 Measurement is the poor relation of marketing. While Indie authors may come to realise that they have to market their books, they don’t always realise the essential role that measurement plays in their decision making. Not knowing how to use measurement in marketing is like walking blindfolded through a room barefoot, with the floor covered with Lego bricks. At some point you are going to say “Ouch, that hurt.” Now, you may think that there is only one measurement that is worth looking at, and that is sales. But you would be wrong. To tell you why, I’d like to present you with a hypothetical scenario.  Let’s say that an Indie author has spent £100 on advertising in a month. They split that 50:50 between Amazon Ads and Google Ads. They have made sales and made a profit on their advertising, so they want to re-invest some of that profit into more advertising.
With that 3rd bullet goes supplementary questions – should they keep the split 50:50 or should they spend more on one platform than the other? The only way to make a sensible decision is to analyse the data and see what it is telling them. What the author needs to know is how many clicks each ad got, how much each click cost them and how many clicks were converted to sales.  To give you a real life example, we recently ran a Google Ad for one of our titles. According to the data we got a lot of clicks on the ad, so you might think that it was a success. However, there was no change in sales volume for the book. If the clicks had been converted into sales, there should have been a corresponding rise in sales volume. Only by putting the two sets of data side-by-side could we see that. The next month we ran an Amazon Ad for the same book. We didn’t get nearly as many clicks as we got for the Google Ad, but we did get a rise in sales. Not only did Amazon Ads tell us how many clicks got converted to sales, we could see it in our KDP sales data as well, in terms of increased sales volumes compared to the previous month. So, going back to our hypothetical example and the 4 questions (plus supplementals) we asked, we might well decide to spend all our budget on Amazon Ads and none on Google Ads. The data was telling us that, so we have no reason to doubt our decision making.  But the story doesn’t end there. If we were getting so many clicks from Google Ads, why weren’t they getting any conversions into sales? Normally we would say that it has something to do with the book’s blurb, the reviews or the free sample. Maybe they weren’t enticing enough. But if that were the case it would apply to the Amazon Ads as well, which we know wasn’t the case. So, we have to look for different answers. When we drilled down into the data, we discovered that the majority of the clicks we were getting were from outside of the UK. The book is on sale everywhere, so that shouldn’t make a difference, but perhaps it was. The book is very UK centric in its story. Perhaps that put other nationalities off buying it. We can’t be certain of that, but it is borne out by our KDP sales data. 98% of our sales for that title are made in the UK and Ireland. Again, we were putting data side by side in order to interpret it.  Above, we mentioned the need to understand how much each click cost us. That is essential information, because if we don’t know that we can’t know if our ad generated a profit. Let’s say we got 100 clicks and made 10 sales (that’s a fairly typical conversion rate for a new author). That sounds good, doesn’t it? According to Amazon Ads those sales would be worth £59.90 gross if the book sells at £5.99. Cause for celebration, perhaps? Actually no. Those 10 sales may have been valued at £59.90 gross, but may only have yielded £30 in royalties. If those 100 clicks cost us £35 (again, a typical cost based on 35p per click) then our ad campaign didn’t make a profit, even though it made sales. It made a loss of £5. And don’t forget that £35 is the pre-tax cost. If you are in the UK you have to add 20% VAT to get the final cost. Maybe we would need to re-think whether or not to spend our advertising budget with Amazon Ads too! Again, we have to put data side by side to interpret it and the data may have to come from different sources, eg both Amazon Ads and KDP.  Now, I’m not saying advertising doesn’t work, because it does. What I am saying is that we have to use all the available data to measure the effectiveness of our advertising. If you are spending £100 (after tax) on advertising and you are making £101 in royalties, then whoopee. You are in profit. But you have to know that and that means measuring what you are doing. So far we have only talked about paid advertising. What about social media?  Indie authors spend a lot of their time on social media promoting their books. It isn’t costing them anything except time, so no need to worry, is there? Actually, as the old saying goes, time is money (Benjamin Franklin). All the time you are on social media promoting your books, you aren’t writing new books which could make you more money. So, time has an associated cost. It is therefore necessary to work out if the time you spend promoting your books through social media is actually time well spent. Social media sites provide data on how many people have interacted with a post. That could mean a “like” or a reply, or it could be a click on a link. The more interactions there are, the more likely it is that they will convert into sales.  So, if your posts aren’t getting interactions, you need to know why, because to continue what you are doing is just going to waste your time. If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you always got. This may mean asking other people what they think of your posts, so you can work out what is most likely to get an interaction. Also, you need to “benchmark” against posts that get a lot of interactions to see what it is about them that makes them so attractive.  Of course, we mean posts that promote books. Knowing that posting a video of a cute kitten playing with a ball is going to get lots of interactions, isn’t going to help you to sell any books. Lots of authors think that asking questions on social media and getting a gazillion answers is interacting. It isn't. yes, the post gets a lot of responses - but is it selling books? If it isn't selling books it is just wasting time. So, some of the data that has to be compared are interactions compared to books sales. Do they line up. If not, why not? But knowing that a video gets more interactions than a still image might also be useful to know.  But with measurement you must always ask the question “why”.
- Why aren’t my posts getting interactions?. - Why aren’t interactions on social media converting to sales? - Why aren't my video clips getting more interactions? Etc. I can’t answer those questions for you in a blog. I can’t even think up all the questions you might want to ask. But there will be answers. You just have to go looking for them. Social media sites provide all that data for free. All you have to do is use it. Measurement and data analysis isn’t very exciting stuff. But using it wisely can make your book sales very exciting. But, like all of book marketing, you have to invest time into it to get the best out of it. But it could help you avoid those Lego bricks. 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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 Up until now we haven’t posted much about using YouTube, Instagram and TikTok for book marketing. It isn’t because they aren’t any good for marketing. In fact, just the opposite. Those platforms are as good, if not better, than Facebook or X for selling your books. No, the reason we haven’t posted about them before is that you have to think about how you use them in a different way from other social media. Because of that we’ve been trying out different approaches of our own to see what works – and what doesn’t. Just posting an image of your book cover isn’t going to sell your book on those 3 channels. Not even making a book trailer featuring your book is going to work.  The reason why is that those 3 marketing channels work on the basis of personal interaction. What do we mean by that? After all, it is someone talking on a video. How can anyone interact with that? Well, they interact on a psychological level. The viewer sees the person in the video talking directly to them and to no one else. The video speaks to them personally. Now, there are a number of techniques that the people in the videos use and they vary according to what is being sold. I’ll illustrate what I mean with some examples.  Let’s start with the “influencers”. These people make a lot of money because they sell products on behalf of brands. But they never use the word “sell”, or “buy” or make any other reference to commercial transactions. I’ll use a stereotypical influencer to illustrate: the make-up demonstrator. They open with a line such as “I want to show you this great new lipstick (or whatever) I’ve just discovered.” Of course, their tone of voice is excited. This lipstick is so great they can’t contain their excitement about it. Which gets the viewer excited because excitement is contagious. Straight away the viewer is interested because the influencer is letting them in on their new discovery, not trying to sell them the lipstick (even though they are). They are sharing a secret with them. Those are very intimate acts, and we respond to them at an emotional level. They then demonstrate their use of the lipstick, which makes them look fabulous of course, and the viewers want to look just like the influencer, so they buy the product. The influencer may not even mention where the viewer can buy the product. They’ll show them the brand name, of course, but then they’ll leave it up to the viewer to follow-up because that way they won’t feel pressured into buying. The technique isn’t new. Product demonstrators have been around almost as long as products, but in the past they were standing in front of you rather than appearing in videos on-line.  Next we have the musicians. Their technique is different. They’ll start by saying something like “This is my latest song which I want to share with you.” Again, you are being drawn into an inner circle of intimacy. They then sing a verse and a chorus. If you like the song, you then have to either buy it to hear the rest or add it to a playlist. Either way, the musician sells their music without actually selling it.  Then we have the comedians. They post video clips of their act. They make you laugh, so when they announce their next gig or their next tour, you want to go along and see them, so you buy tickets. That is more of a delayed reaction, but it means more ticket sales than if they hadn’t posted the clip. So, three different techniques for three different types of product. There are other types, but those serve my purpose in illustrating how the channels are used in different ways.  Now, how do you adapt this to suit your product – a book? With YouTube you can adopt the same technique as a musician and read an extract from your book. You don’t have to show your face if you don’t want to but setting the scene is important; use the camera to act as the viewers' eyes, perhaps finding the book on the arm of a comfy chair and settling down to read it. The voiceover then reads the extract, which you can do yourself It will probably take you a few goes to get the sort of image you want, but it will work. Put an “end board” on the video saying where it can be bought and provide a link in the video’s description along with the blurb and some suitable hashtags. If you use Canva or BookBrush (or similar packages) you can make videos of someone reading an extract. For example, if your book is set at sea you can uses a video of a seascape with you reading the extract as the soundtrack. Then promote the heck out of the video on your other social media.  