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Pavan wrote: "I published my first book Moving On from the Moving Series I have got reviews on Amazon 4 stars and rating on here too.But my book isn't selling and I don't know why this is, not sure what I am do..."
The only answer to this is that worrying over it will stress you out, which will have a negative impact on your wellbeing. There is no magic bullet for overnight success.
There are many threads here that have asked this same question. Many people have offered their advice as to what *might* work, but keep in mind that what works for some will not work for others. I suggest reading through those threads and picking out one or two ideas to begin with. If they don't work, go back and try another suggestion. My only advice would be to stick to things that do not cost you anything at first. There is no evidence that spending money will make you money.
Christina wrote: "Pavan wrote: "I published my first book Moving On from the Moving Series I have got reviews on Amazon 4 stars and rating on here too.But my book isn't selling and I don't know why this is, not sur..."
Thank you, I think you are right I will get up going crazy if I think about it too much. I think I need to have fun with it and write my next book and see what happens for a while xx
Both reviews on amazon.com mention cliffhanger. Some people dislike cliffhangers. And at least one review mentioned "debut," so people may be waiting for more reviews to see how it pans out. The blurb looks good, except that it mentions "without her consent" -- that was a red flag to me. I don't read bdsm without consent.
I'm in the same boat as you! I had a successful book signing and all my family and friends bought it. My issue now is trying to reach total strangers because my goal is I want them to buy the book because they are interested in the story and not just because they know me. Have you tried tweeting? Also try to look for hashtags that fit in with your book to attract people that would probably showing interest, that's what I'm doing. Also you can #book clubs for your genre that might also help. I really hope it works out for you because I can definitely understand the feeling of frustration. I worked really hard on my story and I just want to be able to reach my audience. It's a lot of work trying to do this on my own as I'm sure we're all going through as indie authors. So much marketing tweeting and Instagram and Facebook and still nobody gives us the sales we so desperately need. I hope you have some luck with that and please let us know if it works out for you. I'll be keeping an eye on this post
Erica wrote: "I'm in the same boat as you! I had a successful book signing and all my family and friends bought it. My issue now is trying to reach total strangers because my goal is I want them to buy the book..."Thank you of this and I am on twitter and Facebook, I think time is what I have to give it :)
Diana wrote: "Both reviews on amazon.com mention cliffhanger. Some people dislike cliffhangers. And at least one review mentioned "debut," so people may be waiting for more reviews to see how it pans out. The b..."I have taken the part out about bdsm because that is not what the book is about at all, and I don't what others getting the wrong idea about it.
Pavan wrote: "I have taken the part out about bdsm because that is not what the book is about at all, and I don't what others getting the wrong idea about it. ..."That might help, I know there are other people like me who have that "without consent" kneejerk reaction.
I think it takes some time. Maybe their are bloggers in your genre who set aside days for "debut authors" -- I don't think bloggers charge money, but I don't know.
Diana wrote: "Pavan wrote: "I have taken the part out about bdsm because that is not what the book is about at all, and I don't what others getting the wrong idea about it. ..."That might help, I know there ar..."
I can see where readers come from when they see that, and I never thought about it until you said :) so I have took it out as i don't want readers to think the book is like that when it is not.
I will try bloggers and give it time too xx
Pavan: You are not doing anything wrong I can see. By the date, your book has only been out since May 2, 2015, you've gotten two good reviews, and some sales. I don't know if you will view this as "good news" or "bad news" but for a new authors with a debut novel, this is not bad. If you haven't seen it already, this thread gives some real-world insight in what to expect when launching a book: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...As new authors, we all too often think in terms of the "big splash" paradigm of selling and marketing. Big publishing do this, and it's "up or out" with them. The indie author market is completely different. We build our readership slowly, one book at a time, and our work never goes out of print. The economics are completely different: theirs are about a quick return; ours are about accrual over years. With them, each book is a bet, and if it doesn't pay off in a year (often less), the bet it basically lost. Our "bets" stay out there forever, waiting for their "number" to eventually come up.
As has been said already here, take the long the view, try not to stress and keep writing.
Owen wrote: "Pavan: You are not doing anything wrong I can see. By the date, your book has only been out since May 2, 2015, you've gotten two good reviews, and some sales. I don't know if you will view this as ..."Thank you, I am very happy with what I have so far really really happy. I was just thinking that nothing has happened in a few days, and thought I was doing something wrong.
