Christopher D. Schmitz's Blog, page 12

What is RSS and how do I use it to market my book?

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As part of a book marketing workshop I’m conducting later this year I’ve got a bunch of items to share with you all. Many of them are minor pieces of a larger framework that integrates into each other. This week, I want to show you how to push your blog to expand your reach to a larger base via RSS.

An RSS feed is “Really Simple Syndication, a standardized system for the distribution of content from an online publisher to Internet users.” Because it is standardized, there are many places around the internet that you can use this, so it can be a handy marketing tool to know about. I’ll teach you two ways that it can be immediately useful to authors.

RSS is a type of web feed which allows users and applications to access updates to online content in a standardized, computer-readable format. These feeds can, for example, allow a user to keep track of many different websites in a single news aggregator. Wikipedia

Here’s a pretty good explanation of the benefits of RSS in general.

The reason this is great is that you can use it to automate your presence across a few blog platforms. I use WordPress.com, a very popular blog platform, but there are many out there to choose from. By no means am I a wordpress OR rss guru, so please don’t comment for help on the technical side of things. You may need to send those questions to a tech/helpline since each platform may be different, but I can at least get you started. When I publish a blog on my wordpress.com site, because of RSS, it automatically copies the blog content to my Amazon Author Central page and my Goodreads page.

Automation is important. Additionally, via similar methods, my Goodreads reviews are pulled into my page’s sidebar to beef up my content on my blog via widgets (think of them as tiny apps that work within your wordpress page.) My blog also automatically pushes to my Twitter and my Twitter automatically pushes it to my Facebook. This is important because people may only follow you on one platform and this allows you to increase your presence on the net without needing to copy and paste one post to each and every site where your readers congregate.

[to automate your blog posting to social media in wordpress, go to your settings, click Sharing, and then under the Publicize feature, connect whatever accounts are relevant for you. *note Facebook no longer allows this feature* I’ve not discovered a work-around. Apparently the Zuck screamed something about “take that Russia… for the Lizard People!” and then disabled the feature entirely.]

To setup your RSS, you need the proper link. For my blog, for example, it is simply https://authorchristopherdschmitz.wordpress.com/rss for many it might be the website address followed by /feed (or /rss)

If you have a blog, go to your Amazon Author Central Account and click to edit your Author Page. You can set a link for your “blog feed.” This is where I put that RSS link I use above. Every 24 hours it pushes my new content to my Author Central Page so readers clicking my name on Amazon will see that I am an active and engage writer putting out regular content; some of them may choose to interact by visiting my webpage, blog, or signing up for my newsletter.

Under your Author Dashboard in Goodreads, you can scroll down to your blog section. Edit the page and where it asks “Already have a blog?” it will allow you to add a link for an external blog fee. Similar to the above, it will sync up with your rss feed. Mine is listed as https://authorchristopherdschmitz.wordpress.com/feed/ showing that either of the formats works from wordpress. (By the way, Goodreads is more socially active and updates much quicker than author central. If you aren’t using this, you should be. Not everything in marketing points to immediate sales, and this is one way to engage a reader base.)

 

 

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Pick up a new book, start a new series, and feel free to share!

State of Writing

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I completed the first chapter of the next Dekker’s Dozen SF, but the rest of the week kind of ran me over hard. The weather in MN is getting me down. We got rained on (over top of last week’s foot of snow) plus we got another 6-9” right over top of it. Everything is frozen in slush… floods over top of ice. It’s awful and it affects everything.

Hopefully I can write a second chapter this week while also recording the last DD novelette for audiobook. At least I did get my new setup installed and ready, but I will be spending free time continuing to market (plus I’m writing notes for a marketing module to do as part of my writer’s workshop that I do). It’s also St. Patty’s Day weekend, which is rather in demand for me and my bagpiping skills.

On a happy side-note, all of my marketing endeavors are beginning to pay off. I’ve averaged over 500 page reads per day on KU and sold quite a few books this month with organic reach (not because of direct ads, which I’m not currently running. Just writing that down brightens my day.)

Author Feature: B. Michael Stevens

[image error]B. Michael Stevens Mechs and Magic! Mil Sci-Fi meets Urban Fantasy in a dystopian future. Lots of action.