Instagram and TikTok aren’t so well suited for readings. Their users have short attention spans. Anything longer than a minute probably isn’t going to be watched to the end. And anything that isn’t eye catching isn’t going to be watched at all. The first 5 seconds of the video is crucial to grabbing the viewer’s attention. This is where you have to project your personality as an author. If you try to pitch your book, you won’t sell anything. You have to pitch the idea of books in general and then mention your own books in passing. A popular style in recent months has been “Five books I wish I could discover all over again”. You don’t have to show your face, you just have to show the book covers and maybe your hands flicking through the pages. And, of course, you have to talk about why the books mean so much to you. Then you segue into how those books inspired you to write your own book, a copy of which you also happen to have in camera shot. You can talk about your own books, but you have to put a new twist on it.  People love stories. People, especially those that read books, love stories, so use that to your advantage. One of our authors laid out his books on a table then said that not only did the books tell a story, they each had a story of their own, which was how they came to be written. He then made a separate video for each one and told the story of how he had been inspired to write it, into which he wound some of the book’s plot and characters. And it worked. Each video sold copies of the book he was talking about. But he never actually talked about the book in the way he would have in a written blurb. I would recommend going onto TikTok and Instagram and using the hashtags #Booktok and #bookstagram to see what other authors are doing on there. If your favourite authors have TikTok or Instagram accounts, see what sorts of content they post to promote their work. Remember, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Identify the sorts of videos that make you feel good about the author and their products, not the ones that are trying to pitch books directly to you. Emulate the former, not the latter.  Unlike X or Facebook, these channels aren’t about how many followers you have. Your videos will be shown to users based on what they like to see, so it doesn’t matter if they follow you or not. If they are using any of the hashtags that relate to books or reading, there’s a good chance your video will be shown to them if you have used related hashtags, including genre hashtags Of course, if they follow you that’s a bonus, because it means they will definitely see your videos in the future. But that isn’t as important as it would be on X or Facebook. Once again we must add a “health warning” that using YouTube, Instagram and TikTok isn’t going to turn you into a best selling author overnight. But they can add additional strings to your marketing bow. Experiment and have fun. You have nothing to lose except for a bit of time.  Just a few tips for you. Make sure that any book titles haven’t become reversed during the recording process. I recently watched some TikTok videos by an author I follow and in a couple of them her book titles appeared as “mirror images”. This is a common problem when using the camera in “selfie” mode and holding the book up in front of your face (try it if you don’t believe me). If you have friends who read your books, ask them to do video reviews for you on TikTok or Instagram, making sure they use suitable hashtags, including your author name. Vary your styles and themes. If all the videos you post look the same or sound the same, people will lose interest.  Be patient (yes, that old one again). If you are just starting out on these channels it will take time for people to find you and to share your videos. But they will if you give them long enough.
Post as frequently as possible. Yes, it’s a big time commitment to keep on making new videos, but anything worth doing is worth investing the time into doing it. Use "dead time" to make videos, eg when commuting, coffee breaks, lunchtime etc. For those of you who have never used these platforms, here are some links to helpful videos on how to use TikTok. Most of what they say can be applied to YouTube and Instagram too. TikTok Beginner’s Guide https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjjjlJw2cgM How to make TikTok Videos https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vAho-cr5UxY 10 Mistake TikTok users make https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrY9HpJd6zE Hashtags https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcZHGr_xpII 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 read a post in a writers’ group on Facebook recently that said that the author had done their “research” and come to the conclusion that there were just two approaches to marketing a book. Approach One was to plug your book relentlessly on social media. Approach Two was to make sure you get your keywords right, a good cover, a snappy title and a top notch blurb so that your book would show up in searches and sell that way. The person who made the post had decided he was going to put all his eggs in one basket and just pursue one of those approaches. I’ll not say which in case it influences you to do the same, which is not the objective of this blog. In fact, the objective is exactly the opposite.  Like this shape, Marketing is multifaceted. I’m not going to say that either of those two approaches are wrong in themselves. What I will say is that narrowing things down to just one of two approaches is like saying there are only 2 ways to cook eggs (I can think of 6 without breaking sweat). Marketing, like any discipline, is multi-faceted. Tossing a coin and saying that only one option will be taken is like taking a binary view of any activity. It rules out more than it includes and what it rules out is valuable. Good marketing is analogue decision making, not binary. Using social media to plug a book is important to an Indie author. First of all, it is all some authors can afford because everyone can afford free. Secondly it raises the author’s profile, even if it is only amongst a limited size group of people. Finally, it can actually sell books if done the right way. But having the right keywords, cover, blurb etc is also essential. Keywords get the book found in searches. But they don’t sell the book. Once the book has been found, the cover attracts attention, the blurb increases the reader’s curiosity, and the sale is around 70% made.  But it is either the reviews or the free sample (sometimes both) that actually sells the book. Reviews because people will buy what other people have liked and the free sample because it allows the reader to decide if the book lives up to the expectations raised by the blurb and the cover. But that assumes that the book appears high enough up in the search results. There can be no doubt that Amazon ranks search results by popularity. At the top of Page 1 of the results is always the “sponsored” books, the ones that authors or publishers have paid to be there. Then you usually get the best-sellers in the genre because Amazon knows that they are money makers. The rest of the results can be spread over many pages and there is no way of knowing how far readers will go through the results before they buy their next read. Yes, your book will be there if you used the right keywords, but they may be on page 100.  I suspect it’s going to be one of those 80:20 things. 80% of all books that will be purchased will appear on the first 2 or 3 pages of results and only the remaining 20% of sales will be made on subsequent pages of results, with the percentage declining the further you go through the pages. I have no evidence to support that, BTW, but intuitively it would seem to make sense. So, if you want to be in that 80% you have to do something else to make that happen. And that falls outside the second approach described above. To get your book into the 80% you have to find some way of marketing the book that doesn’t depend just on search results. You have to find a way of getting the reader to go looking for that book specifically, rather than doing a search. And that means finding a way of getting the reader to click on a link so that they go to exactly the right page for the book.  So, we’re back to social media. Yes and no. Social media is just one route that can be taken. We’ve already mentioned paid advertising as a way for readers to find a book the reader didn’t even know they wanted to buy. We use it and it pays for itself many times over. But for people who have a more limited budget that isn’t always a viable route to take (but check it out because it’s probably cheaper than you think). When you use social media and search results together, you start to harness the best of both worlds. It isn’t an either/or situation. It is a “both in the right place” situation. Then you can add in things such as email lists, promos, blogs and so much more.  I could list all the approaches that we at Selfishgenie Publishing use, but you would end up reading all day and you probably aren’t up for that. Scroll down to read the blog we posted a fortnight ago, because that says a bit more about what successful book marketing involves. Suffice to say – there is more than one way to skin a cat and using several ways, at the right time and in the right way, is always going to produce better results than just limiting yourself to one approach (apologies to animal lovers, but it’s just a saying. No animals were harmed in the writing of this blog). That is why marketing is such a time consuming activity for the Indie author and if you aren’t prepared to commit the time, you are always going to get disappointing levels of sales. One of the most frequent questions Indie authors ask about marketing their books is “Which is the best place to market my book?” The answer to that is so subjective that there simply is no answer.  Just because Author A had huge success using Platform X, it doesn’t mean that Author B will have the same success if they also use it. This is why you have to know your readers, especially when it comes to using social media. For example, TikTok is used a lot by younger people. Now, don’t get the idea that it is only used by them, because older people use to too. But if you want to reach younger readers, then you are better off using TikTok than using, say, Facebook. Many women find X (formerly Twitter) too hostile for them, so if you want to reach a female audience you would be better off using Instagram or perhaps Pinterest, where more women tend to hang out. And that is why Author A may be having more success and why Author B won’t because their readership is different and therefore their readers’ social media habits are different.  There are even some readers who don’t use social media at all, or the internet for that matter (I know, weird, huh?) so reaching that group of people is going to be really hard, which is where book fairs and other real world forums fit into the equation.
