Steven Lewis's Blog, page 21

Are you selling your book to the wrong readers?

In this guest post, Shannon O’Neil from the Duolit Self-Publishing Team, shares some great marketing tips for authors.
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People with $3,300/week to spend on rent, probably don’t find their homes on handwritten sandwich boards.

Quick question — what kind of sales numbers did you have last month?

Ouch. That bad, huh?

It’s okay, you’re not alone. Bookselling is some strange combination of art and science that few people have mastered, especially when fighting the uphill battle of a self-publisher.

But I can help you get back on track and increase those sales.

How? By making sure you’re selling your books to the right people.

Most likely if you’re seeing some poor sales numbers it’s because of one (or both) of these factors:

Something’s wrong with your book.
Something’s wrong with your marketing.

If you had your book professionally edited and hired a great designer for the cover, you’re probably not in the first category. It’s more likely that you, like many other indie authors, have found yourself with a great product hindered by a patchwork sales strategy.

It’s okay, don’t cry.

Marketing’s tough for everyone — I’ve been helping authors market themselves for two years and I still struggle sometimes when it comes to promoting my own stuff. In general, what makes a great author (inquisitive, observant, introvert) does not necessarily make a great promoter.

But there are ways to reduce the scale of your sales pitch so you’ll be more comfortable

In the past, you’ve probably tried to sell your books to anyone who would listen, right? You throw out as much bait as possible on your blog and social media, then sit back and wait for someone — anyone — to bite.

Unfortunately, what winds up happening in that situation is that you attract the wrong kind of people. Not everyone will be interested in your book and even some of the ones who are might not be interested enough to actually make a purchase.

But there are people who will take that important step and you need to find them.

How?

Follow these three steps:

1. Start with one person.

Find one fan who genuinely likes your books (your mom most definitely does not count).

Do a one-on-one focus group

Find out:

Where this fan hangs out (on and off the internet)
How he heard about you
What other authors he reads
What social media accounts he pays the most attention to

Build a persona for your ideal reader

As an alternative, if you’re still in the early, early stages of things and don’t yet have one sample fan, you can use reason and logic to create a fictional profile of your reader.

Be specific:

What kind of person would really love your book?
What are his hobbies?
How old is he?
Does he have a college education?
Where does he work?
Does he live in a house or apartment?

The more information you put together, the more you’ll have a complete picture of your ideal reader and subsequently be able to target your marketing content (headlines, emails, tweets, blog posts, etc.) to appeal to this specific person (and all others like him).

2. Figure out where people who like your book are hanging out.

Use the feedback you picked up from your one fan to determine where other people like him would hang out. If your fan told you he likes to visit a particular blog or online forum, you need to check it out. Wherever he likes to go to talk about his favorite things, there will likely be more people with similar interests and thusly will also find your book appealing.

Jump in the conversation, interact with other people and make friends. Don’t bash them over the head with promotions for your work, but leave breadcrumbs (a.k.a. links to your website and social media) where they can find out more information if they’re interested.

3. Rinse and repeat.

Once you’ve found some new fans, brought them back to your website and made some book sales, repeat the process. Ask a handful of your new fans to answer the same questions you asked your first fan.

Over time you will get a crystal clear portrait of who your target market is, where they can be found and how to interact with them!

Career writer vs writing as a sideline

Finding your target market is the key to upping those sales numbers and turning you into a career indie instead of a sideline dabbler.

What are you waiting for? Get to work!

Share one place you think you might be able to find some new fans based on what you know about your current readership.

Shannon O’Neil is one half of Duolit, two gals who help passionate fiction authors sell more books by building their crazy-dedicated fanbase. If you’re ready to become a book marketing whiz, check out their  FREE 4-week training course . A new session starts later this month! 

What are your top marketing tips for other authors? Share them in the comments section below…

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How accessible should you be to your readers?

Does an author having a website or a Twitter account create a reasonable expectation that she or he will respond to questions from readers?
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How much access should readers expect from their favourite authors?

Amazon’s been trialling for what seems like forever its @author_posts feature, which allows readers to tweet authors straight from their Kindles. Reading 50 Shades of Grey? Drop E L James a tweet from Chapter Two to ask exactly how to tie that knot.

