Gary Webb's Blog, page 3
June 8, 2015
How to Promote a Book without Spending a Fortune
Many of my readers are new authors. Many have poured their hearts and minds into an effort that is new to them, but where they have felt driven by passion. That might sound a little strange to those who know that I tend to support more nonfiction authors instead of the supposed “creative writing” authors. I personally believe it requires creativity and imagination to produce anything of value. However, I also believe that isn’t enough. Whether you write novels or self-help books, it takes more than just getting words together to tell a story or communicate solid answers to people’s needs. You need to work just as hard or harder to bring that book to market.
Just putting your book on Amazon doesn’t mean that it will sell even one copy beyond your mom and closest friends. Let’s face it. Even your mom might not read the book she buys!
My newest book, Book 3 of the Prepare! Publish! Promote! series will focus on ways to develop an inexpensive marketing strategy and also tips for using specific tools such as Facebook, Twitter or other social media as well as paid and no cost book promotion websites. It will cover how to use the internal resources that Amazon provides for marketing your books.
May 31, 2015
Don’t Let Your Books Rot on the Shelf
Photo Source / Desaturated from original
Writing is a solitary activity, for the most part. However, most writers have an audience in mind. They have some hope that what they have written will reach the hearts and minds of others. Usually, they hope that what they have written will make the lives of others better in some way. Don’t you feel that way? Of course, it would be even more exciting to know that you have reached into the lives of thousands and perhaps millions of others. In today’s world, that would mean that you have become a best-selling author. Those sales represent more than cash in your pocket. They represent the fact that your ideas were found to be valuable by others, not just yourself.
To accomplish your mission, you must do more than just write well. You must find a way to put those words into the minds of people who need them most. For an author such as Benjamin Franklin, he could fire up his printing press and make several copies at a time. He could then mention the books in his newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette. Today, we launch the book through Kindle Direct Publishing or Createspace and have it displayed among the millions on Amazon. We use our blogs to attract some notice of our piece of literary brilliance. Sadly, these efforts often only reach the ones who would have already known about the book.
So, what else can be done to make sure our books don’t get lost in the haze of Amazon history? We can use social media, web pages, virtual book tours, free or paid promotional sites, Amazon’s internal promotion tools, Google ads, or other tools. But a frantic effort to use all the available resources will not work well without a plan, a marketing plan that targets specific people who have the needs your book is intended to meet. One of the most certain ways to do that is also one of the hardest to implement. It is through the use of email listings.
You’ll find out more about a book marketing plan when you read my book PREPARE! PUBLISH! PROMOTE! Book 3: Promoting Your Book for Growing Sales. It is expected to be released in early July.
May 30, 2015
A Quick Tip for Selecting Your Best Amazon Book Category
Have you ever had this experience? Through keyword searches or just guessing, you have narrowed down your choices for which categories to use for your new book. But then, since Kindle Direct Publishing only allows two categories, you get forced to choose between two pretty good category fits! How do you intelligently choose between the two?
Let me offer a simple suggestion. It may not be the most advanced or highly scientific one, but it works pretty well for quickly getting high rankings after a book launch. All books on Amazon are in competition with one another, both on the Amazon Best Sellers Rank and on their ranking within a particular category. We can use this fact to select the easiest category to get a high ranking!
Look at the #100 ranked book in each category you are considering. Compare their overall Amazon Bestsellers Rank to see how high you must rank overall in order to be in the top 100 of that category. Here are two examples we can use. Suppose you have written a book that could logically fit into either the category for budgeting or for money management. Both fit the book well, but which would be best to quickly get a high ranking?
When you look at the #100 book in each of the categories you are considering and then go to their book page, here’s what you’ll find:
The #100 book in the budgeting category ranked at #233,001 Paid in the Amazon Best Sellers Rank.
The #100 book in the money management category ranked at #122,354 Paid in the Amazon Best Sellers Rank.
I hope you can instantly see that the money management category is an easier one for high ranking than the budgeting one. Wish I had known that when I wrote my book on getting out of debt! I chose Budgeting. I still hit #1, but I would have probably been wise to have put it into Money Management instead.
May 27, 2015
Promoting Your Book For Little or Nothing
Don’t Wait Any Longer! Promote Your Book for Free Right Now!
