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How do you get your book noticed without money???
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I feel your pain, Greg. It's not easy. Have you tried contacting Amazon's Top Customer Reviewers? I've had some success getting reviews there, which is supposed to help, but you'll still be giving away your work in exchange for an honest review.
Have you thought of approaching someone well known in your genre to see what they think of your book? Mine's non-fiction and after slow sales, I approached a prominent blogger who was enthusiastic about seeing my book. I was also offered the opportunity to do a guest blog post about my book, that reached about 5000 followers and I got a spike in sales.
When you use the free promotion days for Kindle Select, the way to get the most out of it is to do so by advertising your free promo day with ebook marketing sites. There are dozens that are free. You can also try using the hashtag #KindleUnlimited on Facebook and Twitter, and join Facebook groups for ebooks to tell about your book there :). Join the Support for Indie Authors group on this forum and look up the "Sales and Marketing" thread. There is loads of information there. Good luck!
That's great, Jen! I tried that but all the top parenting bloggers wanted big bucks.
Greg,The biggest thing for me has been building my social media presence and building relationships with readers (not just other authors!) Reach out to book bloggers, like Jen suggested, and that may get you some exposure. (Of course, if your book gets poor reviews, you might have a lot of work ahead of you! Make sure your work is edited and you get honest feedback privately before asking for publicity!) Even though I haven't had much time for self-promotion in the past year, I had a steady stream of sales right after the release of my first novel because I reached out to fans of my genre, mostly via Twitter. I also have a few friends who've helped promote my work to their social networks.
Also: it sounds like the "normal publishers" who are interested in your work are vanity publishers - basically pay-to-play, not publishers who accept work based on merit. Have you done research to see what reputable small publishers exist in your genre? There are many small publishers out there that pay YOU to write, and not the other way around.
PS - It takes sooooooo much time and energy to get noticed, published, or anything. Don't give up - it's taken me many months to even begin to see the fruits of my labor!
Greg wrote: "Does anyone have any ideas how to get a book noticed when you have teenagers at home who like to eat?"First bit of advice would be - don't rely on your writing to feed the kids. It could happen one day, but it could be a long way off.
The next problem I'm seeing is your book. I'm not drawn to the cover. I'm not drawn to the title. I read the first page and all I really got was "cold wet dampness" and "dripping" over and over again. I'm not seeing a hook to bring the reader in, mostly repeated phrases. The tenses seem to switch a bit, too. Perhaps another round of editing would be in order?
Write another book. And another and another and another. It's near impossible to be noticed with only one book on the market.
Fix up your Goodreads and Amazon pages. Get some photos of yourself in there. If you're not active on other social media, do it. Interact with other authors and with readers. Get people interested in what you're doing and in your next project.
Above all, have patience. You could well find success, but it may take a long, long time. There is no magic formula for instant overnight success. Even tossing money at the problem doesn't make it go away.
Spend time on Social media building a following, don't be afraid to mention your book when you are out doing things - just don't be obsessed with it - join forums that talk about the things that your book is about, all that can help gain notice and interest.Add your books or website to any forum/email etc signatures so it goes out every time you post.
71 Ways to Promote and Market Your Book:http://www.kindlemojo.com/bb/2014/05/...
Plenty of ideas right there. I will tell you this, I've been using this list since the end of last year. I'd like to tell you my results have shown a increase in sales but they haven't but this is only due to me trying too hard and doing them all lol. I would suggest looking the list over and picking out a few out of 10 each everytime and slowly making the most of it.
Publishers have regular "reviewers" who crank out reviews - it's all part of their marketing program on which they spend a whole lot of $$$$$.The best thing we can do is get those who buy our books to write their own reviews and paste them on the site they bought them from.
Greg wrote: "My book is currently published by Createspace and is on Amazon. I have done the free week twice with maybe 100 people reading it each time but no one seems to be finding it otherwise. I have tried ..."Hi Greg! When you say a 'normal' publisher, can I assume you mean 'traditional'? I don't know that much about that route, but shouldn't they pay you instead of you paying them? As for not spending a lot of money on promos for your book, I found that word-of-mouth helps, offline promos like through libraries, coffee houses and cafes, book clubs, and local mom & pop bookstores. You really have to hustle, send out emails and then call them after to follow up, and many times go to speak at their meetings (book clubs if they are reading your book and then invite you to the discussion), do a book signing (bookstores), sign books, meet and greet, and/or talk about your books (coffee houses and cafes), and with libraries, I started local which was awesome. They have a book club as well and invited me to the meeting after reading my book. It was great fun as they loved it and were excited about the characters and what happens to them next, and even convinced me, along with other readers, to do a sequel which I am working on. So, I hope this helps you I some way. Good luck!
Tara wrote: "That's great, Jen! I tried that but all the top parenting bloggers wanted big bucks."What? That's terrible Tara, mine offered me a guest post for free! You could try approaching British bloggers, maybe they are more accommodating. I'm reading your book (slowly unfortunately as the boss arrived a few days ago so things are manic here) and I do think that it would have an appeal to British readers.
