New Author?

Join the club. There are a lot of us since the ebook publishing revolution. It's easy now that we don't need the approval of literary agents and publishing companies, who are all too busy for us anyway. We're populating the market with new indie authors left and right. The next trick is for us to sell our books...

Now all of a sudden, you're a new marketer. This is potentially frightful territory for a typical writer who likes to work alone. Yet it's the key to taking your writing from something of a hobby to a real live career. The trick is to stay positive in the process. You can recruit scores of reviewers, take blog tours, even pay for advertising and still not sell many books. Successful indie authors say it takes time and a few releases to make the marketing efforts pay off.

I don't suggest that you avoid marketing until you have multiple releases. That would be a mistake. I'm merely stating that you can't expect to see phenomenal results in the meantime. There have been some exceptions, but it's a crowded market and even a future classic will have to get noticed before it sells. Multiple releases can open the door for incremental sales and help you collect some email addresses.

Once you have a few books out, make one free. Make certain to list your other two books within its pages, and a link to review sites and then just put it on all your sales outlets for free. Send word to all the “Free Book Marketing” sites that like to attract followers by offering them a place to shop for free books. Some of them reach a huge number of followers. Then hope for some readers because all of the people who enjoy your free book will consider paying for one of your other books. Then you'll begin to see some sales.

Now set up your blog page with an email marketing service like MailChimp and create an email subscriber box that offers your free book to anyone in exchange for an email address. This will give you a few people to send information about you, your books and your future releases. You can also treat these people to special perks like contests for prizes such as signed copies or something personal from your desk. Anything from a beloved author would be treasured by a fan. You can even share written bits exclusively with your subscribers like an excerpt or a short story. Surely they would tell other readers about it and that will help to increase your subscriber base.

Just try not to lose your mind in the early going when you have single digit sales after showing your book to hundreds of facebook friends, and you only get one review after submitting 30 requests. It can be like that for the first few years. Make the most of your resources and publish the best books possible. I covered the importance of using professional editing and getting a professional book cover design in these previous posts. Do that and put a few worthwhile books out. This can be tough on a limited budget, but good things happen for those who stay with it.

Thanks for stopping in
Jonra Springs