In just a few weeks, I’ll be releasing the third book in my Prepare Publish Promote series. I’ll give you information about developing your personalized marketing plan and about the tools available to expand your reach into the reading audience. I will address social media, websites that promote books, building and using email lists, plus many other avenues. I’ll even introduce some off-line approaches that were once the province of traditional publishing. The book will at least introduce you to many free or very affordable ways to increase your book sales.
Today, I would like to share just one avenue for you to promote your book for free. Just log on to the Publishing Points Bargain Books site at www.source4.us. Click on the PROMOTE YOUR BOOK link. You will also be automatically subscribe to my very irregular newsletter (sorry, I just don’t do much of that kind of writing yet!).
May 1, 2015
Pricing Pointers
The focus of this book series is growing your sales, but there is more to it than selling more books. Amazon has deliberately set its royalties in a way that encourages authors to price their books between $2.99 and $9.99. In that range, you can get a 70% royalty on most Amazon platforms around the world. Between 99¢ and $2.99 you are only eligible for a 35% royalty. This system dramatically impacts your bottom line. For example, if you sell six books at 99¢, 
you can expect to make $2.10. If you sell just one book at $2.99, you will net $2.09 minus delivery fees of a few cents. Get the point? Your profits depend on the selling price even more than on your sales volume!
It is good to keep a balance here because a high sales ranking brings lots of free advertising through Amazon and makes your book pop up higher when people search for a book on that subject. However, it takes a lot of 99¢ books to make a living so you can’t afford to keep your price down that low forever.
Let me give you some pointers about pricing your book. I believe that the 99¢ price is great for promoting books. Keep the price down there in order to raise your ranking so that it is solidly in the top 20 of your category, preferably in the top 10. That will make the book more visible to those who are searching for similar books. After your sales have stabilized, you will want to raise it to take advantage of the 70% royalties. Depending on the quality of the book, I recommend that you price it between three and six cents per page. That puts a 100-page book in the $2.99 to $5.99 sweet spot. If the book is below 100 pages, go ahead and price it at $2.99 to check its selling power. Only lower to price after this to boost sales ranking or because it just is not selling at the higher price.
Even if you must price a book below the 70% royalty cutoff ($2.99) that doesn’t mean you are forced to settle for 99¢. You can price it anywhere between 99¢ and $2.99, even odd numbers like $1.49 or $2.29. You may have to experiment to find the optimum price for the highest profits. Keep an eye on your sales numbers by looking at the KDP Month-to-Date Sales Report: 
You can check it on an hourly basis to see how things are going. It is off by as much as four hours though.
Kindle Direct Publishing has added a new feature to Bookshelf that you use for submitting your book. This tool will be a good help to you for early pricing. At step 9, you will see a little yellow button that says “View Service.” Click that. On the next page, you’ll see a graph that shows a projected comparison of estimated royalties at different price points for your book. Here is the graph for this book:
Notice that the most profitable price recommended for my book is $2.99. The dotted line shows how the number of books sold will decrease as the price rises. That makes sense, doesn’t it? But, when you look at the solid line representing my royalty earnings, it spikes almost double when the price hits $2.99. That’s because the percentage of royalty doubles from 35% to 70%. Keep this in mind! I have other books where the sweet spot is $4.99. It varies according to your niche and previous book sales history.
Many authors are still excited about free promotional pricing for their books. I will explain why I do not believe that is generally a good pricing strategy in the next book of this series. I will also share the few exceptions when that might be helpful. Book 3 will also include some other pricing strategy issues that you need to understand when you are setting up your marketing plan.
Action Steps :
Set your initial price for the book at 99¢. Do that so that all those early sales will show up on the PAID Bestseller rankings. Promote heavily as I will describe in Book 3 of this series.
Watch your sales until they seem to have leveled off for a week or more. Then, raise the price to at least $2.99. Expect the number of sales to fall dramatically, but use your calculator to remind yourself of the better profits you are making.
Lower your price as needed to keep the book within the top 20 of your category.
April 14, 2015
Dominating Your Niche on Kindle
Book sales are often increased when a book achieves and maintains a high ranking it its niche. You don’t necessarily have to reach Amazon’s overall Top 100 books. Being at the top of your niche can have a powerful impact on your bottom line as an independent author. There are several factors that determine your success in ranking well however.
