Eva St. John's Blog, page 2

Trying to turn the village into a town. Book marketing. 3/?

It doesn’t matter if you’ve written the best book in the world if no one knows about it.  Well sure, congrats, you’ve written the best book in the world but if you are hoping to make any money off it (tawdry I know), you’re going to have to start marketing it.

Social Media

At the base of everything you are going to need a rock to stand on. A little lump of mud that is yours and yours alone.  When my husband and I opened our first bookshop, it was a rented room. Things were going really well but then the landlord wanted to expand their own premises and required their room back. We had to really scramble to find new premises, the business was going well and we didn’t want to close.  We found a tiny place and I mean tiny. At roughly eight foot by six foot it was probably record breakingly small, but it had the best view in the world. perched on the edge of a Georgian harbour I would spend the day looking out past square-rigged ships, to sea. We spent two lovely years in there and then the landlord put the rent up to silly figures and we started looking around again.

This time we decided to buy our own place. Our own scrap of mud. We’ve been here thirteen years now, twenty metres from the sea and it suits us just fine. No rent increases, no landlords needing to reclaim the ground we stand on.

Click to view slideshow.

Why tell you this? Well, the same is true of a digital selling place. Even if you don’t plan to sell from your website you need a place you can call home. And that’s here. Welcome.

After your website comes your social media platforms. For this series of books I’ll be using Facebook, so that I can run ads, and Instagram, because I like it. I don’t think Pinterest is right for this series.  I mean Pinterest is great and powerful but its a lot of effort that could be spent elsewhere. I’m looking at twitter, but I really don’t like it, I think its great for author to author contact, but not necessarily author to reader. YouTube doesn’t work for this concept either so FB and IG.  You could always follow me there?

Facebook
Instagram

Networking

Now, I am rubbish at this. I am really no good at going up to people and saying ‘hello‘ either face to face or online.  But I’m better at it online which is where all the the FB groups I’m part of, have come to the fore. I’m fairly friendly (?) and chatty in those groups, so hopefully when I mention I have a book coming out is doesn’t feel like a hit and run posting by a total stranger. Incidentally, I’m not posting in the groups where a book on parallel realities is irrelevant.  So, keeping my mouth shut on my local tourist page and on my mushroom group.

I’m also keeping my mouth shut on my bookshop page. This might seem like madness, and I may review this decision, but lots of my friends and family are there, and they would buy my book to support me. I’d rather they did that later on, once the algorithms know who my ‘real’ audience are. And if I haven’t mentioned it before, I’m writing under a pen name, for reasons that I’ll go into in another blog. It’s not a secret, just a bit of a split personality thing.

Very slowly then, I am beginning to mention this book. You’re reading this blog because of my tentative efforts. Thank you for your interest, or for at least humouring me.

Promotions

Ah the joys of Bookfunnel, I have three newsletter promotions running this month. So far I have four people on my newsletter. Let’s see how many I have at the end of the month. I have nothing to give away beyond my book so I am giving away the first few chapters. At the end of the sample will be a link to pre-order the full title, and we’ll see how that goes as well.  When I have a bit more time I might do a dossier on all fifty Fabergé Eggs. (Top tip, don’t pick a title with a non standard keyboard letter.  Alt +0233, in case you’re wondering).

Reviews

I have four/five ARC copies out there. No idea if this will come to anything. Early alpha and beta readers have said they enjoyed it. Now I’m just waiting to hear from the ARC people. Nervous.  Very small number. Tricky. I could have signed up to a paid service but it’s not a field I know well and I want to spend my marketing budget carefully. Which brings me to…

Advertising

Right, I haven’t started spending any money yet but I fully intend to.  I’m going to run amazon ads and FB ads. The FBs will be directed towards the book, but possibly also towards building up a mailing list. I’m fully aware that I’ll pick up a lot of chaff in the Bookfunnel promotions. But this is only the first book, I may look to spend my money simply on direct sales and look towards organic mailing list growth. Beyond the initial BF kickstart.

I might start with adverts towards the newsletter with the free taster, in the hope that this will generate pre-orders. Then, when the book is available, I’ll switch over to advertising.

And of course, during all this I’m trying to write book two, in a house full of locked-down, bored, noisy teenagers.

It’s not easy.

Linked Blogs

It takes a village to publish a book. Part 1/?

Formatting, pricing and distribution of a new book – the village goes quiet. 2/?

Judging a book by its cover. It takes a village. 4/?

 

 

The post Trying to turn the village into a town. Book marketing. 3/? appeared first on The Quantum Curators.