Having a look on Twitter at the result is disheartening but unsurprising.

Is it really reasonable for readers to expect an author to answer questions they could ask Google? Tim Ferris wrote a book on diet and exercise. He sells it for $14. Does that make him your dietician?

@tferriss Hi Tim, Excellent book (4hb)ending first week and boy do my clothes fit better. Can i have plain greek yo… amzn.to/PpANeQ

— Amazon @author_posts (@author_posts) August 16, 2012

I know for most of us the fight is against obscurity but I’m interested in knowing what other people think is a reasonable expectation on an author. If you asked an author a question in, say, Twitter, would you be disappointed they didn’t answer? Would it affect your decision to buy their next book?

I don’t fight obscurity any less than you do, but I do write how-to books, so I hear a bit from readers. Recently a potential reader asked me if one of my books answered a particular question. When I said it did, he went off to buy it. Literally a few minutes later he was back in Twitter asking me a question about something to which a whole section of the book is dedicated. He hadn’t bothered to read the book but now he’d spent a couple of bucks he felt it was reasonable to ask for one-on-one tuition.

Partly because I wanted to experiment with Storify, I’ve taken just the most recent example of an exchange, to illustrate my point.

If you can’t see it below, the exchange is on Storify here.

View the story “Access all readers?” on Storify

I know many of you have very different views from me and I’m genuinely interested in your thoughts on what’s reasonable. Does an author having a website or a Twitter account create a reasonable expectation that she or he will respond to questions from readers or potential readers? 

I’m not talking about whether you might choose to respond. Of course any author can choose to engage with any reader. My question is what is it reasonable for the reader to expect?

And, by the way, if you are interested in how to write a press release or to get media coverage for your business, you should check out my Do Your Own PR & Media course, where you can have a very reasonable expectation that all your questions will be answered!

 

[<a href="http://storify.com/rule17/access-all-..." target="_blank">View the story "Access all readers?" on Storify</a>]

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It’s getting harder to rate books

The other day I couldn’t bring myself to rate a book I didn’t enjoy. It used to be easy to tap on a dismissive one or two stars for a book I didn’t like. Now I’m an author and self-publisher, myself, I can’t bring myself to leave anything less than four stars on Amazon or Goodreads.

I don’t mean I give everything four stars, I mean I don’t rate a book online if I can’t give it at least four out of five stars.

Four stars is my cut off because Amazon considers three stars of a possible five to be a negative review, even though the readers I’ve polled don’t see three stars as negative.

I shan’t tell you what this book is, because that would be the same as leaving the rating. I will say the book was by an American author I saw at the Sydney Writers’ Festival, so this was not an obscure read.

The thing is that I could see how much work went into writing the book, and I know how much work went into producing it. Neither the author nor the publisher was taking the mickey. And, as the author and the publisher had put that much work, time and money into it, I found it impossible to give it one star simply because I didn’t enjoy it.

I don’t much like Chinese food, either, but how on earth is it meaningful for me to give one star to a dish that a billion-odd people would have thought was delicious?

New courses
Low star ratings for books that are clearly the product of considered effort seems arrogant all of a sudden.

If I were leaving a review, I could make it clear that this book simply wasn’t to my taste, so someone reading the review could take that into consideration. With a Kindle Before You Go… or Goodreads rating, there’s just the star and that doesn’t seem enough if you’re dismissing someone’s work.

What do you think? Do you have similar qualms about dismissing without explanation a good faith effort that other people might enjoy?

Those of you receiving this by email will see below that I’m offering a couple of new courses in Sydney:

[Sydney] E-publishing your book for Amazon (Kindle), iBookstore (iPad), Nook, Kobo and all
How to write a mummy blog

 I’m focussing on running my own courses; and although I’m still working with the Australian Society of Authors, I’m no longer presenting at the Sydney Writers’ Centre.

Even if you’re not in Sydney, a tweet or Facebook link to the courses would be a huge help and much appreciated

And if you’d like me to run a course in your city, please let me know. The plan is to take these courses on the road.

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This week’s post is there

I have more than one blog and sometimes I suggest the readers of one look at another. This way I don’t duplicate content and risk Google spitting the dummy. Also it’s fun to look elsewhere from time to time, isn’t it?

