12 Days: My Self-Publishing Journey (Part 1 of 12)
Yesterday, on twitter (no, I’m not a twitter-holic), I followed a fellow author. She messaged me soon after I followed her, saying that she took a look at my book (my first book), “The PureLights of Ohm Totem” and liked it, which she’ll be buying and downloading on her Kindle soon. She asked me if I’d like to take a look at her book to see if it would be something my wife would like (I don’t have a wife, but that’s a different story. I do have a girlfriend, though). I clicked on the link, read the description, liked the reviews, and so I bought the book. It’s titled, “Her Grace in Disgrace” by Claudia Harbaugh. Then, upon further reading her amazon page, I saw that she had only published it a month ago, but her book was about to break the 1000 rankings on Amazon! What!? Wait! How did she do that? And, to top it off, this is her first book!
Now, if you’re not an author, you’re probably thinking, “So, what’s the big deal?”
Well, here’s the big deal. If it’s an author’s first book and they JUST published it, most don’t expect, and only wish, to break the top 1000 books on Amazon kindle (ebooks). Those are the best ranked, most profitable, most loved books on Amazon. It’s an author’s dream to reach that, though it’s my dream to eventually reach the top 100, then the top 10, then #1. Yeah, we can dream, can’t we?
Anyway, if you’re like me before I became an author and don’t know what Amazon rankings mean, then let me explain.
The top eBooks on Amazon rank from “1″ (being the most popular) to “1,000,000+” (being the least popular or least purchased). To get to 1,000 on Amazon means you’re selling your book at quite a high rate–a little over 100 books a day.
Now, again, how did she do that?
Well, I had to know, so I went ahead and asked her. I don’t have the answer(s) yet, but she’s going to take me through the process sometime this week via email. I can’t thank her enough and, on the same note, I can’t wait to use her techniques. More on that, later…
A quick story of my first promotion on Amazon
When my first book, “The PureLights of Ohm Totem“, came out, I didn’t know what the heck I was doing. I published it, crossed my fingers, did a couple of free promotions on Amazon and didn’t sell very many books. The idea with the Amazon free promotion was to be pushed to a higher ranking on the genre page that I’m listed in–on the “free books” portion of that genre category. I did so in hopes that thousands upon thousands of people would download my book for free, read it, and tell everyone they knew about it. And, when their friends, family, and acquaintances found out about my book (certainly after the free promotion was over), they’d run home as fast as they could just to take a glimpse at this amazing book, buy it, and spread the word to more people. I’d be on top of Amazon in no time, but not in the free category–in the paid category.
That didn’t happen.
The first free promotion got me 184 downloads on a 2 day promotion. Amazon allows an author to choose up to five days to promote their free book, but I only chose 2 days because I wanted to do another promotion a month later (you get 5 free days every 90 days on Amazon). Anyway, I got as high as “19″ on the FREE eBOOK “Fantasy – Epic” genre ranking system on Amazon. That’s a mouthful.
And, to make things a little worse, I only sold 15 total books after that promotion was over. Not great!
I was distraught, confused, and…giddy. I know, how could I be giddy? Well, now had a challenge in front of me. I had to figure out how to become a top author on Amazon.
Second Promotion
Okay, so I learned my lesson. I needed to read what other “successful” authors did to get them on the best-sellers list, other than write a brilliant, well-written book, which I felt I did (my book placed 4th in a large writing competition and 1st in its category). So, I get to pat myself on the back. Way to go…me.
I bought several “how to self-publish and make a gazillion dollars” books and read blog after blog on the subject. I spent endless hours learning the self-publishing ropes.
Categories
One of the first things I learned was that I needed to put my book in a specific category. I had mine in “Fantasy” and “Fantasy – Epic”. If people are looking for “Lord of the Rings” or “Game of Thrones”, then they’ll see those books on top of those categories, which has over 77,000 books. If someone wanted to find my book in that category, they’d have to shuffle through over 400 pages of books to find, “The PureLights of Ohm Totem“, and when they got there, after a long grueling day of searching, they’d have to read my reviews, my description, my bio and decide if it’s a book they’d want to buy.
I don’t think that’ll be happening any time soon. And, if someone does that? Then…wow!
So, the new categories I chose were “Fantasy – Visionary” and “Juvenile Fiction (Young Readers) – Fantasy and Magic”. There were, at the time, less than 10,000 books in each of those categories. There are authors out there who suggest going even further down the category line to try and find a category that has less than a 100 books in it. I couldn’t find one that fit my book with anything under 8,000 books.
Free Promotions
Many of the books and blogs I read said that they used certain websites to promote their free eBook for FREE. Yes, they will promote your ebook for free, as long as your book is currently being promoted on Amazon for free (as I said before, Amazon allows you to promote your book on Amazon for free for 1-5 days every 90 days or so). These books and blogs also pointed out that those free websites do a masterful job of letting thousands upon thousands of interested readers know about your book.