Tell us about yourself and how you got into writing:

I got into writing when I got injured and quit MMA. I’ve always been a DM for tabletop role-playing games and thought I should share my stories with more than my six players.

Tell us about your stories:

I started out two years ago writing horror short stories, but recently have focused on my Science Fantasy series of novels. Struck a four book deal with an Indie/Hybrid publisher and the first book releases in three weeks. I tell people its like Robotech meets Final Fantasy.

Review: The Many Adventures of Peter and Fi

[image error]I recently got an audio version of Kelvyn Fernandes’ book The Many Adventures of Peter and Fi. It was the perfect adventure for my recent road trip—something that the characters themselves also seemed to find themselves on, of a sort.

Fernandes’ does a good job of crafting an original feeling fantasy world, but also keeping it familiar enough that we are not pushed out of the story. I typically enjoy anything with a goblin element and so the first tale of their plundering a goblin king’s treasure was a great hook. The slightly askew take on gnomes and their relationships to the goblins was a great touch of world building as well and Fernandes does  a good job of scattering world building nuggets throughout the text (I hate info dumps). The relationship between Peter and Fi is also a highlight of his writing. Each character is wildly unique and surprising as you learn more about him and her.

The chapters felt somewhat episodic, which is a format that I like (and also write with in my SF series) so that The Many Adventures of Peter and Fi seems like season 1 in an unfolding television show; I could imagine this as a fantasy-styled anime.

I recommend picking up this book. You can check it out by clicking here!

State of Writing

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I got some writing in over the weekend while selling books at a rather slow convention. The next Dekker’s Dozen book, Austicon’s Lockbox, is underway. A lot of the regulars at this convention reminded me exactly how important having an audio version is; several of them had previous books of mine in their audible account already, so I’m planning to begin the audible version of my latest book (Dekker’s Dozen: Seed Child of Sippar Sulcus) this week. I’ve had some software holdups preventing me from beginning (Wolf of the Tesseract 2 has been “in review” for 2 months now and I don’t want to do my hardware and software changes, which are a real necessity, before that clears the queue.) I’ll start anyway and hope I don’t have to re-record WotT2.

This week I hope to write 2 chapters and have my audio software changeover complete and new hardware installed! I’ve probably got to count my books, too, and make sure I have enough on hand for Planet Comic Con at the end of the month.

Author Feature: Steve Salmon

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Steve Salmon’s It’s A New Life! Mom Is Gone is about a man with severe Cerebral palsy, who loses his mother from a brief illness.  After living with her for forty-seven years, he becomes an adult overnight.  Through the love of his family and friends, he becomes independent.

Tell us about yourself and how you got into writing:

I have severe Cerebral palsy.  Morse code is how I write since I’m unable to use my hands.  Swaying my head back and forth all day is how I write.  It’s a slow process, but it works for me.  When I was eighteen, I was labeled unemployable by the government.  My dream was to go to college.  It made me angry that I wasn’t a chance to succeed.  After spending two years at home, my mother put me through school herself.  My anger made me want to tell my story.  That’s why I became a writer.

Tell us about your stories:

I write what I know.  My main characters have Cerebral palsy.  I show readers that people with Cerebral palsy are human like everyone else.  Another reason I write is often the disabled don’t have a voice and are not given a chance.  My newest manuscript is a middle grade book about an autism boy, who loses his parents one night and runs away from his group home.  A policeman befriends him.

What kind of success have you had?

Well, let’s just say that I’m not a bestselling author.  All authors dream about becoming a New York author.  Sometimes I feel like a failure.  I have a publisher and a literary agent.  Not many authors have that.  There are twenty-four million hits on my website.  So, I’m making a difference in the world.

What books/authors are your greatest influence?

My mother introduced me to Christy Brown when I was sitting at home, feeling sorry for myself.  My Left Foot inspired me to become an author.  Christy had severe Cerebral palsy.  If Christy was an author, why couldn’t I?  Larry Watson taught writing when I attended the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point.  He is an acclaimed novelist of Montana 1948, Justice, Orchard, Laura, and White Crosses.  Larry was a role model.  I took several classes from him, including an Independent Study Novel Writing class, helping me start my first manuscript.

Give us an insight into a time you wrote a scene with feeling.