I’m not saying you have to be everywhere, all the time. You would have to be superhuman to do that. But you do have to think in terms of being in more than one place at any time. This is why real research is so important. You have to know where the majority of your target readership hangs out and when they hang out there, so that you can be in the same place at the same time. For example, there is little point in targeting YA audiences between 9 in the morning and 4 in the afternoon, because they will be in school or college. You have to target them in the evening. So, what would we like you to take away from this blog? 1. Book marketing is not a binary choice. It is multifaceted. 2. Taking multiple approaches to marketing covers more bases, which means it is likely that you will sell more books. 3. Know where (and when) to find your readers, so your readers can find you. 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.  Books don’t sell themselves. They have to be marketed and learning how to market a book effectively can be time consuming. It can also be expensive, especially as there are so many sharks out there who would like to take your money but not give you very much in return. But you can kick start your marketing efforts by following our top 10 marketing tips for self-published authors. 1. Make time for marketing The one thing every successful indie author can tell you is that marketing takes up a lot of time. But the same authors will also tell you that if you don’t put enough time into marketing, you will never sell any books. Or at least, you won’t sell many.  If your dream is to become a best-selling author, you also have to become a good book marketer. But marketing doesn’t stop when your book has started selling. If you stop marketing, the sales will stop too. This is pretty much a lifetime commitment. You need to spend a minimum of an hour a day marketing your books. That can be more than doubled in the early days or when you have a new book coming out. Yes, it’s a lot. There is no tip in this list that makes marketing any less time consuming. No indie author, even ones who are good at marketing, became an “overnight success”, so you also have to learn to be patient. Patience isn’t just a virtue – it is an essential. That isn’t something people want to hear in today’s “instant gratification” world. But if you try marketing for a week, get no results and stop because you think it isn’t working – well it won’t work. It wasn’t the marketing that failed, it was the lack of patience that caused the failure. It is said in the marketing industry that buyers have to have 7 “touches” of a product before they buy it. A touch is any sort of exposure to the product and includes seeing marketing messages on-line It takes time for those 7 “touches” to happen. You could be lucky and get them within a few days, or it could take weeks, months or even years. But the more marketing you do, the more “touches” the readers will get and the quicker it will be for you to make sales.  2. Use multiple approaches to marketing. Using one approach to marketing may bring you some results, but using several different approaches will produce even better results (which is why marketing is so time consuming). People respond to marketing in different ways. Some will respond to direct advertising, but others would rather die than click on an ad. Which is why you need to use multiple approaches to reach different people. By using all the different approaches listed below, in combination and at different times, you will tap into several of the different ways that people respond to marketing. We promoted this blog as the “top 10 tips”, but that doesn’t mean that there are only 10, so be prepared to research some of the ones we haven’t mentioned. Our past blogs are full of other approaches, and they can be found in our blog archive.  3. Cover The book cover is the first thing the reader sees and it does quite a lot of heavy lifting when it comes to marketing. It has to attract the reader’s attention at the same time as it tells them about the genre of the book. Spend some time looking at other authors’ book covers, especially the best sellers in your genre. What have they got in common? But most of all a book cover has to look professional – even if it was created by an amateur. If you can design your own covers using Canva or BookBrush (other graphics packages are available) and make them look professional, then that ‘s great. But if you can’t it is worth spending a little bit of money to get the right cover for your book. But beware. There are lots of “designers” out there and they don’t all do a good job. Also, the book covers they show on their profiles may not actually be their work. Seek recommendations from other authors, because they have trodden this path before and may be able to point you in the right direction.  4. Blurb This is the other bit of marketing that does a lot of heavy lifting. So many books don’t sell because their blurbs are just snores-ville. Don’t try to describe your book in your blurb. You’ll never do it justice. Instead describe how exciting/entertaining/dramatic/thrilling/romantic/funny your book is. The first sentence has to hook the reader. It doesn’t matter how good sentences 2, 3 and 4 are. If the reader isn’t hooked by the time they get to the first full stop, those other sentences won’t even be read. We have covered blurb writing in previous blogs and there are lots of other blogs out there on the subject. READ THEM.  5. Metadata Meta data is all the stuff that you enter on the first page of whatever publishing platform you use for your book. Author name, title, subtitle, description, category (or categories), keywords etc. All this information is important because it is the way your book will be found when readers do searches for books to buy. Your metadata has to include words that will match up with their search terms. Pay particular attention to the category in which you place your book, because if you put your book in the wrong one, you may as well hide it at the back of a cupboard because it will never be found by the readers who read books like yours. On social media we see a lot of authors saying “you can’t fit my book into any category, it’s a cross between X, Y, Z and something new and original I created.”  This is wrong. Their book has a central theme, and that central theme is the category it belongs in. If ever there was a time to “pick a team”, this is it. One “team” will always be better for your book than the others and you have to work out which it is. Do some research! Do searches on etailing sites to find the categories that other authors in your genre are using. You will find the information in the “product description” section on Amazon. Who are the big-name authors in your genre? Take a look at the categories where their books are listed because that is probably where yours should be listed too. If you get your metadata wrong your book won’t show up in search results. If you get it right it will. Maybe not on the first page, or the second page or even the third but it will be in the results somewhere. The better the match between the search terms and the metadata, the higher it will be. When it comes to keywords, do more research. Don’t just try to guess them, try them out to see what sort of search results you get. Use incognito browsing so you don’t get offered your own books or books like the ones you have bought in the past. If you don’t get books like the one you’ve written, then the keywords aren’t the right ones to use for your book. 6. Social media presence The important thing about social media is that it is social! In years gone by, being on social media was a great place to promote your books for free. However, so many authors are now using it for that purpose that readers now tend to just scroll past book promotions. That doesn’t mean you don’t have to bother with social media. But it does mean that you should use it more to build relationships than you do for promotion. And we do mean real relationships, ones that involve conversations. Asking random questions in order to get lots of responses is not a relationship and it isn’t a conversation. Finally, don’t focus on attracting writers, focus on attracting readers. Yes, writers will support you and give you “likes”, but they aren’t the people you need to be talking to if you want to sell books. Readers, on the other hand, are always looking for new books to read. (yes, we know that writers also read books, but there are many more readers than there are writers). How do you identify readers? By starting conversations with people. We recommend Facebook, X and Pinterest. We don’t recommend Instagram, TikTok or similar. But we may be wrong so if you think you can make them work for you, then give them a whirl.  7. Advertise It pays to advertise, that’s why big corporations spend so much money on it. And it can pay back for indie authors too if they do it the right way. The wrong way is to pay on-line book promotion sites to blast out X or Facebook posts and to “feature” your books on their websites. The posts are ignored and the website entries get lost in the crowd. Use the outlets that have been proven to work for other authors. For us this is Amazon and Pinterest. Both platforms are used by people who want to buy something, so the battle is half won before you start. All you have to do after that is to learn to use them effectively. We have sold books using Facebook advertising, but Amazon Ads and Pinterest have both been more successful for us. I have provided some links to resources at the end of this blog. For Amazon, once you have seen their videos, I would recommend undertaking Bryan Cohen’s “5 Day Author Ads Challenge” where he teaches authors how to use Amazon’s algorithms to get better results for less money.  8. Your own website Having your own website isn’t for everyone and if you don’t think it is going to be your thing, that’s fine. However, if you do decide to get a website, or you have one already, it is useless if you can’t get people to go to it to look at your books. You need what are called “reader magnets”. There are two things you can put on your website to attract readers. One is complete short stories that can be downloaded for free. The second is free extracts of your books, with links embedded to take the reader to the complete book so they can buy it when they have finished the extract – assuming they liked the extract, of course. Blogs can be a reader magnet – if you are reading this it is because we drew you in with our magnet – but they take a lot of time to write, especially as you need to post new blogs regularly. If you are considering getting your own website, wait until you have at least 3 books published. The cost can’t be justified if you only have one book to sell. But remember, your website is like your book. Nobody is going to trip over it by accident. Use the other marketing tips in this blog to get people to visit your website or you may as well not bother having it. If you don’t want a website, at least have a Facebook page dedicated to you as an author. Keep it separate from your personal page and use it like you would a website.  