Since I joined Goodreads in 2015 as an indie, I've been thinking if there's a better formula for us to promote our books so that we can spend less time on promoting and more on writing. I originally talked about it in Beta Reader Group. Then it took me an entire year (2016) to realize my ideas. If you are interested, you can take a look here: http://www.theindiepolis.com
This website supports both published and unpublished books, but I'll only talk about published books for now.
What does the website do:
Imagine you post your book promotion here. Then what? You wait and hope people notice it, before your post is pushed out of view by other promotion posts. What do you do next then? You repeat posting? Others can do this too. So, what now?
Well, here's my solution: I give your books the ability to "browse for" readers.
Books use keywords or tags to define their content and genres, and readers will use the same tags to define themselves. This way, we can pinpoint our target audience and recommend our books.
To clarify, readers can only receive a limited number of recommendations from our "browsing". Once their lists are full, they need to manually remove books by applying labels to them, such as "Read", "Uninterested", etc. It's designed this way to encourage reader engagement. In addition, we will know how active a reader is.
Why is this good?
When you recommend your book, you know it will definitely get noticed. Then, whether readers will buy it or not, or share it with others or not is completely up to your book's quality. This accomplishes my goal: "spend less time on promoting and more on writing".
How to get more reviews & sales:
Free giveaways absolutely work, but to make them work better, I introduce two changes.
First change:
Free giveaways are downloaded by spending virtual coins, which are earned by writing reviews, sharing books, etc. This change means free giveaways will remain "free", but they now require some efforts from readers.
Second change:
All free giveaways become 90% giveaways. This is largely due to copyright concerns, such piracy, because it’s very convenient to download them. Another reason is hoping that some of 90% giveaways will turn to sales.
These two changes are to make giveaways much more desirable by tying them to sales and reviews more systematically.
Conclusion:
These are my website's main features for published books. BTW, its name is Indiepolis. It doesn't sell your books, only directs people to where you sell them.
Indiepolis is very new, so it will take some time to gain traffic. The best way to support it is putting your books there. I also have a group on Groodreads. Feel free to join and ask questions there. (https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...)
IMPORTANT: Currently, Indiepolis only supports Chrome browser.
Since I joined Goodreads in 2015 as an indie, I've been thinking if there's a better formula for us to promote our books so that we can spend less time on promoting and more on writing. I originally talked about it in Beta Reader Group. Then it took me an entire year (2016) to realize my ideas. If you are interested, you can take a look here: http://www.theindiepolis.com
This website supports both published and unpublished books, but I'll only talk about published books for now.
What does the website do:
Imagine you post your book promotion here. Then what? You wait and hope people notice it, before your post is pushed out of view by other promotion posts. What do you do next then? You repeat posting? Others can do this too. So, what now?
Well, here's my solution: I give your books the ability to "browse for" readers.
Books use keywords or tags to define their content and genres, and readers will use the same tags to define themselves. This way, we can pinpoint our target audience and recommend our books.
To clarify, readers can only receive a limited number of recommendations from our "browsing". Once their lists are full, they need to manually remove books by applying labels to them, such as "Read", "Uninterested", etc. It's designed this way to encourage reader engagement. In addition, we will know how active a reader is.
Why is this good?
When you recommend your book, you know it will definitely get noticed. Then, whether readers will buy it or not, or share it with others or not is completely up to your book's quality. This accomplishes my goal: "spend less time on promoting and more on writing".
How to get more reviews & sales:
Free giveaways absolutely work, but to make them work better, I introduce two changes.
First change:
Free giveaways are downloaded by spending virtual coins, which are earned by writing reviews, sharing books, etc. This change means free giveaways will remain "free", but they now require some efforts from readers.
Second change:
All free giveaways become 90% giveaways. This is largely due to copyright concerns, such piracy, because it’s very convenient to download them. Another reason is hoping that some of 90% giveaways will turn to sales.
These two changes are to make giveaways much more desirable by tying them to sales and reviews more systematically.
Conclusion:
These are my website's main features for published books. BTW, its name is Indiepolis. It doesn't sell your books, only directs people to where you sell them.
Indiepolis is very new, so it will take some time to gain traffic. The best way to support it is putting your books there. I also have a group on Groodreads. Feel free to join and ask questions there. (https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/...)
IMPORTANT: Currently, Indiepolis only supports Chrome browser.