In my newest memoir my character goes to the strip club on a cold snowy night to celebrate his fiftieth birthday.  He has a beer and two lap dances with his two favorite strippers.  My Cerebral palsy is a part of me but it doesn’t define the person that I am.  I’m a man, who enjoys a beer and the company of women.  I have “needs” just like any man does.

Always listen to your heart not your family about writing.  Find some writers who you can talk to for support.  Follow your passion.

Check out this book by out FEATURED AUTHOR.

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Is BookRiot a Good Investment? Here are two user experiences

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I do a lot of face-to-face sales at conventions and book events. Oftentimes I run into my buddy Scott Burtness who writes Horror Comedy (think Buffy the Vampire Slayer.) In fact, we met at one of such event for about the third time in a row and just decided to start doing a lot of the same things together and learning what is working for the other guy and try to replicate those results.

He and I have both been guest speakers at MN based MinnSpec meetups and try to help other Indies up north. We were discussing marketing one day and had both been looking into BookRiot as an alternative to a Bookbub ad (since neither of us had scored one yet.) BookRiot was a little cheaper, but came with what seems like a lot of accolades to its credibility from libraries, etc.

One thing that I found as odd was that I could not find any actual user reviews/reports on the service. Bookbub provides its users with a genre-based breakdown for estimated sales from previous users. After we both decided to drop over $1,000 each on an ad package we agreed to keep informed and report back. Here are the detailed results of our ads…

I’m gonna start with a quick caveat. My book was speculative fiction and Scotts was a similar genre. Maybe Bookriot does very well with mainstream genres. I don’t know, but so far, I’ve been unable to locate any other results that answer the question, “Is bookriot a good investment?”

Scott Burtness:

How was my BookRiot promo?

Awful. Horrible. Terrible. Abysmal. So very, very bad.

My book: Wisconsin Vamp, a horror-comedy novel with 103 Amazon reviews, 4.1 star average

My campaign: 3 sponsored emails 10/28, 10/29, 10/31

Cost: $1,150.00

2 days sponsoring the Daily Deals email – Book featured at the top with book cover, name, short tagline
1 day sponsoring the Riot Rundown email — Book featured at the top with creative, name, 100 word blurb

My results: 419 clicks on my book, resulting in 44 downloads at $0.99 ea. At 70% royalties, I made ~$0.70 per download for a whopping grand total of ~$30.00

I spent $1,150.00 and I made $30.

So what went wrong?

The BookRiot Ad Deck for August 2018 states that:

Riot Rundown has 84,000 subscribers
Daily Deal has 72,000 subscribers
23% open rate (19,320 opens)
CTR 22.06% (4,250 click-throughs for the email)

At the end of the campaign, I was sent a report showing how many subscribers the emails were sent to, the open rate, click-through rate.

First thing to understand: The CTR only applies to opened emails. It’s 22% of 23% of 84,000. That’s 22% of 19,320, or 4,250 people out of 84,000 that will click on something in the email.

Which brings me to the second thing to understand: The CTR is for the whole email. If the email has a popular, well-known author’s book, that book will get most of the clicks and the “email” will have a high CTR, even though most of the listed books might get very few or even no clicks.

The third thing to understand: A click-through doesn’t equal a download. It just means someone clicked on the book so they could learn more about it.

So let’s think about conversion. Someone needs to subscribe to the email, open the email on the day your book is listed, click on your book, and finally, download your book.

It’s a numbers game. You need a TON of subscribers on an email list – hundreds of thousands – to have a shot at making a decent number of sales. Not only does BookRiot not offer subscribership of hundreds of thousands, but the actual lists for my campaign were much lower than advertised. The list my Riot Rundown email went to was a full 10,000 subscribers (11%) less than advertised, and the CTR for the email was 17% lower than advertised. My Daily Deal subscriber lists were about 10% lower than advertised as well (~65k compared to 72k advertised). So out of the gate, the actual number of people that could have potentially seen my book was 17,000 people less than anticipated.

It’s been months since I ran the promo and I still feel like an idiot for letting myself be so completely duped. I’ve spent $40 on eReader News Today, and $100 on BargainBooksy and FreeBooksy had had massively better results than what BookRiot delivered.