9. Price Promotions Price promotions are a great way to kick start sales of a new book, by reducing the price of a previous book. Putting your book on sale for a low price can attract sales, boost you up the sales rankings and get you reviews. However, they won't earn you much in the way of royalties, so you have to strike the right balance. Where price promotions really work is by reducing the price of an existing book and using it to promote the new book. Make sure that you include an extract of the new book in the reduced price book to entice people to buy it. This may mean having to change your ebook’s MS and re-publishing, but that doesn’t take too long. This tactic works very well if you put the new book on “pre-order”, which allows you to generate interest before the actual release date. Your pre-order sales all show up in the sales rankings on the day the new book launches, and they catapult you upwards. We do give away free books from time to time, but we don’t recommend it as a major marketing tool. Free books tend to be downloaded by people who only want a free book. They often don’t result in subsequent sales. Free books don’t feature in sales rankings, so they have no impact in those terms, though they may provide you with a few more reviews. It is better to discount the price of the book for a period. Amazon allows you to do this for 5 days at a time if your book is enrolled in KDP Select, but even if it isn’t, you can reduce the price on the book’s set-up pages on KDP as long as you don’t go below the minimum price that Amazon sets. Draft to Digital allows you to generate Smashwords coupons for discounts up to 100% and you can publicise these through your social media. But special offers are only special if they are for a limited time. Keeping books listed at a discounted price for a long period reduces the impact they have.  10. Learn how to market effectively. We should probably have made this the No 1 tip, but if we’d done that you wouldn’t have read the rest of the blog. There is no substitute for learning the skills necessary to do any job. Exactly the same applies to learning how to market your books. The biggest selling indie authors aren’t the ones who have published the best books. They are the authors who have learnt how to become good at marketing. You can write a mediocre book (we've read some of them) and still become a best-selling author by learning how to market. You can also write the best book ever written and it will never sell because you didn’t learn to do your own marketing. Your book, your rules. All we can say is that we sell books because we market relentlessly, and we are always trying to learn new marketing skills. We have included a link below to direct you to a website where you can get some training for free to get you started.  Resources One blog won’t make you a marketing expert, so here we list some resources you can tap into to help you with your marketing. Marketing training. FutureLearn offers free training wherever you are in the world. Search their site for a wide range of marketing courses. You can complete one in a day if you put your mind to it. Using Pinterest for marketing: Beginners use this link, more advanced users should use this link to find out how to use it for business (and selling your book is a business) Amazon advertising: watch their videos to learn how to use their ads platform. To learn to use Amazon Ads more cheaply and effectively, try Bryan Cohen’s 5 Day Author Ads Challenge. This is the Facebook page to find out when the next challenge starts. They usually run once every 3 to 4 months.  What to take away from this blog
There are two key messages that we hope you will take away from this blog: 1. Marketing is the only way an indie author can ever sell more than a handful of copies of their books. 2. Learning how to market is the only way to make marketing work for you. 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.  87% of Pinterest users have bought a product because they saw it on Pinterest. Has that grabbed your Attention? It should, because that is 87% of around 300 million monthly users. We here at Selfishgenie Publishing had heard of Pinterest, of course, but we hadn’t paid it much attention. It didn’t seem to have a place in our marketing strategy, as far as we could see. We regarded it as a poor relation of the social media world and therefore not able to do much for us. Then we watched a video that changed our minds. The video was made by a well-known self-published and mainstream published author, Melissa Bourbon, who also provides a wide range of training for writers. She also does a lot of her own marketing and is a big user of Pinterest. In the video she showed us what Pinterest had done for her and we were sufficiently impressed to give it a try for ourselves. So, we gave it a try and it worked for us too, which is why we are now suggesting it for you. What follows is a bit about how Pinterest can be used for marketing, along with some hints and tips we’ve picked up along the way that will help new users to make an impact with it. Let’s continue with a few more significant statistics.  47% of Pinterest users go on the site specifically to shop. So, if you want to find buyers, Pinterest seems to be the place. 50% of Pinterest users are outside of the USA. So, wherever you are in the world, you have a Pinterest audience waiting for you. Finally, just to whet your appetite a little more, Pinterest users are more likely than other social media users to click-through, share or use your content. First of all, what is Pinterest? We thought it was just another social media platform. We were wrong.  Social media posts are here today, gone tomorrow things. Every time you make a post, older posts get pushed further and further down your profile page. That means you have to keep refreshing your messages with new posts. With Pinterest you don’t have to. Pinterest “pins”, as they are called, show up in search results according to relevance, not currency. So a pin made 5 years ago can show up alongside a pin made today. Pinterest is really a very powerful search engine. But unlike other search engines, it only searches within its own site. When users log into Pinterest they are usually looking for something and Pinterest helps them to find it. One of the popular searches is for recipes, for example. Readers enter a few ingredients or other suitable search terms (dinner recipes, summer recipes, etc) into the search bar and Pinterest will show them all the pins related to those search terms. But not only do your pins show up on Pinterest searches but, if you set them up correctly (I’ll return to that later in the blog) they’ll also show up on Google searches. Two for the price of one. Actually, two for the price of none because you don’t have to pay Pinterest anything, unless you want to use their advertising tools.  And the same applies to books. Some readers go to Pinterest to find ideas for new books to read. If you have a website, Pinterest can give you immediate impact. Google takes a long time to find new websites and show them in their results, no matter what SEO “gurus” might tell you. They can take weeks, months or even years to make it to the first or second pages of search results. But pins on Pinterest show up the day they are posted. All users have the latest pins displayed on their home feed, before they even start searching. And the pins they are shown are those relevant to the sorts of things they have saved before. So, if they have saved pins related to books, they’ll see new pins related to books – your pins. Why do buyers like Pinterest and not Amazon or one of the other book etailing sites? Probably because there is no pressure to buy. They are just browsing, looking for ideas or suggestions.  If the reader finds something they like the look of, they can click on the pin to find out more, but if they aren’t interested they can just go onto the next pin that takes their fancy. Unlike other social media sites, Pinterest actually encourages users to click on links, by including those links in prominent positions on the details page of the pin. And this is why it is a marketing tool for indie authors. Now, I’m not claiming that Pinterest is going to turn a book into a bestseller overnight. Nor would Melissa Bourbon make that claim. This is just one more string to the indie author’s marketing bow and should be viewed in the same light. But it’s probably a more powerful marketing tool than either Facebook or Twitter/X. We started using Pinterest back in November, when we were setting up our social media marketing for the Christmas season. It’s a big time for book sales and we wanted some of that action. The timing of our “discovery” of Pinterest couldn’t have been better.  We have two books which we think are especially suitable for Christmas and we put up several pins relating to them. And we got sales. What is particularly significant is that for one of the books, sales had been pretty poor over the first 10 months of the year, but as soon as we put it on Pinterest, that changed. Coincidence? You know we don’t believe in those. Besides, Pinterest’s tracking data showed us how many views and clicks we got for the pins, so we can be pretty sure that the sales came via Pinterest and not just from random searches on Amazon. I’ll be frank, there is some work needed to get the best out of Pinterest, just as there is for any other marketing channel. Experts suggest you have to make around 10 pins a day. Well, we haven’t got time for that so we’re not going to make the same suggestion. But using it regularly is going to have better results than using it sporadically.  In one of the videos we link to later in the blog, the presenter suggests that you can get great returns not by pinning quantity, but by pinning quality. She claims that over 50% of the traffic that is driven to her website by Pinterest comes from just 3 pins, which she made a while ago. But they are “quality” in terms of what makes a good pin, which is why they keep on working for her in the long long term. We’re not going to take you line by line through how to set up a Pinterest pin or how to create a good quality pin. Instead, we went on YouTube and found a video that does that. We provide a link to it at the end of the blog. But we have learnt a few tricks, and we’d like to offer you a few tips.  The first tip we have is to make sure your book’s cover is eye catching. Your cover image is going to appear as one of many, so it has to stand out. If it isn’t eye catching, put it onto a background that is eye catching. Graphics packages such as BookBrush and Canva have tools that allow you to do that. It does no harm to surround the cover image with short text phrases, to entice the reader in. We’ve put one of ours here to show what we mean. Pinterest also allows you to overlay text onto your images. Second tip: Make sure the filename for your cover image actually describes the image. Many graphics packages download images with filenames that are just bunches of numbers and letters and authors often don’t rename the files. But if you rename them so that it describes the image, the description acts as keywords, so they show up in search results. For example, we use the format “Author Name_Book Title_Genre_Book” Not only will those words be found by searches on Pinterest, but Google will find them too if someone does an image search using any of those terms. I always include the word “book” in all relevant file names, because that will show up in all searches where “book” is used as a search term, even if none of the other words are used.  Third tip: Use the right tags for your books. Pinterest doesn’t allow you to create your own tags for your books, but it has lists of tags that have been used in a lot of searches. If you start to type a word into the tags bar, you will get a box that contains all the tags related to that word. Scroll down and select the tag you want and click on it and it will be added to your pin. It guarantees that your pin will be found if that tag is used in a search. Use as many tags as you can – but make sure they are relevant. Your book showing up in a search related to pea soup is not going to win you any friends or sell you any books (unless you write recipe books, of course).  Fourth tip, post regularly and vary your post images and text. As we have said in previous blogs, it can take up to seven viewings of a product before some people will buy it, but at the same time Pinterest has rules about posting spam, so if the images and text are always the same you could get into trouble. This is where packages such as Canva and BookBrush come in handy because they have lots of templates you can use to create different images with different text, all of which will have your book cover at the forefront. Fifth Tip, make sure you are using the right keywords in your pins. Like any other search engine, Pinterest looks for pins that contain the words that users input into the search bar. So, you have to use the same keywords. You can also nudge the search in the right direction by including hastags in the pin’s description (but put them after the main text). Do your research by entering the keywords you think are right to see what sort of results you get. Refine them until you are getting results that display books just like yours. Those are then the keywords you need to use in your pins to get your books found.  Finally, don’t forget to make special pins for special events: Christmas, Valentines Day, Halloween, Black Friday, Cyber Monday etc. These are great times to boost your sales, especially of paperbacks, and special pins will attract people who are looking for anything related to those occasions.