Choose a Hot Niche
One easy approach to choosing a good niche is to use the Amazon search bar to find several books that are at least similar to the one you intend to write. You read correctly, even before you write the first word of your book, you should be thinking about what people want to read; so you need to research. When you type in a series of searches for keywords that seem to match your book well, it should turn up some books that are already selling. The ones at the top are the ones that have been rated high on the search engine because many people have searched using that particular keyword and then selected that book. Click on some of the books at the top of each keyword. In the book page, scroll down to see if the book is identified or ranked with any particular categories. Click on each of those niches to see what books are grouped together. Some will be books with low sales. That’s good news for you. You may want to be part of that niche. You can change categories (niches) at any time in Kindle Direct Publishing.
The Case of the Missing Niche
Sometimes, though, you’ll find some books that are ranked high in their niche, but they don’t really seem to be any better than your own masterpiece. You would like to join that niche because you think you might get some good sales there too. Then, you go on Kindle Direct Publishing, open your book, and scroll down to the categories drop-down. You search the whole thing, but the category you want just doesn’t show up! It’s completely missing from the choices. How is that possible? Well, both KDP and Amazon are constantly changing the categories – Amazon more than KDP. You can fix the missing category problem this way. Go to the bottom of the categories drop down menu. You’ll find “Non-Classifiable.” That’s the one to select. Then, click on KDP’s “Contact Us” link. Send them a message requesting to have your book classified in the category that you want. Or, to accomplish the same thing, you can call Amazon Customer Service and ask to be transferred to Kindle Direct Publishing. Once there, ask the representative to put the book it into your category. Being in one of these hidden categories can make a huge difference in your ranking, which then leads to increased sales!
Want to Dominate Your Kindle Niche?
We all need to spend some time getting more training and education about book marketing. The cheapest way is through authors who are proven successes. My friend, Alan Woods, has two books that I really love that way. I thought I’d let you in on one since it does fit my topic today.
Kindle Domination by Alan Woods
Sometimes, it isn't enough to just find the right category, write a good book, and publish it on Amazon. Sometimes, you need to completely dominate your niche and be a bestseller. Here's how!
This book isn't about just surviving as and Amazon author. It is about overwhelming the Amazon book market with a high quality book that is marketed most effectively.
I WANT THIS
Amazon USAmazon UKAmazon CanadaAmazon Australia
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April 5, 2015
Missing International Sales
I was chatting with a Facebook friend tonight. We are exchanging favorable reviews of each others books, even though we might be considered competitors. What can I say? The book is good!
During our conversation, she asked me to post her review on her big five amazon sites in addition to the US. That means India, Canada, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and the US. She immediately said that she would do the same for my book. It just occurred to me that I needed to look at my book page for all those sites. Guess what? Even though I have 33 reviews on the US site, I have single digits in the others. She told me that most of her book sales come from the UK instead of the United States. I seldom ever even sell one book there. Could it be that I have locked myself out of those markets by not soliciting reviews in those countries?
I don’t know about you, but I cannot afford to ignore those markets any longer. From this day forward, I’m going to actively start promoting my books to these countries, beginning with actively seeking reviews. What is your experience in this area? Do you think it is important to expand the marketing base by getting more reviews on these other sites? Would it be worth the effort you would take? Share your insights in the comments below.
April 4, 2015
What’s Your Brand?
One of the early keys to the success of McDonald’s was the golden arches outside 
every restaurant; and inside, they had the same menu. The food looked the same and tasted the same regardless of which McDonald’s you visited. Other chains have followed their lead and bit by bit sliced away from their uniqueness.
When I was growing up in East Tennessee, we didn’t have a refrigerator. Before you miss the point, let me say that we did have a Frigidaire! For us, Frigidaire was what you called any refrigerator. We knew that other companies manufactured similar items, but we felt like they were just poor substitutes for the real thing!
If I say the word Campbell’s, what goes with that? Soup, maybe? If I say Kellogg’s, what idea comes to mind? Cereal? Yes. What if I say Coca-Cola? You don’t think about coffee do you? Why? Because we have learned to associate particular brand names with their corresponding products. The same principle applies to bestselling authors.
