R.L.’s Comments (group member since Jan 07, 2017)

R.L.’s comments from the Navigating Indieworld Discussing All Things Indie group.

Lol ikr?!

I mean they could just rename CS to KDP and call it a day

So basically they’re inconveniencing us for no reason and making a penny lmao, Zon

Anita wrote: "R.L. wrote: "Oy. This is gonna be a head ache. Mind if I share in other author groups Anita?"

Not at all. This is why I started the thread. This is an issue that affects all of us."

Thanks for sharing this

Oy. This is gonna be a head ache. Mind if I share in other author groups Anita?

You can send a mobi to their kindle email. I’ve done this for readers outside the US. I advise to only do it this way. Save your money because some people are known to refund your gifted books and keep the money. This way you weed out those people and make sure your hard work is going to people who actually care about it.

How awesome!

I agree!! So cute!

Keep writing though. It’ll be easier to edit something than to have a blank page. You. Got. This.

I’m sure you’re fine Alexis. Lol

I do straight to kindle mobi. Contact your winner via messenger and announced that they won. Tell them to add your email to their documents in Kindle and give you their kindle email. then you send the mobi with no subject no signature just the mini attachment and they get it auto delivered to their device.

I don’t send pdf or mobis to emails anymore. Too many pirates out there. And readers are used to this now so it’s pretty easy.

Lol you’re welcome.

Well the ones we’re offering is generic but typically you want to find a group that matches your books genre. The readers are there so they want to see that specific thing. With ours I’d suggest telling your followers that you’ll be doing a takeover, have them join the group so they can support you and the incentive for them is to stick around and learn about new authors as well as the chance for any giveaways too

It just depends. Erica posted this example over on the Magazine thread about examples:

1. Hi, my name is _____ and I am the author of _________. I am excited to be here today. To start it off, I would like to get to know you better. Comment with the most exciting place you have ever visited. Everyone who comments will be entered into a drawing for a kindle copy of my book __________.

2. I am currently in the process of releasing a new novel about _____. Something interesting about this book is __________. Please follow my Facebook page to learn more. Once you have followed me, comment "followed" on this post and you will be entered into a giveaway for ___________.

3. Outside of writing, I enjoy ___________.

4. Some form of a game post. You can find all types of ideas for games by searching social media games.


I include pictures, ask them to do interactive things like:
"My book is set in a smalltown. Post a pic or gif of your hometown in the comments below!" With this you can have a winner or just leave it as is and engage with the picture, by asking where theyre from etc.

The next best thing is to join a few takeover groups as a reader and just watch what everyone is doing. You can join Shades of Read and just observe, plus you can see what other authors have done as well. Its a romance book groups so the focus will be on that. You can also search for book takeover groups on facebook and check those out to try and find groups for erotica, sci etc

Well here's my outlook and my experience:

The time i spend on takeovers isn't very time consuming, because i schedule my posts a day before. So not only do I have time to think of fun interesting things to post early on, I'm not tied down to posting live. I'm currently one hour into my group takeover on "Shades of Read" today and facebook alerts me when people respond. So I can write etc, unless it's a more interactive post requiring an immediate response from me.

Next, I have to believe it works. Up until I tried it here were my stats for doing essentially nothing: Author Group: 14 members, Newsletter: 75, Author Page: 155, Sales: Lucky if I get one per week on Amazon after May 2017. Took book One out of KU, because well page reads were zilch.

Since the takeovers March 26th 2018: *Put Book One back in KU* Author group: 155 (not a ton, but way better), Author Page 300 likes
Newsletter: 800 (With an open rate of 70%)

Now the kicker for me is that in within two weeks of the takeovers I sold as many books in 2 weeks, (roughly 70% of my newsletter, although I can't say for sure it was all them) than I had for the entire year alone and still am selling every day since. And that's just book sales. That's not the thousands of page reads I'm getting every day too.

At the end of the day, it's about what your goals are and what you want to see happen in your career. Am I killing the rank algo's on Amazon? Nope. Anywhere near bestseller status? Nope. But last night I texted Carole a photo from a reader that was raving to a group of thousands about my book. A book she found because another author group had a takeover and I took a leap and did it. I was scared crapless but I did it. And now people are asking about the book and sharing what they loved about it. Things that would not be happening if I didn't take that leap of faith. Will it spread and maybe I get some new readers, I hope so. That's the goal.

Anything worth wanting, you have to be scrappy about going after it. Free, paid or otherwise...Unless you're a Rockefeller lol.
To soar in any career, you have to take a leap. Sure you could end up in a mangled mess at the bottom of the ravine, but that's a possibility with anything. Get up and try again. I know I will.

Well, that's it for my point of view on it guys. I hope you all at least try something, anything. Have a good one! XOXO

Lol ok

You could do a day a month or several. I mostly see people do this around release time. For example use Michael. He’d get some if his other horror authors to come on for half hour to an hour and engage with questions, trivia and giveaways. Thank the host for having them and sometimes they even purchase and giveaway a copy of the hosts books. That seems to go over really great.

Some ask people to follow or share their post (whether a page or buy link)for whatever the prize is. Then they leave that open 24 hours to let others who couldn’t participate see and enter. After that (I do this due to people stealing prizes by cloning the winners Facebook account-craziness) I contact my winner privately and discuss how to get them their gift. Announce that the giveaway is closed on your thread after doing this and that’s it.

I do also suggest that after your 24 hours or whenever you choose to be finally done, to close comments so that your old posts doesn’t override a current authors takeover time the next day.

Authors do takeovers in private reader groups and pages as well as huge blog groups when they’re opening it for anyone to signup. It’s a really good free way to get yourself out there.

That’s a great amount of followers. For sure engage them with takeovers. You won’t regret it.

Facebook Takeovers have been a game changer for me. Ever since I’ve met tons of readers, gained new fans and sales have for the first time in a year been consistent. I also attribute this to the release blitz I did for my sequel too. Every bit helps and you don’t have to spend a ton. Heck takeovers are free advertising and readers are greedily seeking out new authors and books.

Enticing Journey worked well for me. So well we did an interview in last months magazine of them. It was inexpensive and they have a bracket for ALL BUDGETS. Highly recommended.