Greg. Someone on another thread once advised me to NEVER pay to be published. I had been offered a 50/50 deal. The publisher puts up 50% and I put up the other 50%. I would receive 50% of the sales price, which was more than usual.Any publisher who asks for money is a vanity publisher. Writers using these are generally looked down on, so don't use them.
As to being found by readers, I wish I knew the secret. Everything people have suggested I've tried to no avail. I have a good story and my spelling and grammar are good, although I say it myself. I don't repeat myself, use cliches and all the other things we're told not to do, and I've been told my characters are interesting and realistic, but still no joy. Still, I keep writing.
All of this advice is wonderful and only thing I can think to add is to get hard copies into the hands of your local libraries and offer to do workshops or provide copies to book clubs that meet there. Yes you are giving your work away for free...but if enough people borrow it and like it, and you have your contact information inside, you will create a following on your author sites. The following you create will be important when you are selling and promoting future books. It takes a long time to connect all the facets of your cyber-self, but it is also crucial that you do so. Because once your followers decide to promote you by word of mouth (or keyboard), you want to be sure everything out there about you links back to your blog. Or, at the very least, to your sale page on Amazon.
I too am in the same boat, but am looking as book one as a way to build my infrastructure. Once I get other books out in the series, my connections (and hopefully followers) will be ready to help do the promotions with me. Book one took a long time to finish between a full-time job, raising a family and taking college courses, but as a writer it always comes down to the story needing to be told. Honestly, it was that much sweeter to finally see it in print, knowing just how much of a struggle I had to go through to get it to that point.
Kudos to you and everyone else out there pursuing their dreams! And best of luck!
If you can afford it, I recommend taking a copy of your book to the local libraries and giving them one (with a signature and maybe a little thanks to the library). I have even stuck a few copies into little local neighborhood give and take libraries.I tried pimping reviews for a while, but found that too often if you go out and seek reviewers, you find people who aren't that great at reviewing or who don't understand your book, which means you get meh reviews. I think ultimately its better to let the book go wild and free and get what reviews it earns.
One thing I've discovered is giving away books for free is no guarantee of getting reviews. I don't know how many I've given away, both print and ebook as well as audio and perhaps received one review out of it. That and book signings, trying to connect with other authors and get people to repost facebook or twitter posts about my books. People just do not want to show their appreciation for receiving something free by giving a review. It's like pulling teeth.I've also donated to libraries, no results from that either.
About the only thing to do is pay for advertising, however, that is no guarantee either. I don't get it. How do so many authors get an audience and a lot of reviews while myself and others have to beg, plead and perhaps even pay for reviews?
C.J. wrote: "One thing I've discovered is giving away books for free is no guarantee of getting reviews. I don't know how many I've given away, both print and ebook as well as audio and perhaps received one rev..."Two possibilities:
you write books which will be enjoyed mostly by a small niche audience, or
your books for some reason need more work (you have to decide if this is so, and whether it is serious).
If you don't have many books out, that also affects recommendations from the people who did read, maybe?
The problem is that we're used to seeing the outliers - the success stories - and of course hope we'll be outliers, and go viral, and catch the attention of a champion...
The reality is more that you have to keep writing, and keep trying new things and evaluating whether they are worth it to you.
I run at more like a 30-50% review rate for books I have placed personally - with someone I think will like Pride's Children - and haven't been successful except in personal relationships. My ads have also gone nowhere.
Many of the authors who get a big audience, like Hugh Howey, have actually been writing and publishing ten years before they hit big. Hard work - and lots of time - check out Joe Konrath's blog. He did an unbelievable amount of work when he was traditionally published and after.
I got a local university bookstore to put business cards for my site in their science fiction section. I just went in there and asked nicely.
so how do find these small publishing houses that pay you to write? And if you already had your book published by a pay to play publishing house, can it be republished with a different publisher? Dana
Dana wrote: "so how do find these small publishing houses that pay you to write? And if you already had your book published by a pay to play publishing house, can it be republished with a different publisher? ..."
Dana,
I would recommend googling "[genre] small publisher" or something along those lines, identifying a few that look good to you. Read through their websites carefully and then Google to see what other authors say.
From what I've seen, many reputable small publishers that pay you to write hone in on a specific genre. That's why I recommend searching by genre.
For your second question, it will depend on the terms of your contract with the pay to play publisher (or "vanity publisher" as they're commonly called), and it will also vary between paying publishers. Some will do reprints and some won't.
Here are some pages to look at if you need more advice.
http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showt...
http://www.sfwa.org/other-resources/f...
I can't personally vouch for this list, but it looks like a good starting point: http://flavorwire.com/417838/25-indep...
My publisher, Fountain Blue Publishing, is one of the smaller publishers. I'm quite happy with them. They are typically looking for new authors and they are a traditional publisher not one of the vanity presses.
Ria wrote: "Dana wrote: "so how do find these small publishing houses that pay you to write? And if you already had your book published by a pay to play publishing house, can it be republished with a different..."Thank You!! Very helpful!
Does anyone have any ideas how to get a book noticed when you have teenagers at home who like to eat????