James Patterson or J.K. Rowling?
If you hear the name James Patterson, you don’t think of comedy or romantic books, do you? With J.K. Rowling, you don’t think of a chemistry textbook… or do you? Every author should develop a unique brand. The interior branding is a particular genre of book written in a unique style. Exterior branding is also important. That begins with the book cover having the same typography, coloring, similar images, etc. Sometimes, it is important to develop a logo that represents your branding as well. This is often used in other venues such as your blog or website — maybe even on coffee cups! Your name and photo is also part of the branding associations that you are trying to build.
Branding a Book Series
Here is an excellent example of branding from Lise Cartwright’s series called Outsourced Freelance 
Success. Notice the use of chess pieces as a theme across the different covers, with unique colors to differentiate between each one. They are unmistakably the work of the same author writing on the same subject. Lise has used similar concepts to brand her books on home workouts! When you open the cover and begin to read, her style is consistent, clear, and always very helpful. I’m learning more from her every time she shares anything! I love it! Want to see more of her work? Just look at her Amazon Author Page!
The Purposes of Branding
Branding has a purpose. It gives a sense of identity to your fans. It makes your work easily recognizable, and therefore easily purchased. A brand establishes a set of expectations from the buyer. It distinguishes one author from another, even if they are writing very similar kinds of books. As a result, it can increase sales of all your products. I wish I had known some of these things sooner.
As an author, you can establish a personal brand by having a unique signature emblazoned across your book covers. Or, you can chose a color scheme that is always on your covers regardless of the title or other elements. I haven’t really established my own yet. My first attempt is through this series on self-publishing. Unfortunately, I chose a title that brings confusion instead of clarity. However those who buy Book 1 are being exposed to the next two covers from the outset. Hopefully, it will make a difference in sales. What do you think?
March 30, 2015
A Major Lack of Discipline
I always thought I was a disciplined person until I started writing. I find myself spending much of my time searching for ideas and recording them, but without having any real focus. In the meantime, writing isn’t all there is to living. I’ve discovered that I don’t have a daily routine that works for me as a writer. What makes that even worse is my wife’s physical condition being so bad! I now have most of what were once her responsibilities, plus my own, plus the new venture into putting words on paper. Now, I discover that I’m supposed to blog daily or at least every other day. Of course, since I’m now a #1 bestselling author, I’m supposed to be brilliant on a daily basis too!
How Can I Be Disciplined With So Many Unnecessary Distractions?
The house needs to be clean; somebody needs to cook the meals; the lawn also needs attention. And I still don’t even know how to set up a decent website! Or how to design a web course! Or how to build a mailing list of raving fans who beg for the first glance at my next book. In the meantime, I wrote a book about lasting weight loss, and I’ve gained back five pounds over the winter. I’ve got to get back to the exercise routine again.
A Lack of Discipline Has a High Price Tag. Only Rich Men Can Afford Discipline!
Successful life is about successful habits. I’m quickly discovering that I don’t have enough of those. I’ve got to start from scratch at 67 years old! I’ve designed my book covers, but everyone says not to do that. Somehow, I’ve got to figure out how to afford not doing that! I’ve got to figure out how to afford not having a professional editor who would make more from the book that I do.
Surely I’m Not a Procrastinator! I’m Busy All the Time!
We’ve all seen the vast array of books about procrastination and wondered, “Can that many people be interested in books on this subject?” Probably not! But it is such a big issue for writers that we can’t resist putting down some thoughts about it. Procrastination is simply doing what you want to do and neglecting what you need to do. I need to do a lot of things. I want to write, and those useless things like cooking and cleaning are annoyances. Washing clothes and washing dishes are just as distracting from the real work of an author. I just need more discipline. That way, I can pay attention to my writing and not even think about all these trivial matters.
March 29, 2015
Keep It Off!
Keep it off!
So, you’ve lost the weight and reached your goal. Congratulations! Now what? Does this mean you can relax and stop being so hard on yourself? What about that diet? Can’t you add on some of the foods you’ve been missing now? Maybe you can skip some of the time at the gym, right?
Understand me. I’m not one who is determined to make your life miserable. But good health depends on good habits, not a temporary change of diet.
Let me be honest! Your weight loss is no more permanent than your lifestyle changes!
