The Dreaded S Word – Sales

I have been called many things in my life, but I can tell you with great certainty that ‘marketer’ has never been one of them. I can do a lot of cool stuff too. I can write books! I can design a large enterprise network, or write software, but if you ask me to sell something you’re quite likely to get a very wide-eyed and blank-faced stare. Huh?

But, I’m an indie author. This means I get to keep more of my hard earned money in my pocket, but it also means I’m responsible for every book-sale that generates that income. If I don’t market and sell, I don’t get paid. It’s as simple, and as impossible, as that.

So, with a great deal of trepidation, I am stepping out of the warm light of the familiar into the moist dark unknown terrain of sales.

There are two aspects to selling books. The first is public relations (known as PR in the biz), which has to do with the state of the relationship between you, the author, and the public. This includes things like how well known your name is or how much influence you have in the writing/publishing world. The second aspect is marketing, or the act of promoting and selling a product or service. There is a bit of overlap between these two concepts, but they are not the same thing. They each have a very different focus.

For a well rounded plan it is important to have both. I have been building my author platform for a couple of years now. I have a website with a blog, an active Twitter account and a good following, but what I don’t have is presence. I don’t do much commenting on other blogs, I don’t guest blog on other people’s blogs, I don’t invite folks to post on my blog, and hell, I don’t even post on my own blog with much regularity! Clearly, the PR portion of this plan needs some work.

In terms of marketing I’ve done… a whole lot of nothing. I have done one Good Reads giveaway – which was awesome and is where I’ve gotten the bulk of the reviews on my novel Magicless (a grand total of 11). Outside of that, I’ve done absolutely nothing. I have a steady stream of sales, but it’s a slow stream. People don’t know my book is out there. I’ve got to get it in front of more people.

So my strategy is two fold. One – get Magicless into as many hands as possible to generate more reviews. Two – build my influence and get my name ‘out there’ more broadly. This will take time and effort, things in short supply for most of us. I can’t do it all, so to start I am looking at the following.

Lower the Price: Look, I am entirely on board with the idea of getting paid for my work and not undercutting my worth as an artist. But I’m also an author than no one has ever heard of and I’ve got to get my name out there and get folks reading my book. People are far more likely to take a risk on an author they’ve never heard of if that risk is inexpensive. On 9/15/15 I lowered the price of the ebook to $2.99.
Advertise: There are thousands of places to advertise books. For my initial effort I am focusing on two areas:

First, I set up a marketing campaign on GoodReads. I’m running two separate adds with unique sales copy. I’ve no idea what combination of elements are the key to getting a sale and I felt two ads would allow me to compare results based on differing descriptions and target groups. I will allow each form of the add to run for a few days up to a week and see if either of them generate sales. I’ll continue running different versions until I settle on a format that seems to generate the best sales, or decide this is not worth the investment. I’ve started with a $100.00 budget and set the ads to active on 9/15/15.
Second, I’m going to attempt to take an ad out on BookBub, an online publication that shares discounted/free book promotional information with it’s readers. For the fantasy genre BookBub has almost 1.5 million subscribers, and they average just over 23,000 downloads for a free book promotion (see genre breakdown here). That is a lot of downloads for a debut novel from an unknown author! Books go through a selection process for BookBub and there is no guarantee Magicless will be selected. But you never know until you try! I sent in my first query on 9/15/15.


Expand my Influence: This is a tough one for me. Building influence is incredibly time consuming, whether you’re blogging, guest blogging, or engaging on Social media in other ways, and time is something we all have precious little of! So, I’m going to start slow. I’m continuing my existing level of engagement on Twitter, but I’m going to blog more regularly on my own site (2 x week), begin inviting guest bloggers to post on my site (try for 1 x mo), and I’m going to begin guest blogging for other sites (1 x mo). The key here is to make sure this does not interfere with my timeline for the next novel. Finishing the next novel is more important than any marketing or PR campaign. Your business depends on product, and the more product you have the better off you’ll be!

This is not an incredibly ambitious plan, and some might call it downright simplistic and conservative. But this is my first foray into marketing outside of extensive reading and I’d like to take it slow and identify which items really work and which just cost me money.   I’ll post an update in October with the results of these efforts.