So, that is our quick whizz around Pinterest, and we hope you have the same success with it as we have. But remember, this is just one string for your marketing bow. A well rounded marketing strategy uses all available and relevant channels and also uses them in multiple different ways. If you want to give Pinterest a try, then beginners can watch this video Once you are happy with using the platform, you might want to take a look at this video, which is aimed at optimising pins for business use. 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.  As an Indie author, are you ready for Christmas? This is one of the best times of the year for books sales, because books make such a great gift. But, just like any other time of the year, your potential readers need to know about your book and how it is going to be the perfect gift for their loved one or friend. If you use Amazon Ads, then now is the time to launch a “keyword” ad aimed specifically at the Christmas market. There are two steps to this. Firstly, find the books by other authors that are like yours and use their titles and the authors' names as keywords in your ad.  Secondly, add in suitable keywords so that people searching for Christmas gifts also find the book. The most efficient way to do this is to add the words Christmas, festive, seasonal, holidays (if you are American) and similar to other keywords you may use that are related to your book and its genre. For example, Christmas books, Christmas novels, Christmas romance. Christmas mystery etc. If you are a stranger to Amazon Ads, then their tutorials are the place to start finding out more and learn about their power to improve your sales. But Amazon is only one place where you should be promoting your books for the Christmas season. If you are on Facebook, X/Twitter, Linkedin or Pinterest, you should be scheduling posts specifically aimed at the Christmas market. People are desperate for ideas for gifts to give, so they will appreciate you giving them helpful suggestions. Make sure you include some of those keywords in your posts, so that they show up in searches. Also use hashtags for added searchability. You might also consider setting up some book bundles for readers to buy. This is particularly relevant if you write series and you can bundle 3 or 4 books from the series. By offering a reduced price compared to buying the books individually, you can increase your sales, which increases your income.  If you have your own website where people can buy your books directly from you, then setting up “buy one get one free” (aka BOGOF) offers will also give your books a boost. Everyone loves a bargain and being able to buy two gifts for the price of one is always a winner. Black Friday is 24th November and Cyber Monday is on 27th November and both those days should also be targeted for sales. But you must offer deals on those days, or people won’t buy.  If you have access to graphics packages such as Canva or BookBrush, use their templates to set up some seasonally themed mock ups for your books. Putting your book cover on your social media is OK but, psychologically, displaying it in a Christmas setting is another nudge towards the “buy” button. Making it clear that price is reduced for Black Friday is another nudge. But remember, you aren’t selling your book direct to the reader, you are selling it to a friend or loved one. So the text that accompanies your promotion has to be about how somebody else will love the book. So, a phrase such as “The golfer in your life will love this book” is more appealing that just telling the viewer that your book is about golf.  The key to extra sales isn’t about promoting your book once and hoping for the best, it is about promoting your book continually throughout the season. Most social media sites have rules about spam, but if you vary the images and the text you will get away with it, as each post will appear unique. But the Christmas selling season doesn’t end on 25th December.  A lot of people get gift vouchers for Amazon and for other etailing sites, so set up another series of promotions and post them starting on 25th December and running through to the New Year, because that is when people will be going on-line searching for things to buy with those vouchers.
Make sure it is your book or books they buy! And, if you are looking for some great book ideas to buy for your friends and loved ones, then you might want to take a look at the ones we have to offer. Just click here to take a look at our catalogue. 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. Back in June of this year we blogged about the way some authors don’t engage properly on social media, so they don’t get the best results out of it. We called it “fake engagement” and there is a lot of it about. We are happy to say we now have a case study we can use to demonstrate the value of good quality social media engagement, so we can show how it is superior to fake engagement.  It is the basic principle of social media marketing that selling should always be secondary to engagement. If people think that all you want to do is sell them something, they will scroll past your posts. That means you spend a lot of time and effort trying to market on social media, only to get poor results. So, to our case study. A reader of our blog about fake engagement, we’ll call them Red Bus, got in contact with us to say they make regular posts to their account on X (formerly Twitter) related to the themes of their books. They are just statements of fact that Red Bus thinks readers may find interesting. The posts don’t have URLs linking them to Red Bus’s books, because that wouldn’t be engagement, that would be selling.  This week Red Bus got a response to one of the posts from someone we will call Maple Leaf. Red Bus responded back and a virtual conversation started up, with Maple Leaf talking about their dad’s experiences and Red Bus making contributions based on personal experience. This went on for about two hours, off and on (maybe a dozen posts each) when Red Bus had to end the conversation, as there were other things that needed doing and X is too much of a distraction. Red Bus said goodbye and thanked Maple Leaf for the chat, logged off X and thought no more about it.  Red Bus logged back onto X the next day and found that Maple Leaf hadn’t quite terminated the conversation the previous day. Maple Leaf had asked a couple of questions about Red Bus’s books, relating to where they were available. Naturally, Red Bus replied, providing the necessary information. But Red Bus didn’t include a link to the books. That would be too pushy, Red Bus decided. Again, Red Bus didn’t think too much more about it and got on with the business of the day. Later that day Red Bus logged onto their KDP dashboard, to see that there had been a sale in the territory where Maple Leaf lived. A coincidence? Maybe. But Red Bus didn’t think so. Logging back onto X, Red Bus saw a notification from Maple Leaf, and sure enough, Maple Leaf said they had purchased one of Red Bus’s books. So, quality engagement on social media had led directly to a sale. At no point did Red Bus link to any of the places their book is sold. At no time did Red Bus suggest to Maple Leaf that Maple Leaf might like Red Bus’s books.  Maple Leaf took the decision to ask, and then took the decision to buy, without any prompting. Now, you may think that a single sale is no big deal, and you would be right – and wrong. Firstly, if Maple Leaf likes Red Bus’s book, they may buy the other books that Red Bus has written, so one sale turns into several. Secondly, if Maple Leaf likes the book(s), they may leave a review and we all know how valuable reviews are. But, most importantly, Maple Leaf may tell their family and friends about the new author they discovered on X, and suggest that the family and friends take a look for themselves.  Because Maple Leaf has had a positive experience as a result of this engagement and that is so rare it may be worth mentioning to others.
