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Time. Fantasy is a hard market to break into, it always has been. Case in point, Lord of the Rings didn't become a success until AFTER J.R.R. Tolkein died.
There's no one thing that works, other than to keep writing and just keep trucking. Most overnight successes take 10+ years to generate a buzz (Game of Thrones, I'm looking at you.)
I personally tend to start looking for reviews when I feel I'm not getting enough reads. I don't know how much, or how little, impact they have on sales, but a good review from a book blogger can potentially generate a sale or two, and costs you nothing but patience and an electronic copy of your book.
I find reviews help boost sales and exposure, as do doing author interviews on bloggers sites.
As Riley says, fantasy is one of the harder markets to succeed in. Yes, it takes time and patience. Most authors who eventually get traction don't see it until they have quite a few books out. Getting a positive mention is a well-regarded blog can help, but takes research and perseverance. Don't get discouraged if you don't hear back -- that's the norm. And just keep writing.
Yep, I'm in the same boat. Tough to get attention in Fantasy. Best bet is keep writing, so that's what I'm working on.
Here a couple things:1) You should be selling your books on the sidebar of you blog. You should be blogging about it. Put the covers where you have the Internet Defense League.
2) Revise your Amazon author page. A professional Photo, a positive professional Bio. Readers want to believe you are serious author. You need to improve your brand.
3) Reconsider your pricing. $22.95 for paperback and $6.95 may be to high.
4) A 665 page book that is intended for a young adult audience is long.
My $.02. YMMV
Good luck!
Is your cover really attractive? In this competitive market, covers mean a whole lot more than they did several years ago. I also agree that your price is high? If you don't want to lower if permanently, you might consider lowering it for a week. Here's something to consider. If you have a 665 page book, is there any way you could split it in half? I agree that a book that is that long, might be a tough sell. There are so many people who are publishing three or four books of the same continuing story line. It would be a perfectly legitimate thing to do. Anyway, good luck
I knwo the feeling because I'm in the same boat right now. I have reviews but haven't seen sales. I've promoted but I feel like I force it at times which you never want to do. What I've started doing is taking things step by step, going over a list of 71 ways to promote and market your book and am looking to putting up a perma free book to attract people to my landing page and then hopefully my other works.As for your book being 665 pages..ehh yes I would say you should consider breaking that into two and making it two separate novels and consider making a prequel and make that free. When you have that many pages even though it is big you can break it down and use it to your advantage. I'm no expert but I know lots of people who have a series and they say the best thing to do is to give the first book in the series away for free so if people enjoy it they will buy the others.
Justin wrote: "As for your book being 665 pages..ehh yes I would say you should consider breaking that into two and making it two separate novels and consider making a prequel and make that free..."It's not 665 pages. Shirley was mentioning that books shouldn't be overlong, as one possible thing for me to consider.
The Amazon page says it is 665 pages. I just checked again. That is Moby Dick long. Most YA's will turn away based on that alone. How many words is it? That would be a better measure for us.
I could be looking at the wrong ones, but I see 2 ebooks, both under 250 printable pages, Amazon US.
I sell more books from personal connections, book signings, and author appearances than I do from social media or any other marketing campaign. My book is long too, but I can't cut it anymore and don't want to chop it in half and leave the reader with a "to be continued" cliffhanger at the end. Readers I've talked to don't like it when books are abruptly cut in the middle like that. It makes them feel like you've purposely cut the book just to gain more money from sales by making it into two books instead of one. At least that's what I've been told. I've been advised from other authors that the more books you have on the market, the more books you sell. Keep writing and get more books out there. Writing is a tough industry, but try not to get discouraged. Two sales is better than no sales.
Elí wrote: "Justin wrote: "As for your book being 665 pages..ehh yes I would say you should consider breaking that into two and making it two separate novels and consider making a prequel and make that free......"You are looking at the wrong page.
http://www.amazon.com/Call-Silent-War...
Hi Eli,Fantasy lover here
A lot of people have given lots of good feedback but would like to add mine
First of all, when writing a series, especially as you are not well known, the first book should always be free. This would entice readers to give you a shot.
It is the content that tells whether or not the reader would get the second book in the series or not. As far as fantasy goes, it should be an exciting read and not make the reader skim through the pages. Obviously it should also be professionally edited and proofread.
Whilst it is great to get reviews for review sake, have any of your reviews been by someone who likes fantasy? If so, did they like your book to want to get the second? if no, did you ask what you can do to improve?
Your cover image is nice, but just doesn't do it for me. The black clouds is the only thing I like that gives an insight into the book for me. Before looking at a book's title, it is the cover image that holds my eyes first.
248 pages as per Amazon is a good length.
If you don't want to put the first book in the series permanently free, consider enrolling it in Kindle Unlimited.
There was a book I read about deciding on titles for a book. It was mostly for non-fiction but I think your books could definitely use working on title wise. The silent war doesn't tell me anything. It doesn't entice me to want to read it. For instance "Aranya (shapeshifter dragons book 1)". Yours could be "The calling (The demon wars series)"
When I look on your book's description, I see demon and supernatural gifts. That still doesn't tell me why I would want to read it. There are loads of supernatural gifts. What does your one look into? Are they mages, shifters, witches etc?
As a fantasy reader, these are the things that I would be looking out for before deciding on what to read.
Do you have an author website? When you published your first book, did you take out a press release? Did you approach fantasy bloggers and give them the press release asking if they would publish it on their blog? Did you attempt to develop an online friendship with those bloggers? It is this friendship that would make them more amenable to posting your content on their blog regularly. All of this increases your chances of discoverability.
After writing the second book, did you put in it direct links to the first book and did you edit the first book and include links to the second book? When you give more people access to the first book, it is easier for people to read the second book if they liked the first one.
Even though I am giving you feedback, I am in the same boat as you with my books. But I understand my books are very niche and it takes time to build a reputation. So I am working on my relationships with other authors and bloggers.
Your book is an easier sell than mine, so there are things that you can do (paid services) to put you up the rank and increase visibility.
When I used my KU free days, my book went up the rank to top 100 in its category. If you would like to discuss this and have a budget then send me an email iyayetunde1 @gmail.com. I partnered with someone who has a mailing list of hundreds of thousands of book lovers that want to read free books. I got loads of downloads and it was this that helped improve my book ranking thereby increasing visibility. Obviously it needs to be sustained in relation to the other books on Amazon.
Offline, last year (not so much this year) I tried to build relationships with random strangers and refer them to Amazon to get my book.
My website was completed earlier on this month http://www.segilolasalami.co.uk/my-bo...
I started a new podcast show https://youtu.be/pg3utz2CdYw
All of this is to increase visibility of my brand as an author and my books.
I sprained my back in January and Feb alone, I have been out of my house only 3 times. So I am quite restricted on marketing activities hence zero sales this month and last. But fingers crossed it should get better.
I hope this has been useful
I agree that your cover must be competitive. Who are bestsellers in your genre...do your covers compare?A few other suggestions:
Most self-pubbed authors I know say:
write more books
newsletters are great
Consider guest blogging and/or writing articles you can post.
Something that helped me was doing boxed sets with better known/better selling authors.
Finally, did anyone mention paid promo via popular newsletters? Goodreads (or now Amazon) giveaways?I've found those helpful.
Any advice on how to get a little boost in sales? I'm on Twitter, Facebook and I have a personal homepage, but that doesn't seem to be doing much. I do have some KDP free days stored up, but I want to save those for when the third book comes out. I did try a 100 dollar ad campaign in October, but it earned me a grand total of three sales. Not worth the money. What else can I try?