Back to me:

I feel much the same as Scott. Book Riot was trash. I think I could’ve done so much better with promos spent with smaller services. A better investment might even have been purchasing some master classes on marketing or an enrollment in Mark Dawson’s SelfPublishingFormula. A person could do SPF for $800 and still have  $200 left over to spend on highly targeted marketing.

Details on my campaign—

My book: Wolf of the Tesseract, YA/NA Speculative Fiction 29 Amazon reviews, 4.7 star average

My campaign: 4 sponsored emails 10/12, 10/29, 10/30, 11/8

Cost: $1,050.00

2 days sponsoring the Daily Deals email – Book featured at the top with book cover, name, short tagline

1 day sponsoring the Swords & Spaceships email — Book featured at the top with creative, name, 100 word blurb

1 day sponsoring the What’s up in YA email — Book featured at the top with creative, name, 100 word blurb

My results: 433 clicks on my book, resulting in 3 downloads at $6.28 total (70% rate)

I spent $1,050.00 and I made $6.28 (and some change from KENP).

Comparing the emails with Scott’s, my CTRs and total open rates were MUCH worse… open rates on their email lists were ALL below 20%. The average open rate was only 17.49% I suffered the same problems that Scott did and wound up with extremely poor results. In fact, when you look at things like Click Through Rates and compare them to the average cost involved to things like Facebook adverts (which can be fairly expensive depending on the details) FB can be a much better investment, dollar for dollar.

When I decided to take the plunge with BookRiot, it was because of the rising costs of FB ads. I used similar CTRs and CPCs (Cost per Click) data to determine that if my BookRiot ad did only a fraction as well as FB ads, I would break even and be happy that I’d found a new, quality ad outlet. I want my $1,050 back. My experience was so much worse. I could’ve bought 300+copies of my book and given them away for the difference in what I spent versus what I made and come away with a few new fans, at least.

These two Indies gave Bookriot a chance. But I’ve been unable to locate other Indie Authors who will give me a response to their experience. It’s a small cross-section, for sure, but it’s info that I’ve been unable to find elsewhwere (and which cost a joint $2k+). What disturbs me most is that I’m sure there mut be other data/reviews out there. When I searched for that info, I could never find it and would go 15+pages deep on Google search results. Most of those pages were filled with articles from BookRiot, making me believe they are intentionally using their SEO in such a way to bury negative results under a pile of links and obfuscate user reports. Maybe that’s just me, or maybe every other user is just too ashamed of their results that they won’t post them.

Live and learn, I guess.

If you want to help me recoup some of my investment and also get a great resource in return, check out my Indie Author’s Bible series, filled with lots of great details and practical advice on self-publishing. It is a DIY how-to guide that, much like this post, will help you avoid the same mistakes I’ve made.

 

If this sort of post is helpful and you want to support me as an author, signup for my mailing list! (Just for signing up, you will get FIVE FREE books as part of my exclusive Free Starter Library, books you would have to pay for anywhere else!)

About Scott Burtness

I live in the Midwest with my wonderful wife, Liz. I’ve always enjoyed reading horror, sci-fi, thrillers, and comedic takes on all three genres. For me, reading is a fun escape, a chance to live vicariously through someone else’s adventures. I decided to start writing with the hope of entertaining readers like myself.


About Christopher D. Schmitz

Christopher D. Schmitz is an author of fiction and nonfiction books. Before throwing himself into book writing he had published short fiction in more than twenty outlets. In addition to a day-job working with teenagers, he also writes for a local newspaper, speaks/sells books at comic-cons and other festivals, runs a blog for authors, and makes an insanely tiny amount of money playing the bagpipes.

He grew up as a product of the 1980s and thinks Stranger Things is “basically my biography.” He lives in rural Minnesota where he drinks unsafe amounts of coffee with his family and three rambunctious dogs. The caffeine shakes keeps the cold from killing him.

Author Feature: Kathleen Jones

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A graduate of the University of Toronto and Ryerson University’s Certificate in Publishing Program, Kathleen Jones toughed it out in the corporate world for over thirty (long) years, chiefly as an editor for various Canadian book publishers. Some of the time, she had the opportunity to do the type of work that she enjoyed . . . but too all often, she didn’t. Towards the end of her corporate career, the type of work that interested and challenged Kathleen began to slip away, and she became less and less happy.