That is the sort of result you can get from proper engagement. It is not the sort of result you will get with posts saying “Can anyone see my posts?” It is not the sort of result you will get with posts like “Who is the best band in the world?” Or with “Should you put pineapple on pizza?” And it is certainly not the result you will get just by posting links to your books. Growing a market through social media is a painfully slow process sometimes. But if you do it right, it can pay off, as Red Bus found out this week. 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 writers’ groups on social media, authors often post drafts of their blurbs, asking for opinions. It’s a good idea, because it can gain valuable feedback. But in reading these drafts, it is quite obvious that some authors haven’t read any of the numerous blogs that have been written on the subject of blurb writing. In the vast majority of cases, the blurbs won’t sell the book because they fail to capture the interest of the reader within the first few words. Instead, they try to precis the story and what they end up with doesn’t sound interesting enough to sell the book. But experts on blurb writing often say they can write a blurb that will sell a book without even reading the book. And this is a theory we subscribe to, in broad terms, because in the blurb you aren’t telling the story, you are telling the excitement of the story. You aren't selling the story, you are selling excitement. Let’s take visual media (movies, TV and games) and think about how they sell their product. They never try to tell the story. They try to show the viewer/player how much enjoyment they are going to get if they watch the movie or TV show or if they play the game. Depending on the genre, you will get car chases, explosions, gunfights, people falling out of aeroplanes, zombies trying to eat people, people expressing anger, fear or love. If it’s a comedy you will get jokes, either visual or spoken. What’s the most memorable scene in the movie Dumb and Dumber? Yes, that’s right, the one where Harry (Jeff Daniels) has his tongue frozen to the street sign. Yes, that’s in the trailer! By the time a good thirty second trailer is over, people are already setting reminders on their TV, booking seats at the cinema or they are downloading the game. The movie, TV show or game may be the worst ever, but you would never get that from the trailer. Because the trailer looks exciting/horrific/emotional/funny, and the audience wants to see more. The blurb is a book’s trailer, so it has to work the same way.  The reaction many book blurbs get. So many book blurbs just don’t sound entertaining enough. By the end of the first paragraph the reader has already lost interest and is scrolling onto the next book in the search results – somebody else’s book! We try to follow a three paragraph structure for blurbs. If you haven't sold the book by the end of the third paragraph, you probably aren't going to sell it at all. Research has shown, however, that many readers never get past the first paragraph. So that is the crucial one. If that hooks the reader, then the other two paragraphs clinch the sale.  We call this approach (very unoriginally) “hook, line and sinker.” Hook gets the readers’ attention, line reels them in and sinker makes the sale. (Note for the pedants: we know that is not what a sinker does, but we don’t care about that. We just want three simple words to remind us that the blurb comes in three parts. We don’t claim that our fishing metaphor is perfect.)  But the hook is crucial. It does 80% of the work in selling the book, because if it isn’t sharp enough, the reader’s attention will already be moving onto the next book in the search results. A good hook is made up of three parts (do you see a trend emerging here?): character – conflict – consequences. Who is the character, what conflict have they become embroiled in and what are the consequences of failure? But it also has to indicate the book’s genre without wasting words by making it explicit. If you write westerns, you might use the words gunslinger, drifter or cowboy. If you write medical romances, you might mention a doctor or a nurse. These indicate the genre without having to describe the genre. The hook can be written as three sentences, or as a single sentence. That isn’t so important. The important thing is that you have less than fifty words to get those things across in an exciting manner. Yes, 50! So, no room for lots of adjectives. No room for descriptions. No room for sub plots. No room for backstory and definitely no room for “world building”.  It has to be the tightest writing the author has ever done, because, if the reader’s mind starts to wander, they’ll never get them back. Here is an example: “When Private Eye Harry Jones was asked to investigate an errant husband, he had no idea it would nearly get him killed.” So, from that sentence we get genre (crime), we get the main character (Harry Jones) and we get the conflict and the consequences in the single word “killed”. To save you having to count, that was just 22 words. I didn’t need 50 and the reader will either be interested in finding out why a routine investigation nearly got Harry killed, or they won’t. I’m not trying to say that example is perfect, but it is the sort of thing blurb writers aim for as a first attempt. A 3 sentence example might be “A private investigator. An errant husband. A deadly assignment.” We still have the character, but without using his name. We still have the genre. We still have the conflict and the consequences. Some genres lend themselves to that approach better than others. I probably wouldn’t use the 3 sentence structure for a romance (though that doesn’t mean it can’t be used).  The second paragraph, which we call “line”, expands on the first to provide it with context. There are a few rules, mainly “don’ts”. 1. Don’t include other characters, focus on the protagonist (or MC if you prefer). 2. Don’t include sub-plots – stick to the main plot throughout. 3. Don’t get into world building, locations or time periods. If the book is set in a specific time period, use a generic term, eg Regency, medieval etc, or just refer to a century. 4. Don’t include backstory. It loses the focus of the blurb. 5. Do ramp up the conflict and the jeopardy. Continuing from our example hook, above, we might develop the line as follows: “When Harry Jones is asked to find out if a client’s husband is having an affair, it leads him into the seedy world of drugs and prostitution. He stumbles on the daughter of an old friend, enslaved to a drug gang. Desperate to help the girl, Harry takes on the gang's boss to set her free.” We can now clearly see the conflict that Harry has to deal with, without using a lot of unnecessary words. At the same time, we introduce a victim that needs help (the girl) and a villain (the gang's boss).  The sinker. All that needs to happen now is for the levels of danger to be ramped up so high that the reader has no choice but to buy the book to find out what happens. That is the job of the “sinker” paragraph: “In order to rescue the trapped girl, Harry fights not only the drug gang, but also his own fears. Old memories return to haunt him, paralysing him with indecision. Can he overcome his past and get to the girl before she is killed, or must he watch his friend’s daughter die? Finishing on a question leaves the reader wanting to know the answer. And to find out the answer, they have to buy the book. Yes, it is manipulation, but all marketing is manipulation of some sort.  Different genres use different types of wording. Romance blurbs use phrases like “torn apart by fate” or “star-crossed lovers” or “mutual dislike”. But whatever wording is used, the blurb has to show that the possibility of an unhappy ending is real, so that the reader will want to know the final outcome. The final message we must give you is that the hero must always have control over their actions. They must never be coerced into involvement. So phrases such as “Harry must fight…” or “Harry has to overcome…” are a no-no because they make it look like Harry has no say in the matter. Instead, phrases such as “Harry fights …” or “Harry overcomes…” take out the element of coercion and leave Harry as a hero.  This is because heroes do the right thing because it is the right thing to do, not because they have been made to do it by some outside agency. This is a pretty safe rule when writing a novel anyway. The hero is the hero because they don’t walk away, even though they could. It's is a tough thing to do with some professions. Police, military, firefighters etc have to obey orders, so what we are talking about in a blurb has to be the character going above and beyond the call of duty. Yes it’s the cop’s job to catch the killer, but it isn’t their job to dangle from a ledge a hundred feet up while they do it.  Here’s a free offer for you. If you want to try out your ideas for your blurb, email it across to us at the address on our “contacts” page, we’d be happy to provide you with a bit of feedback, free of charge.
Of course, if you’d like to browse our books catalogue while you’re waiting, we’d be delighted. You’ll find some stuff to read on our “free stuff” page. Pull up a seat, pour yourself a cup of coffee and we’ll get back to you as quickly as we can. 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. Note: The names of companies are provided for information purposes only and are not recommendations. We warn you now, this is a very long blog, but it contains a huge amount of useful information.  Author Robert Cubitt at Newark Book Festival One of our authors, Robert Cubitt, has attended several book fairs as a seller this year and learnt quite a few tricks about selling books direct to the public. This blog acts as a “case study” for anyone else who is considering taking this route to sell some of their books. I’m sorry that this blog only relates to UK events, but most of what we talk about can be applied in any country in the world, so it still makes it a worthwhile read. But first of all, a reality check. Book fairs and similar events aren’t going to turn you into a best selling author. All the exhibitors that Bob spoke to while attending these events had the same stories to tell regarding sales volumes.. You may sell a few books and people may search out your books on-line later, but don’t load up a van with hundreds of copies hoping to go home with an empty van because it isn’t going to happen.  But book fairs aren’t just about selling books direct to the public. They are a shop window. Not everyone who looks in a shop widow buys what they see straight away. Sometimes they go home, think about it for a bit and then come back and buy. Obviously, by that time the book fair is over, but there are ways of accommodating that which we will discuss later. Firstly, it is essential to do some research on the fairs you want to attend before you reserve your place. There is usually a contact email address to which you can address questions, but finding out who else has been to them in the past and what experiences they had is also helpful. Not all book fairs are the same. One of the ones Bob attended was aimed mainly at the second-hand book market and it’s pretty hard to sell your book at a profitable price when the stalls around you are selling all their stock at a fraction of what you are charging. It was noticeable from the behaviour of the people attending that they were interested only in bargains. The fair wasn’t an entirely wasted journey, but Bob barely covered his costs.  