UK Amazon Kindle Forum discussion
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How do you launch a new ebook?
G+, Linked in, Twitter, GR, some specific book sites I have built up a relationship with. Some modest paying promo sites (listings & interviews, not paid reviews). A trailer, some more info on my blog (story prompts, image gallery of associated images, story themes etc).I also use the GR event function to invite those that follow me through GR as friends.
I think generating content around the book can be interesting.A lot of people do stuff around the characters, but in a collection of unrelated stories that's a mite tough. But I surf the web for visual images that express something from the stories. I talk about where the stories originate from (film image, news story, something I saw on a commute etc). If you can drip feed these during the day maybe it can help.
If you've joined BookHippo they will publicise a new release, though they normally feature price drops.
As well as blog tours etc, I've tried to build up stuff around the characters. For example face book pageshttps://www.facebook.com/TsarinaSecto...
https://www.facebook.com/Land-of-the-...
Also I've even given two characters blogs of their own
https://tallissteelyard.wordpress.com...
https://jwebster2.wordpress.com/2015/...
But you've got to keep it in proportion or you'll never have time to write!
Jim (above) is effectively doing that. Another author released two episodes a couple of years ago but he seems to have gone off the boil.
My lead character has her own blog/facebook page, although it's a bit occasional. It's written as if she's an "actress" starring in the book, so she might do location visits, "behind the scenes" stuff etc (as opposed just having her be in the book universe and always in character)Quite often I'll bung photos on Facebook of the locations in the book, as I'm writing, and in the days & weeks leading to a launch, I might post character profiles etc.
Jacquelynn wrote: "Thanks Kath. It would be interesting to hear how you have gone about this, Jim.
..."
I had the idea. Basically it started off with me thinking about the roots of fantasy/SF. It was with pulp fiction, publications so cheap that the paper wasn't finished properly and if you find any of the magazines now they're likely to collapse into dust if you open the bag.
So what I pulled out of that was it was
1) cheap
2) regular
(looking at some of it, it certainly wasn't high literary quality that sold it.
So rather than my usual 70K books selling for the mind boggling sum of £2.99, I'd pitch it at 20K words for £0.99
So I wrote six, stand alone stories, a mixture of detective/mystery stories, set in my fantasy background using one of my more popular characters to help sort things out.
Think the tales of Sherlock Holmes. They were written in a certain order, but you don't have to read them in that order.
Not only that but whilst someone who reads all six will hopefully gain from the experience, it should be a lot of fun just reading one.
But I didn't just split a book into six bits. Some people have done that,charging for each bit. (And effectively selling a £2.99 book for £6) I've read some pretty negative comments from readers about that.
Sounds like a great idea. I might just try that one day.
Well if it's a success I'll let people know. It'll probably take a year or more before I know
I'd probably use a really, really big sling shot.
Patti (baconater) wrote: "I'd probably use a really, really big sling shot."whip it round Jupiter
Patti (baconater) wrote: "I'd probably use a really, really big sling shot."An e-slingshot?
That puts me in mind of the piano fling on Northern Exposure!
I'd be very wary of doing a serialised novel. Some readers regard them as a scam and you could collect a lot of one star reviews on the back of it.I saw this earlier today so went back and found it for you
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
I think you know my feelings on the whole cliff hanger scam thing, Jim.It's a sure fire way to make me never read that author again.
Patti (baconater) wrote: "I think you know my feelings on the whole cliff hanger scam thing, Jim.It's a sure fire way to make me never read that author again."
I know Patti, but I felt it was as well to produce evidence that others also shared your opinions.
It's nice to get a wide enough view and realise just how widely shared some opinions are :-)
Don't forget that Dickens, Doyle etc serialised their novels in the newspapers. It was very much not the same thing as publishing a "bookette" through Amazon. (zero effective cost to the end reader, for starters)
I think there is a sliding scale here. At one end we have the clear scam shorties where the reader is being suckered in to paying through the nose in installments for something that ought to be cheaper in one big lump.It reminds me of those De Agostini magazine things where the pitch is that you cab build a Millennium Falcon for only £2.99. Except that the normal price of the magazine is £8.99 and it takes 100 magazines to finish the thing. I make that a total cost of £893.
At the other end of the worthiness scale, we have something like Great Expectations where the serialisation was done to avoid the very high costs at the time of buying a novel. That doesn't apply so much these days.
To get this to work in the ebook world, I suspect that the individual stories would need to be fairly hefty and reasonably self contained - more novellas than individual novel chapters.
I can see it working, provided that the pricing structure was sensible and not a scam.
Jim wrote: "I'd be very wary of doing a serialised novel. Some readers regard them as a scam and you could collect a lot of one star reviews on the back of it.I saw this earlier today so went back and found ..."
I get enough jip for the fact that my stories don't 'finish' but end at a natural break in the story with some stuff resolved and other stuff still waiting, and most of my books are either close to or over 100.000 words!