This week’s post on the Taleist Centre, my blog about online marketing and social media, mostly for Australia, is:

If you want to please your blog readers, give up.

I’m pointing you to it because it’s relevant to authors with blogs, and it was inspired by one reader of this blog and one former reader.

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Are online bookshops giving traditional publishers an unfair advantage?

The Wall Street Journal reports that Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other bookshops have started sharing with publishers data about how readers are reading their books, information that could give those publishers an advantage in promoting their books over self-publishers with whom the data is not shared.

My last post told you How to find out more about your readers without having to ask, which at least one reader described as “creepy”.

Okay, writers on Twitter, do you think this is a creepy way to treat readers, or perfectly ok, or both? bit.ly/LnCgQm

— Frankie Sachs (@frankiesachs) June 28, 2012

I admit I don’t understand the sentiment, not when you consider how little — and how anonymous — was the data collection I was suggesting; and certainly not when you consider what any serious business would know about you from the second you arrived at their website, let alone as you moved through the site, especially if you bought something.

What data are publishers getting from e-reader sellers about reader behaviour?

Anyway, no sooner had I published that than the Wall Street Journal printed Your E-Book Is Reading You, a breakdown of the information that Amazon and other sellers of e-readers is sharing with publishers about reader behaviour.

I commend the piece to you but here is a breakdown of the information the WSJ reports is being collected:

How long it takes readers to finish a particular book
If a book isn’t finished, how far the reader gets into it before giving up
What passages they’re highlighting
Whether reading one book leads you to buy a particular book next
Differences in reading patterns between genres
Whether readers tend to read a whole series like the 50 Shades trilogy
Which search terms readers use to find books

“Retailers and some publishers are beginning to sift through the data, gaining unprecedented insight into how people engage with books,” reports the WSJ.

Unlevelling the playing field?
Self-publishing in the ebook age levelled the playing field between traditional publisher and self-publishers. That’s not the case if Amazon, Barnes & Noble, et al are helping traditional publishers sharpen their game while keeping self-publishers in the dark.

Not having those data puts self-publishers at a serious disadvantage to those who do have the data.

Why does this information matter?

Imagine you’ve written a how-to guide on a topic for which there is a Dummies Guide, or a travel book to a place the Lonely Planet also covers. In the background Amazon is sharing with Wiley or  the Lonely Planet:

What search terms readers use to find books on that topic or destination
What readers find most interesting in books about those topics

Now Lonely Planet and Wiley can optimise their books’ pages on Amazon for those search terms. That way they’ll siphon off more potenial readers during the search process.

They can also use the information to consider rearranging their books to get readers reading more of the book and faster.

Knowing what readers find particularly interesting will also allow them to showcase those parts or beef them up. Maybe readers like photographs less than you would think, so you can save money on those; or they want maps and diagrams; or they like information arranged in a particular way.

And when they find a book that does the things they like the way they like, they’ll be more likely to buy another book from the same stable.

“Jim Hilt, [Barnes & Noble's] vice president of e-books, says the company is starting to share their insights with publishers to help them create books that better hold people’s attention,” says the WSJ.

How can you compete with that? You can’t.

Jim Hilt is quoted by the WSJ saying, “If we can help authors create even better books than they create today, it’s a win for everybody.”

But only if by “everybody” he means everybody, which right now he doesn’t.

Amazon refused to comment to the WSJ on how it analyzes and uses the Kindle data it gathers, but I can tell you it’s not sharing it with me and I’ll bet it’s not sharing it with you.

What about you? Do you care? Do you think you would use this information if you could had access to it?

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How to find out more about your readers without having to ask

How to use simple online marketing techniques to find out more about the readers who buy your ebooks on the Kindle or the iPad, including where they are in the world and what else they’re interested in.

Get a clear picture of your readers with some simple data collection

Imagine the depth of information Amazon and Apple have about everyone who bought your ebook or even thought about buying it, including:

Their name
What they were searching for when they found your book
Whether they downloaded a sample
Where they are in the world
Whether they read your book
If they finished it
How long it took, including how long it took them to get round to reading the sample or the book itself

And on and on. All this information would be helpful to you in marketing your book, and none of it is information that Amazon will share with you, even though it would be mutually beneficial for you to become a better salesperson of your ebook.