Some book fairs have speakers or people reading extracts of their work. You could even offer to speak yourself. It almost guarantees sales (but make sure to take someone with you to look after your stall while you are speaking. You don’t want to miss any sales). The next thing to consider is the cost for the “pitch”. Costs range from about £5 at smaller fairs up to £40 or £50 ($35-$45) at the larger ones. For one event, which ran over a weekend, Bob also had to have a hotel room which cost a further £100, plus meals. Including fuel, you can call it a £200 investment for the weekend and you won’t be far out. There were a few other costs, and a we’ll be discussing some of them.  Given what we said about the potential to make sales, it is therefore advisable to work out how many books you would have to sell to recoup your costs, to see if it is worthwhile going. Obviously, the closer you are to the venue, the more profitable it is likely to be. However, a lot of the value in bookfairs isn’t in actual sales. It is part of a marketing strategy and has to be treated with that in mind. You may not sell a single book on the day, but it could result in several sales after the event. It isn’t unusual to see people photographing the book covers and they aren’t doing that because they’re into photography. Bob actually asked someone why they were doing it. and they said it was because they were compiling a list of books they were interested in so they could compare and contrast them later, before buying on-line.  The next cost is that of the “author copies” of books, because you can’t sell product and promise to post it later! Of course, all of that expense is tax deductible, but has to be paid out in the first place in order to reclaim it later. So, was it worth that investment? Yes for 3 events, no for one (the one focused on secondhand books). Oxford was a particularly profitable one, with good reasons why. It is advertised as an “Indie” book fair, which means that customers know what to expect. Bob didn’t realise how many people actually search out Indie authors until he saw hundreds of them coming through the doors for that fair.  So, what did Bob learn from these events? The greatest thing about them was the opportunity to meet and interact with readers. These people are the life’s blood of authors, and we need to understand them. The best way to do that is to talk to them and book fairs provide an excellent opportunity to do that. While the main purpose of being at the book fair was to sell books, this opportunity to meet readers shouldn’t be underrated.  Booking a place at a book fair isn’t always easy. There isn’t a universal directory that lists them all (business opportunity?). Some book fairs leave it quite late to decide what dates to hold their events. It also isn’t easy to find out about the smaller fairs. The search results are dominated by the big, international events, which aren’t suitable for most Indie authors. Even if you could get a stall, the cost would be prohibitive. So, finding the smaller fairs is a bit of a challenge. We’ve provided some links to help you out, at the end of the blog. (sorry if you aren’t in the UK. You’ll have to do your own research).  The value of networking at bookfairs is important when it comes to finding out about other book fairs, but we’ll talk more about that later in the blog. Most (probably all) book fairs provide a table on which to set out your stall, but for outdoor fairs in the summer (and some at Christmas), you may need to check whether you need to provide your own shelter from the weather. Two were outdoor events and provided covered market stalls, which met Bob’s needs. But you should definitely plan to take something to sit on. Folding camping chairs or garden chairs are ideal. Once at the fair, there are many other things you have to consider, but they divide mainly into “selling your book” and “other things to think about”.  Social Media Turn your social media connections into customers by advertising your presence at the book fair through your social media posts. Bob posted the day before the event took place and again on the day of the event itself. By using the “schedule” facility that most social media channels have, the details can be posted even while you are driving to the event. If the event has a website, post a link to it. The organisers will appreciate it and it will help people to find out more information. Also link to the organisers’ social media accounts where appropriate. Bob also posts after the event to thank people for turning up.  Selling Your Book Make sure you have enough stock. There is no point in exciting interest in your work, only to have to tell the buyer that you’ve sold out. Exactly how many copies of a book you need will depend on the size of the book fair. If it’s big one, like Newark, then 50 books in total is probably enough. For a small event in a village hall, as few as 20 copies may be adequate. What you don’t sell at one book fair will give you a head start for the next one. If you write series, have at least the first and second books in the series available. If it’s a trilogy then having all three titles available is OK, but if it is a longer series there is no point in having later titles, because people are unlikely to commit that much money to an untried series. But make sure that buyers have some way of finding your books when they are ready to buy the next book in the series (see more below).  The next thing is to have all your “elevator pitches” prepared, one for each book you have on sale. While some of the people browsing the stall will pick up the book and read the back cover blurb, many of them just pick it up and ask “What’s this book about?” At that point it doesn’t do to be umming and ahing. You have to be ready to tell them about the book in as concise a way as possible. If you aren’t sure what an elevator pitch is, or how to compose one, Google one of the many blogs on the subject. Here’s one we found, but there are many others. https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2022/08/16/elevator-pitch-examples-templates You should have elevator pitches ready anyway, even if you don’t plan to attend any book fairs, because people will ask about your books if they know you are an author. One of our authors once sold a book at a wedding she was attending, based solely on her elevator pitch.  Which brings us to stories. Not the story that is told in the book, that has already been covered above. No, I mean the story of how the book came to be written. Readers love those stories and once they’ve heard them it is far more likely that they will buy the book (but there is no guarantee). Bob has a very good story about how he came to write the biography of his father’s war service. That story has sold him more copies of the book at book fairs than any of his other titles. Then he tells the customers about how that biography inspired his Carter’s Commandos fiction series, and that sells copies of those books. Next you have to be able to deal with all the usual annoying “Would I like this?” sorts of questions that authors always get. And you have to be able to respond without sounding sarcastic. The best way our author found of responding was to reply with a question of his own, such as “What sort of books do you usually read?”  Be prepared to grasp at any straw to connect their reply to your book. It doesn’t matter how far removed from your genre their preferences may seem, making a connection of some sort could lead to making a sale. But don’t be afraid of directing people to other stalls, where they may find what they are looking for. Some people just don't have an interest in your genre (whatever it is). I’ll talk more about that later in the blog. People love a bargain, so being able to discount the price of your books compared to bookshops and on-line retailers is a big plus. Bob charged about £1.50 ($1.35) below the Amazon list price and was still able to make the same level of royalties as he does on-line. His printed price list shows his price and the Amazon price side-by-side, so people know they are getting a discount (they can also check for themselves). Bob also offers further discounts if people buy more than one book. Know what royalties you expect for each book, how much the books cost you to buy (don’t forget the delivery charges) and price accordingly.  One of Bob's props - his father's medals. Take “props” with you because they attract attention and encourage questions. Bob displayed the original cover art for his father’s biography and his father’s medals but on other stalls he saw artefacts that relate to fantasy, sci-fi and horror genres. There are internet retailers that sell that sort of stuff, so making a small investment is often worthwhile. If nothing else they are conversation starters and conversations sell books. Other things to think about. Display is a critical part of attracting attention to your books. Not only must the browsing public be able to see the cover, but they should also be able to see the blurb. Bob uses upright stands (available online) to display the book’s cover and lays a copy out flat in front of it showing the back cover blurb. Some sellers print fliers that show the same information, but Bob noticed that fliers often fly away when the wind blows. Books don’t do that. Some sellers also use boxes or small bookshelf units to raise the height of the books. Maybe this is something that you will want to play around with at home to see what works best for your books, when placed alongside other promotional materials such as props. Getting stuff up to peoples’ eye level often helps with sales. Take some freebies and giveaways with you. Bob takes some bookmarks that a colleague made for him. These are handed out to people regardless of whether or not they buy a book.  Cheap pens with the title of your book, your name or your website details printed on them are another good giveaway. They can be bought for as little as 20p (about 16c) each, but you have to buy in bulk. Make sure you have plenty of business cards to place on the stall. Even if you don’t sell a book, the browsing public will take something away with them and they may check out your titles later. And slip a business card inside each book, to be found later. This is especially important if you write series. If you don’t have any business cards, they can be purchased on-line from companies such as Vistaprint. You should always carry business cards anyway, because everyone you meet is a potential customer - they just don't know it until you tell them about your book. Another useful marketing tool is to have small bags into which to put purchased books, with a book title, author name or perhaps a cover image on the outside. In these environmentally conscious times, make sure the bags are made of paper, not plastic. Branded bags are expensive, so buy cheap plain brown paper ones then buy a separate roll of stick on labels with your message printed on them and apply one to the other before you go. Bob bought his bags on Amazon and his labels from Stickythings Limited and the total cost was another £50 ($40).  Bob also bought a tablecloth with our Selfishgenie branding on it (see photo above - we paid some of the cost as it is part of our marketing). It wasn’t cheap, but the cost can be recouped over several book fairs. Take plenty of small change with you. You don’t want to lose a sale because you haven’t got change for a £20 note. Make sure you have a way of accepting credit cards, debit cards, Applepay etc. There is no point in losing a sale because you only take cash. There are a number of companies that provide Bluetooth connected card readers these days and their charges are quite reasonable if you are going to attend a lot of book fairs or “meet the author” events. Bob Cubitt uses Sumup. There is also a long list of sundry items that you might need to have with you. Bob has a checklist he uses before he leaves home, just to make sure he has everything. You can download a copy (yes, it’s free) at the end of blog.  