of advertising, it works out as a really cheap option. A Bookfunnel subscription costs about $10 a month, which you can easily spend in a day advertising on Amazon or Facebook. First I need to explain about “group promos”, for those of you who aren’t familiar with Bookfunnel (if you are, then please feel free to skim over this bit). Basically, you sign up to a group promo by uploading some free content (novella, short story, or a complete book) to Bookfunnel. You create a landing page for the book and then you join a group, usually one that is relevant to your genre so that the free content goes to the right sort of readers – the sort that read your genre and that you want on your email list. Once you have joined the group, you promote the offer on your social media and using your email list, while the other group members do the same. Your content then gets downloaded in exchange for a reader’s email address and that way you can build your list much quicker than you would by relying on organic growth.  A good group promo could get you as many as 50 new email addresses, though the average is a little lower. Now, substitute “sales” for email addresses. Is making 50 additional sales something in which you would be interested? Stupid question – of course you would. Well, Bookfunnel is there ahead of you. As well as what they call “newsletter swaps”, which build your email list, you can also join “sales swaps”. The basics are the same, upload your book, create a landing page and join a group promo, but one that is focused on sales instead of newsletters. The main differences is that you create a sales landing page and add a universal book link so that the “call to action” button takes the reader to the sales page for your book: Amazon and/or wherever else you sell it. The other difference is that the wording of the promo header makes it clear to readers that the books have to be paid for rather than being downloaded for free (though you can also offer free books).  Just as with the newsletter swaps, you promote the group on your social media and to your email list and the other authors in your group do the same. What are the numbers like? Well, typically a group promo of that sort will be made up of between 10 and 20 authors. We’ll stick with the lower figure so that our estimate is at the conservative end of the scale. If each author has 100 people on their email list, that’s a potential reach of 10,000 readers of your genre. And that’s before you factor in the group's combined social media reach on top. In reality the email lists are likely to be much larger (possibly 1000s of email addresses per author), so the actual reach of the promo is probably going to be considerably higher. All that exposure costs you nothing. Joining the group costs you nothing. Joining Bookfunnel does require you to pay a subscription fee, but if you already subscribe then that is a “sunk cost”. In other words, you have already paid your money, so you lose nothing, but you stand to gain a lot.  Other than their cheapness (you can’t get cheaper than free) there are several other advantages to using these swaps that you don’t get using other advertising methods. 1. You are targeting people who read books in general, but who also read your genre specifically. 2. You don’t have to spend time researching keywords or comp authors, which you do for a lot of ad platforms. 3. Readers are used to getting emails from the authors, so they open them (well, most do anyway). As all Indie authors know, January is a slow month for sales unless you write self-improvement books (people who believe in “New year – New me” buy a lot of self-improvement books in January). Everyone is strapped for cash because of Christmas, so they don’t spend much money on books.  But that doesn’t mean there is no book market. You just have to go looking for it. Many people get new Kindles or other ereaders for Christmas, so they are looking for books with which to load them up. And people who like reading will still buy books – if they are cheap enough. So, it’s a great time to run a Kindle Countdown Deal, especially if you write series. Set your series starter to 99p (99c) (or even free) and use a Bookfunnel sales promo to advertise it. You can pick up a whole lot of new readers without having to spend money on advertising, so your financial risk is zero. Just for a change you aren't paying to give soemthing away for almost no return. You can promote full prices books, but this does work best if you are offering free or heavily discounted books. And even if you don’t get sales, you are likely to pick up new readers through KindleUnlimited if your books are subscribed to Kindle Select.  Pro tip.
Email lists cover a lot of territories where you can’t run Kindle Countdown Deals, and you are limited to running them in 2 territories at a time anyway. That means that the readers in many territories get starved of bargain books. Canadian and Australian readers will be jumping up and down shouting “That’s us. We don’t get them” right now and those two countries have big book markets. This is your opportunity to get readers in those countries on board because email list are often international, but you will have to adjust the price of the book manually in the KDP price settings. Remember to do that a couple of days before the start of the promo, because it can take a couple of days for price changes to filter through the system to reach all available territories. And don’t forget to adjust the prices back to normal after the end of the promo. You don’t have to be on Kindle to make this work for you. So long as you can use a universal book link to take the reader to the right place to buy your book, you can use these swaps. So, if you are already a Bookfunnel subscriber, what are you waiting for? And if you aren’t a subscriber, this is another reason for joining. * ARC = Advance Review Copy – a book provided for free in advance of publication, in exchange for a review being posted on Amazon/Goodreads after publication.. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so.  Are you familiar with SMART objectives? They were a big thing back in the 80s and 90s and emerged from the bad habits of bosses, who set their staff objectives without making sure that the objectives were actually achievable. For example, if you were my employee and I were to set you an objective of painting a wall, you would expect me to provide you with paint, brushes, maybe a ladder and possibly even training in how to paint walls. Sad to say, back then not all bosses saw things that way. They would just say “paint that wall” and expect the employee to do it without further input from them. Consequently, objective setting had a very bad name, and a lot of objectives were never achieved. This had a very poor outcome for businesses that were relying on the achievement of those objectives to make them profitable. The reason you don’t hear about SMART objectives anymore isn’t because they are no longer set, it’s because the setting of them is so routine that no one bothers to call them by that name anymore. Now it is just called objective setting (or goal setting). Why should you, as an Indie author, be interested in SMART objectives? Well, if you are one of those people who think in terms of the process of either writing a book or marketing it, then setting SMART objectives is very much a part of that process.  Because if you don’t set them for yourself, you could end up in the same position as the person who has been told to paint a wall but hasn’t been given the paint and brushes. So, what does the acronym mean? S = Specific. M = Measurable A = Achievable (or attainable) R = Relevant T = Time based (or bound). So, let’s unpack those in terms of what you need to do as an author. I’ll be addressing this from a book marketing perspective, but exactly the same principles apply to setting yourself objectives as an author who is about to start writing a book.  