As the author of an ebook, you’re in the online marketing business, which is why you should be reading books and blogs about online marketing as well as writing and self-publishing.
You can get some of this information about readers yourself

At its most basic, an ebook is just a long webpage, which is why people who format their Kindle books properly use HTML, the web language that your book will be written in whether you do it yourself or trust Smashwords or Amazon to convert it for you with their meatgrinders.

Because an ebook is really a webpage, you can use lots of the techniques online marketers use to find out more about your readers.

Two simple steps to finding out more about your readers
1. Persuade your readers to click from your book to a website, any website

An ebook is a webpage and an e-reader is a web browser. You can, therefore, include hyperlinks in your books to a website, whether it’s your own or someone else’s.

Links that I put in my books to persuade readers to click include:

Links to my other books
Links to my website to look at supplementary pictures (the graphs and charts from Not a Gold Rush – The Taleist Self-Publishing Survey, for instance)
Links to my website to sign up for my mailing list

If you plan to write more books but aren’t inviting readers to sign up for your mailing list, you’re crazy. Who is more likely to buy your next book than someone who is enjoying this one?
2. Use a link shortener

Long links like http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0085M7KIU/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=taleist-20&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=B0085M7KIU are unattractive and impractical in services like Twitter.

That’s why there are hundreds of options for link shortening, perhaps the best known of which is bit.ly. You paste in your long link and get something elegant like: http://bit.ly/KQjdA0

Use the shortened link when creating the link in your Kindle (or other) ebook.

If you don’t know how to include a link in your book, it’s explained in How to Format Perfect Kindle Books.
What happens now

The way link shorteners like bit.ly work is simple. I use bit.ly in this example but you can use any shortener you like. I’ve even set up my own, l.taleist.com, which is what I use in my own ebooks.

The reader clicks a link that sends them to bit.ly, as in our example http://bit.ly/KQjdA0
The bit.ly server looks at the end of the link (KQjdA0), which is a unique code that was assigned to you when you pasted in the long link on the bit.ly server
The bit.ly server then redirects the reader to the long address associated in its database with that code
The reader arrives at the place they were expecting

The critical point is that the reader has to pass through the bit.ly server first, if only for the blink of an eye, before arriving at their final destination.

This means that bit.ly has the opportunity to collect information about them and to share it with you.

bit.ly graph showing where in the world readers were when they clicked one of my shortened links

You can see how many people clicked and where they were in the world when they did it.

Using this method it doesn’t matter what you link to from your book as long as you use a link shortener like bit.ly because you’re gathering your data from bit.ly in the middle, not the final destination.
What you can do with this information

This might not seem like a lot, but it’s more than you had already. Not only do you know where your readers are, you know what they’re clicking. That means you can find out things like:

What they’re interested in (might help you decide on your next book, especially if you write non-fiction)
Which of your books they go on to look at and perhaps buy after finishing the current book

I know from my data, for instance, that readers of Not a Gold Rush are more interested in In-Book Promotion, my book about using the Kindle’s built-in features to promote your book, than they are in How to Format Perfect Kindle Books or my book about riding the Indian Pacific train across Australia, Hot Silver.

If I wanted to put a prominent ad for one of my other books in Not a Gold Rush, I now know it would make sense for it to be for In-Book Promotion. And I’ll be able to see how successful the ad is by using the technique described in this post.

And it’ll help for advertising

I’ve said for a long time that advertising is the future of ebooks because it’s not going to be viable to write them for the low sales price that readers are coming to expect. And if you’re supplementing royalties with advertising, it’ll help to be able to tell advertisers how many people are clicking.

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Not a Gold Rush – The report of the Taleist Self-Publishing Survey 2012

Dave Cornford and I are thrilled to be able to publish — self-publish of course — Not a Gold Rush, the report from the Taleist Self-Publishing Survey that was run in February 2012.

We collected the responses to up to 61 questions from 1,007 self-publishing authors.

The answers gave us demographics (age, sex, location etc.), how long respondents had been writing, how many books they’d self-published, where they got outside help, and how much they were earning, along with a multitude of other information.