One of the big opportunities offered by book fairs is networking with other authors. They know things that you don’t, and you know things they don’t. Find out about the sorts of books they sell and if that turns out to be the genre your browsing members of the public read, don’t be shy about pointing them in the direction where they can find the right sort of books. And make sure that the authors on other stands know about your books, if they haven’t stopped by to find out for themselves. Ask them about other book fairs they’ve been to and note down the details. Also discuss writers’ groups, both in real life and virtual ones. Other authors are your allies, not your rivals. So, that was our quick whizz around the world of book fairs and other book selling events. If you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments section or you can email us at the address on our “Contacts” page. if you have enjoyed this blog, or found it useful, be sure not to miss future editions. Just sign up to our newsletter to be kept up to date. We'll even give you a free ebook if you do. Here’s a few websites for Indies who live in the UK (and one for Indies who live elsewhere). http://smallpublishersfair.co.uk/book-fair-calendar/ https://www.casita.com/blog/uk-book-fairs-you-should-check-out https://www.oxfordindiebookfair.co.uk/ https://10times.com/publishers-fair https://fromesmallpublishersfair.co.uk/ https://www.newarkbookfestival.org.uk/ Multiple nations: https://publishersarchive.com/2023-book-events.html Children’s books: https://www.theschoolrun.com/best-childrens-literary-festivals-uk Black History Month: https://curlytreats.co.uk/2023-uk-black-history-month-events/black-british-book-fair/ For people in the North West of England (or who can get there easily), try this Facebook page. This Facebook page deals in book signing events, which are just another form of book fair. And the download of Bob's book fair checklist: 
Traction and momentum are things that marketers talk about in terms of their campaigns. It relates to the amount of effort that needs to be put in to get results from a marketing campaign and how, once traction has been gained, momentum can be achieved. In terms of money spent, this usually means a lot of it is at the beginning of the campaign, but once traction has been achieved, a lot less has to be spent to maintain momentum.  Let me use an analogy. If you put your child on a swing (assuming you have a child – if you haven’t, you’re a writer, use your imagination) and do nothing, then the swing will just hang there and the child will get no enjoyment from being on the swing. So, you need to apply some effort to get the swing moving so that the child can enjoy the experience. Depending on the size of the child and your own strength, you may have to put in quite a lot of effort to get the swing moving. However, once the swing is moving, all you have to do is step in from time to time to give it another shove to keep it moving. That is what it is like marketing a book.  Newton's 1st Law of Motion - an object at rest will remain at rest. If you just upload your book to your distribution platform (I’ll use KDP and Amazon for the sake of ease) then it’s like putting the child on the swing. Nothing will happen unless you make it happen. Yes, Newton’s first law of motion applies even to book marketing – an object at rest will remain at rest. So, once your book has been published, you have to provide the outside force that acts on it to take it from a state of rest to a state of motion and get sales moving. If you are an unknown author publishing your first book, you will have to put in a lot of effort. If you are an established author with a loyal readership, you won’t have to do quite so much – but you still can’t do nothing. Even loyal readers need to know that you have a new book out. But the amount of effort you put in will eventually pay off. You will make sales. The sales will put your book higher up the sales ranks, so Amazon will help you by steering readers towards your book because that will make Amazon more money, and your readers will help you by leaving reviews of your book.  But you can’t back off entirely. Once your new readers have bought your book, they aren’t going to buy it again. This means that your book will start to slide down the sales rankings, the automated systems will pay it less attention and you won’t make so many sales. So, you have to step in and give your swing another push, just to get things moving again. Social media marketing has a part to play in this, but it is never going to provide you with the big push you need to get up the sales rankings. It will sell you the occasional copy, which is the equivalent of the swing just about moving back and forward. Let’s face it, that wouldn’t be very exciting for your child and, in terms of books sales, it isn’t going to be very exciting for you. So, you need to find some way to give the book a bigger push.  On the internet there is no shortage of people willing to make you lavish promises of results in exchange for your hard earned money. Some people do find success with those book promoters, but I think that it’s true to say that the majority don’t or, at least, they don't get the level of success they had hoped for and which will return a decent profit. Most of the internet companies are using social media to promote their customers’ books and are just doing what you could do for yourself, but on a larger scale, eg more Tweets (are they X’s now?), more Facebook posts, more Instagram posts etc. Again, they may get you a few sales, but they aren’t going to get you to the heights that will get you excited. But there is one tried and tested method to stimulate books sales and we have blogged a lot about it over recent weeks. Amazon Ads do produce results.  The problem with Amazon Ads, however, is that they take time to work. It seems to take an eternity to build traction and get your sales moving. Many Indie authors place an ad for a week or a fortnight, find the results disappointing and halt the ad. Instead, they look for the on-line book promoters who promise instant results, then get very disappointed when they find that they are spending larger sums of money but getting very indifferent outcomes. So, why does it take so long for Amazon Ads produce results?  I’ll return to my child on a swing analogy, but this time imagine you are on the one on the swing, with no one to push you. By moving your body the right way, you can get some motion, because you are putting energy in and that energy has to go somewhere. But you need to keep putting in energy to get you moving faster and higher. If you stop putting in energy, the swing will slow down and stop. To start with, you have buyer resistance. Advertisers maintain that an advertising message has to be seen 7 times before some buyers respond to it. This is why you will see the same ads on TV several times in a night and several more times over successive nights. The marketers are trying to get those 7 viewings in quickly, so the ad starts to pay back through increased sales.  Think about that for moment. Let’s say that Mr X, a reader, goes on Amazon to find a new book. He does a search for the sorts of books he likes to read, and he is presented with a list of results. If you have paid for an advert, then your book will be one of the ones he sees. It’s called an impression and you don’t have to pay for it. However, Mr X has never heard of you, so he scrolls down to the next result, which may be a book by an author he has heard of. He buys their book instead of yours. But Mr X has a limited amount of free time, so it takes him about a week to read the book before he goes back to Amazon to buy his next one. He sees your ad again, but again he scrolls by, looking for a more familiar name. This happens maybe four or five times over the space of four or five weeks, but Mr X then realises that he does know your name now, because it has become familiar through repeated impressions, so this time he might click on your ad. Now, if you pulled your ad after week 2, you could never get that click from Mr X at week 6 or 7.  The ad system analyses Mr X's clicks. So, this is the first time you have had to pay, and it is also the first time that Mr X is seriously considering buying your book. He may buy it this time, or he may not. A lot will depend on the blurb for the book and the sample he may read. But he will remember your name now, so every time he sees your ad, you have a chance of him buying the book. But, because Mr X has clicked on the ad for your book, the ad system now knows that he might be the sort of reader who will be interested in your book. So, the system analyses the ad clicks that Mr X has made in the past, looks to see who else has clicked on the same books and shows your ad to them, even though they may not have used the same search words as Mr X. You can see this system in action on Amazon, because they show you “People who viewed this item also viewed ….” And “People who bought item this also bought…”  Someone taking a risk on your book. This means more people are now going to see your ad and every time one of them clicks on it, the ad system learns a little bit more and directs your ad to more new people. More new potential readers means more potential clicks and more potential sales. But you still need that first sale, because if your book is low down the sales rankings, it discourages some readers. So, you need to find a reader who is prepared to take a chance on your book without looking at the sales rankings. And they do exist. We know they do exist, because that’s how our authors all sold the first copy of their book. We paid for the advertising, of course, but someone took a chance on them. And someone, somewhere, will take a chance on you – but only if they see the ad for your book often enough. The same applies to reviews. Some people will only buy books if they have reviews, so you need some of those to be posted, which needs sales too (please do not pay for reviews. Amazon is able to spot them and will remove them, so you will only be wasting your money.) So, the graphic below illustrates the process by which ad clicks get turned into sales, which creates traction and leads to more sales, which creates momentum.  But, as I said above, the system needs a shove from time to time to keep things moving, so you will need to keep advertising, if only at periodic intervals. You can tell by your sales figures when that should be. If you were making 5 sales a day consistently and that starts to drop to 4, then 3 then 2 etc, it’s probably times to liven things up again with another ad campaign.  Blog Reader: “But it takes so long, and I have to spend so much money.” Yes, but if you are using the system correctly you will get that money back when you gain traction. If you put nothing in, you get nothing out. Remember Newton – an object at rest will remain at rest unless an outside force is applied. You have to be the outside force! And at least you know where your money is going and you are in control, unlike with those on-line marketing companies that promise so much but deliver so little.  It took you weeks, months, maybe even years to write your book. It can hardly come as a surprise that it could take weeks or even months to get some sales, gain traction and build momentum.
And, if you haven’t made any sales after say, 3 months, then it might be worth considering why that may be. Because advertising can only sell a book that the reader wants to read, so if they don’t want to read your book, there has to be a reason and you know the fault can’t be in the advertising, so it has to be in the product. 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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