It makes me feel a bit hard done by when I've lost count of the times I've been suckered into paying over £3.00 for a book half the length of one of mine!
But I do understand that it's hard to wait a year for the next instalment...
For my first (of many, hopefully) I had two launches. I had a soft launch for a select few and reviews, then a hard launch for the general public. I found that with a few reviews in, it enticed more people to buy. I had a lot of help though, from some great people here at GR.I also found that enthusiastic beta readers will help you by tweeting/posting on FB on your behalf, or will allow you to post to their pages. That advertising alone was worth a hundred Amazon clicks!
Also, Will, I'd managed to create and post some adverts YouTube, so that I could include those on various posts. They're relatively easy to do, but I found that dominating the first page of the Google search for my name or the book title helped a lot!
Let me know if you want a hand with an advert of that nature, but you're always welcome to post to my Facebook author page, or tweet me and I'll be more than happy to retweet the few followers in my bank.
I also get a lot of "interesting but I'll wait till the trilogy/series is finished before I start" comments. (On that basis, when FC3 comes out in November, it should be an overnight best seller!!)
Gaff, I'd definitely be interested in more info on the YouTube gig.
Tim wrote: "I also get a lot of "interesting but I'll wait till the trilogy/series is finished before I start" comments. (On that basis, when FC3 comes out in November, it should be an overnight best seller!!)"Yep. That's exactly my take on series.
I also do a soft launch for reviews, then a hard launch using free days. I put details on goodreads and Amazon forums, plus some free book websites listed on the author's marketing club. I've done this recently with the first in a cozy mystery series and got 400 free downloads and 12 sales which I'm happy with. Once I've more books the aim is to be more visible with guest blog posts and paying someone like bookbub.
I did a book trailer using animoto but not sure if that brought in any sales! I keep telling myself it's a long game and readers will slowly build as the series grows.
I've also read that having a mailing list is good so I'll be starting one soon.
Tim wrote: "Don't forget that Dickens, Doyle etc serialised their novels in the newspapers. It was very much not the same thing as publishing a "bookette" through Amazon. (zero effective cost to the end reader..."It is also a model I had in mind.
The advantage for the writer is he'd get paid, and probably at a reasonable rate. If it's anything like modern freelance journalist money, two novels a year would keep you!
The advantage for the reader is it costs them nothing because they buy a paper anyway
The advantage for the paper is they hope to get extra readers/not lose old ones, and the cost probably isn't that high compared to filling the space using other methods
It's just a case of convincing a paper to do it
Sadly judging by the turn of recent events and changes on Amazon and other book sites, prepare to give 2 to 3 of your works away. It has become a standard method to use the first few books for marketing and PR "Try then Buy no 4! It's a lot of effort and seems simple but it is not easy. Eyes open and be prepared to bleed! There's a lot of info about the various tactics long term strategy. Once you establish yourself limit the free versions in a suitable way so most have to purchase them. It is a double edged sword. I am currently putting myself on the chopping block adopting this method! Think Long term. #LLAP
Jacquelynn wrote: "Has anyone here ever tried to release an ebook in a serial format, so say, adding two or three chapters every month?"No, but I did the final revision, and posted a new finished scene every Tuesday for two years on my blog. I got some readers that way, and met a lot of other authors.
My blog will always be too tiny - I'm a writer with a very different 'system' from most people - but I told everyone I knew from there, and on the FB groups I belong to, and the usual friends and family.
My marketing is very minimal - I can either write Book 2 or spend a lot of time or money marketing, and then, if I got your attention with Book 1, you'd have nowhere to go, so I'm not as worried as I could be.
It depends on what you write, how long your books are, what genre you are in, but it is probably easy to do some research online and see what others are doing.
Expect to start slow and be creative - you're yelling in a marketplace with a lot of others: what makes you and your book special? Go with that.
I just told everyone that I ever met in my life who might want to read a book. Then I tried to put it on any indie-friendly website that was free. I think the most important thing is to make sure your book has a good plot and is free of grammar and punctuation errors. I tried to submit it to about 75 or so book review blogs, but I only got replies from a small percent of those emails. It's like your kid on the first day of school....you send it out into the world and cross your fingers that it does well. And then cry.
I'd like to suggest a terrific free ebook by Paul Brodie (USA)Book Publishing for Beginners.
http://www.brodieedu.com/resources
Thanks Dan. Every bit of information can help, I reckon.
Joanna Penn does a couple of free ebooks. You sign up with email address for the first one Author 2.0 BluePrint. It contains loads of links to other resources including her free ebook on Amazon, Successful Self Publishing (UK site but it must be on the US one too).
I keep hoping someday authors can make friends from their work, instead of making friends for their work...Frankly I would just keep writing, because at the end of the day, all marketing aside, it's the work that must stand on its own merits.
