Mark Phillips's Blog - Posts Tagged "2015"
On the importance of Ebook Promotion
2014 was a great year in terms of indie publishing, and hopefully, 2015 will allow indie authors to rise even higher.
It was the first year that indie authors had concrete data to prove that they were selling just as many books as traditionally published authors.
It was the first year that the stigma was finally removed from self-publishing, and successful indie authors were as respected by readers as successful traditionally published authors.
It was also the first year that I published a book.
2014 was a wild ride for me and I learned a lot about indie publishing. Putting your book out there to be read and judged by the masses is not an easy thing to do for most people, but it's a lot easier than trying to sell your book.
In years past, the biggest obstacle to publishing was simply getting your book published. Writers toiled and slaved away at query letters, trying to get them just right, so that they could catch the eye of a literary agent. That is no longer the case.
With the avenues wide open to anyone with even a passing knowledge of how the internet works, publishing a book is now as easy as one click.
Today, with the market so flooded with good (and not so good) books, the biggest challenge is in the marketing. There are firms like Bookbub (who I highly recommend) that can help you out tremendously. There are your friends and family that can help spread news of your book by word-of-mouth. Yet, there are also predators out there.
Do a Google search for ebook promotion and what you'll find is some useful information, along with a handful of people who want to sell you a website subscription or a banner ad that won't help you sell one book.
Whenever there is a group of people looking to achieve a dream there is another group of people looking to take advantage of the first group.
Now, I wish I could tell you that you need look no further than this blog to find your answers. I wish that I could lay everything out for you and give you the keys to success.
But I can't.
The truth is, there isn't just one key (or set of keys) for success. Each writer succeeds in their own way. Besides that, I'm not expert when it comes to marketing. I'm much like the rest of you; just trying to figure it all out as I go along. But if any of you reading this are just starting out I can give you a few tips.
Write a great book. This is step one and is the most important thing. Not every great book becomes a bestseller, but there are very few bad ones that do. Write the best book that you possibly can, and make sure that it is edited to perfection.
Design a great cover. People really do judge books by their cover. An arresting cover will get a lot of attention and cause people to take a look at the free chapter that most sites allow them to read. After being dazzled by your writing, they will be spurred to by the book.
The above is what you can control directly. After that, you need to come up with some sort of marketing plan. Obviously Facebook and Twitter will play a part, but what about beyond that?
How much money you want to spend is entirely up to you. Bookbub is great, but it is pretty expensive. There are other sites which are cheaper, but the return on investment might not be as good. I haven't done any research on this; I can only go from my own personal experience.
The bottom line is this, I don't think you have to spend any money at all if you don't want to. Paid advertisement is dicey at best. I can personally attest that Bookbub is worth the money and provides great results, but it's not necessary to use them. You can still become a breakout success without that.
You want to engage potential fans whenever you can. It's hard to find that line between spreading the word and being annoying, but you must find it. Word-of-mouth is still the biggest marketing tool for books and it's completely free. It's just hard to achieve.
My final piece of advice is to get lucky. This isn't something you can force, obviously, either you get lucky or you don't. However, you can tilt the odds a little bit. If you buy one lottery ticket you have a 1 in 285 million chance of winning the lottery. If you buy two tickets you have a 1 in 142.5 million chance. You doubled your odds (still extremely poor, of course) of winning by buying another ticket.
In the same way, if you write another great book and publish it your odds of getting lucky will double. The more books you publish, the more likely it will be that your name will travel and your books will sell.
So keep writing, keep reading and keep dreaming. Have a wonderful 2015.
It was the first year that indie authors had concrete data to prove that they were selling just as many books as traditionally published authors.
It was the first year that the stigma was finally removed from self-publishing, and successful indie authors were as respected by readers as successful traditionally published authors.
It was also the first year that I published a book.
2014 was a wild ride for me and I learned a lot about indie publishing. Putting your book out there to be read and judged by the masses is not an easy thing to do for most people, but it's a lot easier than trying to sell your book.
In years past, the biggest obstacle to publishing was simply getting your book published. Writers toiled and slaved away at query letters, trying to get them just right, so that they could catch the eye of a literary agent. That is no longer the case.
With the avenues wide open to anyone with even a passing knowledge of how the internet works, publishing a book is now as easy as one click.
Today, with the market so flooded with good (and not so good) books, the biggest challenge is in the marketing. There are firms like Bookbub (who I highly recommend) that can help you out tremendously. There are your friends and family that can help spread news of your book by word-of-mouth. Yet, there are also predators out there.
Do a Google search for ebook promotion and what you'll find is some useful information, along with a handful of people who want to sell you a website subscription or a banner ad that won't help you sell one book.
Whenever there is a group of people looking to achieve a dream there is another group of people looking to take advantage of the first group.
Now, I wish I could tell you that you need look no further than this blog to find your answers. I wish that I could lay everything out for you and give you the keys to success.
But I can't.
The truth is, there isn't just one key (or set of keys) for success. Each writer succeeds in their own way. Besides that, I'm not expert when it comes to marketing. I'm much like the rest of you; just trying to figure it all out as I go along. But if any of you reading this are just starting out I can give you a few tips.
Write a great book. This is step one and is the most important thing. Not every great book becomes a bestseller, but there are very few bad ones that do. Write the best book that you possibly can, and make sure that it is edited to perfection.
Design a great cover. People really do judge books by their cover. An arresting cover will get a lot of attention and cause people to take a look at the free chapter that most sites allow them to read. After being dazzled by your writing, they will be spurred to by the book.
The above is what you can control directly. After that, you need to come up with some sort of marketing plan. Obviously Facebook and Twitter will play a part, but what about beyond that?
How much money you want to spend is entirely up to you. Bookbub is great, but it is pretty expensive. There are other sites which are cheaper, but the return on investment might not be as good. I haven't done any research on this; I can only go from my own personal experience.
The bottom line is this, I don't think you have to spend any money at all if you don't want to. Paid advertisement is dicey at best. I can personally attest that Bookbub is worth the money and provides great results, but it's not necessary to use them. You can still become a breakout success without that.
You want to engage potential fans whenever you can. It's hard to find that line between spreading the word and being annoying, but you must find it. Word-of-mouth is still the biggest marketing tool for books and it's completely free. It's just hard to achieve.
My final piece of advice is to get lucky. This isn't something you can force, obviously, either you get lucky or you don't. However, you can tilt the odds a little bit. If you buy one lottery ticket you have a 1 in 285 million chance of winning the lottery. If you buy two tickets you have a 1 in 142.5 million chance. You doubled your odds (still extremely poor, of course) of winning by buying another ticket.
In the same way, if you write another great book and publish it your odds of getting lucky will double. The more books you publish, the more likely it will be that your name will travel and your books will sell.
So keep writing, keep reading and keep dreaming. Have a wonderful 2015.