Then one day, Kathleen realized something: creative, out-of-the box thinkers like her didn’t belong in the corporate world, and if she wanted “meaningful” work, she’d have to create it for herself.

That was when Kathleen decided to pursue the only work that she’d ever really wanted to do since she was a child: the work of a novelist!

Tell us about your stories:

I published my first novel, “Love Is the Punch Line,” with Moonshine Cove in April 2018. The novel is a quirky, funny, and somewhat serious midlife romance set in the world of standup comedy. I am currently working on a second novel.

What kind of success have you had?

Against great odds, I was able to sell my first novel to a publisher. Once the novel was published, it received a number of 5-star reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Also, a number of middle-aged readers were happy to find a romance novel featuring characters their own age; far too many romance novels are based around young, beautiful, and rich people.

Are your characters pure fiction or based on something/someone.

Some of my characters are loosely based on real people. However, I usually base them on more than one real person.

Give us an insight into a time you wrote a scene with feeling.

Josh Steinberg, a plump, balding, and middle-aged male standup comedian who has been unlucky in love, spies Holly Brannigan, an attractive middle-aged woman, while performing his act in a comedy club. When Holly’s cell phone accidentally rings, Josh confronts her, and Holly, who’s also attracted to Josh, becomes upset and throws a glass of water into his face. Holly retreats to the washroom to cry, but when she emerges, Josh is waiting for her. He apologizes for getting angry, she invites him out for a drink, then she takes him home with her . . .

Final Thoughts?

This novel appeals to a much broader audience than the traditional audience for romance novels: the characters are realistic and complex, and the book has both strong male and female characters. In other words, it doesn’t fit neatly into the romance genre, or into any one genre.

Check out this book by out FEATURED AUTHOR.

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You can follow her online at https://www.facebook.com/kathleen.lepidas

KDP Hiccups: Where are my Sales & Who Jacked my Royalty Rates?

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I discovered a few little things very recently after combing through my KDP sales… some of my numbers weren’t adding up correctly. Here are two little known issues that I got to the bottom of after spending some lengthy time on the phone with support.

Why are some ebook sales showing up as $35% when I am at the 70% royalty rate?
I have a huge spike in sales on my chart but they aren’t there when I generate a report—where are my missing book sales?

Number one was easier to get to, although it was from something buried deep in the TOS that I was unaware of until now. A book may be sold outside of countries where the 70% Royalty Option is currently applicable in Amazon.com. When that happens (based on whatever those countries are,) you will only get the 35% royalty.

“For sales to customers outside of the 70% territories, royalties are calculated at 35%, and these transactions appear at a 35% rate in the sales report. For sales to customers in Brazil, Japan, Mexico, and India, the 70% royalty option is only available for titles enrolled in KDP Select.”

The countries include Andorra

Australia (including territories Christmas Island (CX), Cocos Keeling Islands (CC), Heard & McDonald Islands (HM), and Northfolk Island (NF))

Austria

Belgium

Brazil*

Canada

France

Great Britain

Guernsey

Germany

Gibraltar

India*

Italy

Ireland

Isle of Man

Japan*

Jersey

Lichtenstein

Luxembourg

Monaco

Mexico*

Netherlands

New Zealand (including territories Cook Islands (CK), Niue (NU), and Tokelau)

San Marino

Switzerland

Spain

United Kingdom

United States

Vatican City

The second question was more concerning and took longer to ferret out… in fact, customer service couldn’t even figure it out until we spent a long time on it. If a sale goes through but the payment is not logged in the same royalty period it can cause this disruption. What it was in my case was a block of ebook gifts purchased for others many months ago that finally posted. They don’t show up as an actual sale until the download code is used.

In the very specific case above, I purchased a block of 30 books to give as gifts in a period when my book was not in KDP select. I dropped the price to 99 cents for a day in order to get a bunch of redemption codes I could give away to book reviewers (since it was a sale, I still get $0.35 from each) and then enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. I sat on the codes for a while and apparently once the first giveaway was downloaded they all registered as being sold on the daily sales chart, but not on the report causing a discrepancy.

As an author, that is worth knowing about so you don’t get bent out of shape thinking the Zon stole your money. Like, of course they’re ripping us all off, but this isn’t one of the ways they are doing it. It was my own hand in my pocket all along!