SPECIFIC This means that the objective describes exactly what you are expected to achieve. So, you wouldn’t say “sell some books” because that is too vague. Instead, you would say “Sell 100 books”. But we can probably make the objective even more specific when we start to include the other elements from the acronym.  MEASURABLE In essence I’ve already included a measurement in there by saying “100 books” – but that is the end goal. To make sure that you are on the right track and making progress, you might want to break that measurement down into smaller chunks. Perhaps measuring once a week to see how sales are progressing. There may also be other measurements to be carried out, such as the amount of budget that is spent each day, week or month to achieve the objective. That is very important if you happen to be short of cash. Failing to set measurements of success mean that the objective becomes vague and open to interpretation. You can actually let yourself off the hook. As you are doing this for yourself that may not seem important, but it can mean you don’t achieve what you set out to do because you weren’t sure what you expected the outcome to be. Your measurements also need to have targets that are comparable to what others are achieving. So, as a first time author, how many books can a first time author expect to sell? There is no point setting a target of 1,000 books, if first time authors almost never achieve that level of sales. You will just end up feeling frustrated because you failed to hit the target.  ACHIEVABLE This is where we get into the allocation of resources to achieve the goal. If you have been trying to sell books for a long time and made no progress, then you will have to do something different and that means learning what to do. So, you may need training in order to make your objective achievable. That may mean that you need a budget, because training can cost money (yes, I know there is free training available, but we’ll assume that isn’t going to be sufficient). But you may also need a budget to pay for things such as new book covers. You may also need to advertise, which also requires a budget. So, this “achievable” word is probably the one that is most important in setting goals and objectives, because without the right resources to back the objective up, it isn’t going to be achievable..  RELEVANT This also harks back to the bad old days when some bosses would set an objective that the person carrying out the work didn’t think was relevant to their job. Now, if you are a painter and decorator, then telling you to paint a wall is obviously relevant. But if you are an accountant then it has nothing to do with your job. Studies found that people who were given objectives that they didn’t consider to be relevant to them, didn’t put much effort into achieving them. If they did consider they were relevant, however, they would put in a lot of effort. As an author you might have to consider what is relevant to you. Maybe you don’t think that marketing your book is relevant. But if you aren’t going to market it – who is? So, if you don’t think that marketing is relevant to your job as an author, how are you going to achieve that objective of selling 100 books? It can be done, but you would have to pay someone else to do it for you – which takes us back to “achievable” and the allocation of resources to pay someone else to do the work.  TIMEBASED Again, harking back to the bad old days, some bosses would set an objective and not set any date by which it had to be achieved. Was it high priority and had to be completed by the end of the day/week/month? Or was it low priority and didn’t need to be completed until the end of the year? So it is with your objective to sell 100 books. Do you want to reach that figure by the end of the month, in 3 months’ time, 6 months, a year? This ties in very much with measurability, because the longer the timescale you set for yourself the more measurement you will have to put in to make sure you are making progress. It also ties in with resources, because if you have set the target for your objective to be completed in a year, then the budget has to be capable of lasting a year too. There is also the question of achievability. Just because you set your objective to sell 100 books by the end of the month, it doesn’t mean it will be achievable by then – especially if you don’t have other essential resources such as knowledge and budget.  PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER I think I have demonstrated that all the elements of a SMART objective have to be integrated, so that they all work in harmony with each other. It doesn’t matter how relevant the objective is, if it doesn’t have the resources that are necessary it won’t be achievable, for example. If it doesn’t have the right measurements taken at the right time, you won’t know if you are succeeding or failing and if you are failing, you may not know why you are failing. Going back to that original objective of “sell 100 books” we would now re-write it as: “Complete an on-line book marketing training course then sell 100 books within a period of 30 days, commencing immediately on completion of the course but before 31st December 2024, while remaining within a budget of £100.” OK, it doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, but it does contain all the elements of a SMART objective. It doesn’t make the relevancy of the objective clear, but as you are an Indie author responsible for marketing your own books, I think we can agree that relevance is implied. Now, you may wonder why I have gone to the trouble of explaining all this in a blog dedicated to writing and book marketing. The answer is simple. Many of the questions I see on social media about people floundering around with their writing or their marketing, come down to the fact that the person hasn’t followed the SMART principles. Because SMART objectives feed into SMART planning. All that means is that once you have set your objective, you can create a plan for how to achieve it. And a SMART Plan takes into account all the elements of the SMART objective. If you don’t have a plan, you don’t know what you should be doing, or when you should be doing it. The number of people I see posting questions on Facebook writers’ groups that start by asking “When should I start doing … (whatever)?”
Sadly, the answer is often “3 months ago mate!” By starting with your SMART objective and creating a plan to achieve it, you can then measure progress towards completion. As has been said many times before “Fail to plan – plan to fail”. Just creating a plan is an objective in itself, because some people have never planned a single thing in their entire lives. Someone else has always created the plan for them and they have just done what they were told, when they were told. I’m not ashamed to admit that the first time I was asked to plan something, I had absolutely no idea how to go about it. It was a hard learnt lesson and one I have never forgotten. I’m not going to pretend that all my plans worked seamlessly, but in general they have a high success rate because I have had to consider all the things that make the plan achievable. And if I am unsure about achievability, I can ask myself what I need in order to make it more achievable so that I include those in the plan too. If you have enjoyed this blog, or found it informative, then make sure you don’t miss future editions. Just click on the button below to sign up for our newsletter. We’ll even send you a free ebook for doing so. |
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