Anna’s Comments (group member since Mar 21, 2017)

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

Thank you T and K. I've made notes!

My local library is tiny. A good place to practice on!

Thanks both. I've got it in my diary to do just that, Theodore, I've even made a list of libraries that are near to places mentioned in the books but I've read somewhere in the last few days that this practice (of hoping they'll order more) doesn't work. I can see they might take my book as a donation but will they purchase more from Amazon?

We only get one shot at enquiring and it would be good to get it right. I don't have a problem with meeting head librarians or anything like that, that's one thing in my favour. Perhaps the only thing...

My hope hangs on your comment '...perhaps they have a process...' :o)

So now I have some paperback books at last, I'm going to need to sell some. My first thought is libraries - not known for buying books really, but I thought I could give them one book and hope they'll ask for more. You can probably see that I'm not that good at selling!

Do any UK authors get their stuff (sorry masterpieces) into libraries? If so, what's the best way to go about it?

Thank you, Erica.

You know, this group is incredibly supportive; there should be an award for the best GR group!

Carole wrote: "Speaking of KDP- what do you guys think of the author Michael Scott-Earle- All his books were taken off Amazon for breaking TOS rules.

What rules do you think he broke, if any??"

Oh dear! Worrying. Or was he really naughty?

Yes, modern technology is truly awesome - it never ceases to amaze me and I am very grateful to Amazon for being there at the very time I decided to write! Very nice of them.

Ha, ha. Stop it!

Ooooh, thank you! I feel a bit better now. I imagined I might just have my husband's vote... I haven't dragged him to the pc yet.

I have discovered that Under a Dark Star has become a finalist in the eFestival of Words held by Bards and Sages Publishing. I had never heard of it and, initially, I did not know who had nominated my book. After checking it out, I find it's an OK place to be!

I don’t have a vast army of Twitter or Facebook followers – I don’t even belong! If you would like to vote for Under a Dark Star (Best Historical Fiction) you can probably imagine how pleased I’d be :)

Here’s a link to the voting form:

https://bardsandsages.com/efestivalof...



I haven't a hope of competing with those who have armies of followers but I'd like to get at least some votes!

Thank you to those who take the time to vote.

Oh, I'm following all right - what makes me stop and think is that I always thought that for a promo there wasn't much point in competing with the free and 0.99 books if mine were to be priced even at 1.99. So the fact that you've promoted at a price of 2.79 and broken even is an eye-opener for me. Thanks Dale.

Dale said I put it on sale for $3.99 USD. At a 70% royalty, that gets me $2.79 USD/book, so I needed 20 sales to break even. At a lower price, I wouldn't have done it.

Gee, that's an interesting comment... I'm staring at this screen real hard while I absorb that.

Try sending in your books for promo sites with just the four. As they've scored highly, you might be allowed to promote. Try smaller sites?

Good news! And rare to make more money on a promo than you spent.

Whoopee! Excitement and a sigh of relief when that sort of thing happens.

Your book is rising up the charts, Varun, heading the right way! Well done.

Yes, Carmel, well done for being so brave and making something good happen for you!

D.J., I'd suggest you don't use the same site more than once a year. I'm away from home at the moment and I haven't got all my back-up notes for who to promote with if you don't have too many reviews. Sorry about that.

I think you could get a couple of sales from sites that only charge $5-$10 and will take most books.

Anything that gives a book visibility has to be good and it sounds like Carole (far more experienced at these things than I am) is sensible enough not to turn down tweeting etc help.

I see you ask for additional activities to help with the 'push'.

I can only suggest alerting folks on Goodreads on the first day of your promotion. I have seen some authors' suggestion of then reminding people the day before the promotion ends.

I don't do social media, but if you do, you could tweet and post - though most say this is a waste of good time. Others might disagree.

But you probably knew all of the above! Sorry not got any bright ideas.

Hi Dale, Alex is right. So is D.J. in the sense that even if you don't make your money back you are achieving visibility and a few sales.

I've just gone against my 'don't give my hard work away free' principle and put the first of my trilogy on Amazon for 3 days free, finishing on 2nd July. There were nearly 3,000 downloads and some buyers also bought #2 and #3 in the series. Also the Kindle Unlimited reads have increased from about 200 a day to 1,000 - so look out for that as well.

Having said all this, I haven't had any sales in the last 3 days but the KU reads are still higher than usual.

Think visibility and other phrases like slowly, slowly catchee monkey. It's a tough market both for Indies and the trads and I hope your promotion goes well.