Hmm…I thought for a half a second, then jumped on that ban-wagon as fast I as I could.
I found over fifty of these sites. I submitted my book, my book’s description, my book’s cover image, my author profile picture, my bio, etc. to those websites and on the day of my promotion, they tweeted my ebook on twitter, sent my ebook cover and description in an email to their subscribers.
*Side note for authors: Here’s a link to a website that has a list of 50+ websites that you can submit your novel to, or, if you’re super busy, they can submit your book for you to each website for only $40–eBookBooster.
These websites claim to have thousands of subscribers or twitter followers or facebook likes and they’ll send your free ebook link to each and every one of their fans. Some of these websites will charge $5 to guarantee a listing of your book, because sometimes they don’t have enough room or time to promote every book that gets submitted.
So, what did I do? I submitted my book to ALL of them. I paid a few websites $5 in order to guarantee me a spot on the day I promoted my book, giving me the feeling that I was on the right track. I was going to get my book out there for everyone in the entire world to read. I was going to finally make it as a writer. No problem. No problem at all!
How many days I promoted my book for free this time around?
3 days.
I made sure the days would be Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday. I chose those days because I read that they are the best days to promote your free ebook. Then, after the promotion, I read that Thursdays are the best days. A little later, I read that “FreebieFridays” are the best days, especially on twitter. Months later, I read it doesn’t matter. My conclusion? No one knows.
My stats for the second promotion
On the day of my second promotion I was a ball of jitters and high spirits. Here it was, the day that five thousand or five million people will download my book, making sure I’m the numero uno (#1) in my genre category for free ebooks.
Again, that didn’t happen.
My book was downloaded a whopping 450 times. Now, as you can see, that’s not at all what I was hoping for or expecting. At least a 1,000 downloads? Please? Throw me a bone?
My begging, my groveling, and my crying got me no where. I actually didn’t do any of that, but thinking about it, perhaps that would have actually got me somewhere.
By the end of the first day of this promotion I was surprised to see that I was 2nd in my “Fantasy – Visionary” category. I had over 200 downloads on the first day and by my third day, I still had some free downloads trickling in, and was able to remain near the top of my category.
What did that get me?
When the promotion was over, I was up at the 19,000 ranking for all Amazon ebooks. That’s not great, but it’s better than where I was at–the 200,000 ranking–where no body would find me. It’s a lonely, murky place down there. Shortly after, I had 30 paid purchases, which meant that 30 people paid to download my book and read it on their kindle. Again, not great, but better. And, I had some great reviews that came in after the promotion.
Reviews
Those wonderful, incredible reviews. They’ll either bring you warmth and happiness or rip your heart out. They’ll also be very difficult to obtain–at first.
By the beginning of the second promotion, I had about five reviews. All of them were 5 stars. A couple of months after the second promotion, I had 14 reviews. Some of them were because of the second free promotion and some of them were because I sent out my ebook to professional reviewers and professional review bloggers. About 1% actually read my book and reviewed it. Right now, I’m still waiting on three of them who said they are currently reading my book and will write a review once they’re done.
I don’t want to explain every single way to get a review, so if you’re an author, then go here: PageLily - How to Succeed on Amazon (they are my favorite ebook conversion/formatting company–cheap and professional). PageLily has partnered with a company called “AMC” that will help you get reviews, morally, without paying for them or badgering people to review your book in order to get them. So, watch the AMC video after you click the link above.
How I’m currently doing my “third” free Amazon ebook promotion, which starts in 7 days (July 27th)
The very first sentence on this post was: “Day 1: Promoting my second book by promoting my first book”. And, we’ve finally made it here. I’ve learned a lot from my past experiences and have made a lot of changes on how I’m going to promote my book this time around, though it’s ten times the amount of work compared to the first two promotions.
So, here goes…
For the next 12 days (including today) I’m going to keep you updated on this journey–promoting my second book by promoting my first book. It’s going to be fun, informative, clever, and just a plenitude of great reading.
What I’ll be doing
I told you about all those websites I went to in order to promote my first book for free, remember? Well, I’m doing it again, but with a little twist, because my second book, “The PureLights & The PureLight Order”, is coming out soon. In fact, I’m bringing it out a couple of days before I start this third promotion, making it available by the time this promotion begins.
But, this little twist and what I hope to learn from the woman at the beginning of this post, Claudia Harbaugh, will be in tomorrows edition of 12 Days: My Self-Publishing Journey. Perhaps I can use her techniques, her tid-bits, and her brains, to make my books rise to the top.
Stay tuned… part 2
*Second side note: If you’re a struggling author that needs help, then go and get the book, “Self-Printed“, by Catherine Ryan Howard. You won’t regret it. I just finished it. It’s the best book I’ve ever read on self-publishing. After that, go to the website A Newbies Guide to Publishing and wade through J.A. Konrath’s archives to figure out how he became successful. He’s a full disclosure author, giving you, as a writer, as much information as he has accumulated throughout the years. You’ll be blown away.