Hear, hear, BY.Although, I know lots of our authors have become my friends from their work. And in spite of it. ;)
I think it's a case of making friends in spite of being an author
Then you are luckier people than I. My own friends and family, for all their love and support, are not and have never been what you would call 'readers', and pushing on down this path just makes me feel apprehensive about approaching strangers with the work - as if I'm trying to push myself onto people just so they'd take a look at my writing, rather the other way around.I keep hoping for vidication in the form of readers completely unknown to me to get in touch because they loved my stories.
Making friends inspite of your work, or inspite of being an author means, imo, your work has already reached that next level. Wanna give me a hand up there while I'm here? =)
what I was meaning B.Y. is that there is so much potential hostility to authors, mainly because of spam, 'drop and run promo posts' and various other things some authors have done that on some groups authors are restricted to certain small ghettos which the rest of the members can ignore.So you have overcome that potential hostility and become accepted 'in spite of' being a author.
Jim wrote: "what I was meaning B.Y. is that there is so much potential hostility to authors, mainly because of spam, 'drop and run promo posts' and various other things some authors have done that on some grou..."Ah, well I honestly thought you were referring to the tendancy of many authors to tread on the crazy side. After all, we are a group of people who make a living (or dream to) mainly through talking to imaginary people we find interesting.
I wore out my stock of madness assuming it was possible to make a living from food production, writing I approach in a fairly rational manner
I have to admit, once I got past the idea that I had to be the next Stephen King or Harlan Coben or whoever, I became a lot more relaxed about my writing. I don't know anyone who makes a living by writing and I consider it a hobby these days. But I love writing. If anybody buys a copy, great. If not, that's why I have the day job.
Jim wrote: "what I was meaning B.Y. is that there is so much potential hostility to authors, mainly because of spam, 'drop and run promo posts' and various other things some authors have done that on some grou..."'Small Ghettos'. That's a good description Jim.
Actually, I'm confused by that.Jim, do you mean that there are groups that don't allow authors to post in chatty threads simply because they are authors?
Or are you referring to the practice of containing promotions to certain threads as 'small ghettos'?
I think he means is generally how authors are regarded less as writers in these forums and more as promoters, thus earning a measure of apathy from other frequenters.Can't say I disagree. Even after only casually browsing the lists really do give off the impression of a clear separation. What you end up having are numerous authors posting to each other about their books and the readers they are trying to reach generally off in their own conversations wanting very little to do with the writers. But in any open discussions like this one visited by so many at one time it's a given that personal interests and investments will invariably leave an impression - in this case, I'd imagine there are enough occurances of forceful promotions and twisting discussions to try and generate interest in books that it's made people a little wary.
By no means confined to this thread or this group, and more of an admittedly expected symptom as a whole.
Personally I say just let it stand - the work will sink or swim on its own merits, and the truly great ones are never truly buried. Just enjoy the company here, and write off the rest to whatever it may be.
Jacquelynn wrote: "Thanks for the comments on serialisation. I can see that one of the problems is that people would be paying for the sections, and these would be wiped out when the whole book is available. It's als..."So one prices accordingly then. Presumably you may certain the difference isn't so vast to turn people off - but then again for the whole book I'd offer that readers might expect a discount over buying each individual 'chapter' anyway. I think it's more important that those 'chapters' end up more or less self contained, so the reader is still getting a whole story, even in seperate issues.
Patti (baconater) wrote: "Actually, I'm confused by that.Jim, do you mean that there are groups that don't allow authors to post in chatty threads simply because they are authors?
Or are you referring to the practice of ..."
I've come across groups where there were serious discussions as to whether authors could post anywhere other than the promo threads.
A lot of people didn't seem to think they ought to be allowed on the chatty threads.
I've used https://princessofthelight.wordpress.... (basically $11.50 per item - so interview/spotlight/cover reveal) and http://www.masqueradecrew.com/.I also have my own blog. I tend not to promote much on Goodreads. I'll add a post to my relevant author threads but mostly I used GR as a reader, for the reasons above.
If anyone does want a spotlight/interview email me at libraryoferana@gmail.com or use the contact on my blog and I'll toss you an interview - readers, editors and any aspect of book creation.
B.Y. wrote: "Jacquelynn wrote: "Thanks for the comments on serialisation. I can see that one of the problems is that people would be paying for the sections, and these would be wiped out when the whole book is ..."Hi B.Y. A Serialised Novel in a smaller format - I would assume that there is a market for that structure - especially with easy electronic payment systems.
(Edit: Whoops newbie error - just missed most of J.Y.'s comment above...)
Jim wrote: "As well as blog tours etc, I've tried to build up stuff around the characters. For example face book pageshttps://www.facebook.com/TsarinaSecto...
https://www.facebook.com/Land-of-the..."
Good ideas.
I've looked at many of the book promotion websites but they seem more interested in price drops and free books than on book launches.
Any seasoned authors will to share tips on how to launch a book? Please?