For the last few months we’ve been working with that data to report on information like:

What the top earning self-publishers have in common
What marketing seems to be working
How much the average self-publisher is earning in royalties
What types of outside assistance really make a difference

The report is divided into six chapters, and you can see a breakdown of them here.





Where to get the full report
The report, Not a Gold Rush, is available exclusively from Amazon.
You do not need a Kindle to read an ebook from Amazon. Under its promise of “buy once, read anywhere”, Amazon provides free apps to read Kindle books on computers, smartphones, and tablets. These can be downloaded from Amazon here.

If you would like to know why we launched exclusively with Amazon, click here.





Infographics

Andrew Brown of Design for Writers has come up with these stunning infographics to illustrate the survey. They’ll give you a flavour of the sort of analysis included in the report.

Important information for Taleist Survey respondents

After respondents completed the Taleist Self-Publishing Survey they were asked to leave their email address so we could be in touch with them.

Some did not, which means we can’t get in touch with them to give them their complementary respondent’s copy of the report.

If you took the survey but did not leave your email address afterwards, please go here if you would like a respondent’s copy

If you qualify, i.e. you took the survey, you will be emailed your respondent’s copy.

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The full report of the Taleist Self-Publishing Survey is coming on 24 May

12,000 words of analysis began with this collection of index cards

After reviewing the answers of 1,007 self-publishers from over 40 countries to 61 questions about their self-publishing experience, Dave Cornford and I are delighted to say that 12,000 words of data and analysis is now in the hands of our editors.

On Thursday 24 May that report will be available from Amazon, and there will be a downloadable summary of highlights on this site, together with images and video commentary.

Six chapters of data and analysis
The full report is split into six chapters, each offering fascinating insights into the world of self-publishing, including a whole range of information that hasn’t been available anywhere else before.

Chapter 1: Overview — The survey methodology, and the demographics of our respondents, including age, education, employment status.
Chapter 2: The Self-Publishing House — Where are self-publishers getting outside help, e.g. editing and cover design, and does production assistance make a difference to the bottom line? (Spoiler alert: it really does.) We also look at whether it makes a difference to to have been traditionally published first.
Chapter 3: Not a Gold Rush — Who is self-publishing? How long have they been writing for? Are they writing fiction or non-fiction, and which genres generate the most revenue? (We’ve already reported that romance authors are earning more than twice as much as their peers). Perhaps the most anticipated result of all is here: What is the average income from self-publishing?
Chapter 4: Marketing — What are authors doing to market their work? How much are self-publishers experimenting with the prices of their books? How important are social media like blogs, Twitter, and Facebook? What is the single thing that makes more difference to revenue than anything else? How many authors have pulled their books from other stores to be part of Amazon’s KDP Select?
Chapter 5: Top Earners — We look in detail at the authors who have said they are making enough from self-publishing to live on their royalties alone. What makes these Top Earners different from everyone else?
Chapter 6: Looking to the Future — We draw together some of the threads from the other chapters, and talk about the sentiment among self-publishers. Would they self-publish again? Do they consider themselves successful? How do they feel about the future for self-publishing?

Be notified when the report is published

Subscribe to the Taleist mailing list to be notified by email

Follow the conversation live on Twitter

The data and our conclusions are going to generate discussion across the internet. Be part of that conversation on Twitter by:

Following Dave Cornford on Twitter
Following Steven Lewis on Twitter
Following the #TaleistSurvey hashtag on Twitter

Follow the survey in the media

You can also setup a Google Alert for “Taleist” that will alert you to media coverage of the survey, which has already attracted interest from major publications.

Your contribution

The report couldn’t have happened without the 1,007 self-publishing authors who took the time to answer our questions; or without the help of the bloggers, tweeters and others who spread the word. We’re incredibly grateful for their help.

After four months in our data cave, we can’t wait to share the results and hear what you think.

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Infographic: Editing vs proofreading

Editing and proofreading have been on my mind as I work through the draft of our Taleist Self-Publishing Survey. Thanks to Dave‘s number crunching, we can see that self-publishers who get the most help with things like editing and proofreading earn up to 40% more than than their peers who don’t.

That’s one reason this infographic from the good people at Scribendi jumped out at me. With their permission I reproduce it here for you.

What do you think?

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