Formatting, pricing and distribution of a new book – the village goes quiet. 2/?

Ah, the joys of formatting. The last few days have been a bit of a slog. I have been shaping my finished edited manuscript into something that can  actually be bought.  You can read about it here. This is the moment when a traditionally published author gets to relax. Their publisher takes the manuscript away does some magic, and the next thing they know, they wake up to see it filling the shelves in Waterstones. Well, something like that.

If  you are a self published author, as I will be for this series, this is where you have to really knuckle down; learn some new skills and start making a whole range of marketing decisions. This is also a quiet time, you’re doing this bit on your own. Happily, there are some fabulous tools out there to use and if you aren’t good at this stage you can go back to the village for help. I recommend Reedsy, its a marketplace full of publishing professionals out there to help you with formatting, and anything else book related.

The first question.  What formats to make this book available in?

Formats

Digital: An e-book is, straight out the gate, the first option. It’s the cheapest and easiest to construct and distribute.

Paperback: As a librarian, bookshop owner, and physical book reader, this is a no-brainer. But it’s more complicated. It requires more formatting for the print file, additional artwork for the spine and back. Then you need a printing and distribution account. Happily, I have this covered.

Large Print: Why not? All the issues are as above but if you are doing it all for standard print just spend a bit more time on this. The sales are unlikely to be over-whelming but if you can do it, why not, plus for some readers this is a lifeline.

Audio: Yes, but it’s expensive to create, so maybe wait to see if the sales are positive. That’s on the back-burner for now but something I do want to do. Read more on audio books here.

Hollywood Blockbuster Movie:  Well, okay.  But I can dream.

Distribution

Wide or Exclusive. The age old question in the self published market. Wide means you sell your e-book all and everywhere. Exclusive means you can ONLY sell your digital edition on Amazon. I have chosen to go…

Digital: Exclusive. For the first six months, the digital version will be exclusive to Amazon and placed into their Kindle Unlimited programme. As soon as I leave that I will ensure the digital copy is available to libraries as well as other selling platforms.  I’ll use Draft2Digital to distribute.

Print: Wide. I’ll offer this to libraries, bookshops and online platforms.

Anyway, over the last few days I have done the following.

Prepare digital files for Kindle. I’ve also created a sample of the book to offer as a newsletter sign-up and an arc copy for early reviews. Having created all those files I then, created download links for them.   It’s funny how quick that sentence was to type,it took days to actually do.  By all means have a look at what I’ve done so far.

Pre-order on Amazon

or

Download a free sample

or

Register for an Advanced Review Copy.  No link for this, get in touch with me directly if you would like a free copy of the whole book. You’ll need to show a proven track record or blogs or influences.  hello@thequantumcurators.com

So all that took a long time, hopefully I haven’t made a mess of it. I used Draft2Digital to format the word document into .mobi and .epub files. In the past for walking guides, I’ve used Calibre as it’s a much more powerful tool. This time though my file was simple so I tried D2D and it was a doddle in comparison.

Print files. This is my task for the next few days. Prepare files for printing, standard and large print.  I will then upload them to KDP print for Amazon, and Ingram Sparks for everyone else: bookshops, wholesalers, libraries, other online websites.

Pricing

I’m going to start the digital copy at £2.99. I’m not a fan of 99p books, I think they devalue the product and the market. I can see the benefit of them working as offers and loss leaders, and I will no doubt have some sale days. But, by and large, I will stick to £2.99 and will investigate £3.99.

The paperbacks will cost more. Considerably more. As the files haven’t been submitted I don’t yet know the print costs but as they are a physical item the costs are much higher.

Audio Book. Even higher production costs but potentially better sales than paperback.  Unless of course you can get your paperbacks into the big distribution chains and that is a bit of a holy grail for the self-pubbed market.

What Next

And whilst I’m doing this, I am also sorting out the marketing and the jacket art work, as well as writing book two. I’ll be doing those blogs in the next day or two.

Trust me, self-publishing is not an easy option. But you are in control 🙂

 

Affiliate Links:  Standard disclosure. Where ever possible I use affiliate links. This means that if you click on a link and spend some money I receive a tiny commission.  It costs you nothing and adds a few pennies to my coffers. it’s a fabulous scheme. Currently my only affiliate links are to Amazon.

Linked Blogs

It takes a village to publish a book. Part 1/?

Trying to turn the village into a town. Book marketing. 3/?

Judging a book by its cover. It takes a village. 4/?

 

 

The post Formatting, pricing and distribution of a new book – the village goes quiet. 2/? appeared first on The Quantum Curators.