I think giving myself some time to build a relationship with readers will be best xx
Pavan wrote: "Thank you, I am very happy with what I have so far really really happy. I was just thinking that nothing has happened in a few days ..."Most welcome. I will echo what's been said above, that a debut novel that is a cliff-hanger is a hard thing to sell at first. I believe a lot of readers will wait to see if you are going to follow through. The original cliff-hangers were based on keeping interest for a week or so -- an author may not have the next book out for many months.
Once you have another book or two out there, this first book can become more valuable. But readers tend to lose interest fast (as we learned to our cost releasing our first book). You might catch readers now, just to lose them if they don't stick around waiting for the next book. If you have a way to give then some "hope" and keep their interest, that helps.
Owen wrote: "Pavan wrote: "Thank you, I am very happy with what I have so far really really happy. I was just thinking that nothing has happened in a few days ..."Most welcome. I will echo what's been said ab..."
I was thinking about this too about the next book I bet a lot of reader are waiting for it too see if I even publish the second book I am publishing it.
And I can see everyone point too, that is why I am working on that book so that they won't have to wait ages.
What is the best time to put out the next book in the series?
Mod
It looks like you published only two weeks ago. Things take some time. I have some things that have not sold a copy yet and were published months ago. It takes some time for people to find your work.
One thing that I have found that helps a great deal is to be active here on GoodReads. Read others' works, be active in discussions, let people get to know you.
Pavan wrote: "What is the best time to put out the next book in the series?"That's hard to say. I think it varies quite a bit. If you have a way to interact with and get feedback from your readers, you can get some idea, but beware that the answer from some will be just "more! now!" (The squeaky wheel gets the grease and all.)
However, the "conventional wisdom" says about 6 months is usually OK, but 4 months is better. A year (what we did) is probably too long.
But two things, I think, are critical: Do not announce a release date than then miss it. (We did that -- very bad). And most important: Do not rush a book to get it released. Readers will forgive you making them wait; they will even forgive you (to an extent) missing a release date.
They will not forgive you for rushing out a book that is not ready. You hooked them and made them wait on the promise it would be worth it. So you need to give them your best effort. That generally means not rushing, not stressing, and as Dwayne says, reaching out to people here (and possibly elsewhere), and keeping focus on the next book.
Mod
Whenever it is ready. Don't publish before it's ready and when it's ready, why wait? So, the day it is ready is the day it should be published.
Dwayne wrote: "Pavan wrote: "What is the best time to put out the next book in the series?"Whenever it is ready. Don't publish before it's ready and when it's ready, why wait? So, the day it is ready is the day..."
Owen wrote: "Pavan wrote: "What is the best time to put out the next book in the series?"
That's hard to say. I think it varies quite a bit. If you have a way to interact with and get feedback from your reader..."
Thank you for this I am writing it but slowly as I don't want to rush and readers hate me for it, and thanks for the tip about not giving a date just incase something goes wrong. Xxx
Pavan, I just noticed you don't have an author page on amazon so I can follow you. I don't know, does amazon charge for that? Then you can put a bit about yourself and sometimes something about the next book, or their website. Some books on amazon also have an "about the author" section or "editorial reviews" section. I think that is something you put in.Also, on amazon.com it says Moving On is book 3 in the Moving series, but people can't get number 1 and number 2.
I will have at look about the author page and get one set upAnd I don't know why that has done that on the .com one I will look into that thank you x
Diana wrote: "Pavan, I just noticed you don't have an author page on amazon so I can follow you. I don't know, does amazon charge for that? ..."Author pages on Amazon are free. You can link your blog to them as well, which can be handy (if you have one).
I always go to the author pages and follow. That way I can make sure I've read everything they wrote that I might be interested in, and often it has a link to their newsletter site. LOL, I get notified by newsletter and amazon when their books come out, so I can't miss them. Now I guess I'll get notified on goodreads, too? I hate tomiss the end of a series.
I too have had problems selling my book. With time good things happen? I am hoping. Trying to push out the second book in the series so I can price drop the first.
A.L. That's hysterical!(about KDP)I do that now and my book has been out since mid-March. I do hope that it will pick up soon. I think tweeting and hashtagging will work for those of us trying to get notice. I've been searching a lot of hashtags that would pertain to my audience and then following them(they usually follow back, but not all of them.) I hope things pick up soon for us all!
Sarah wrote: "I too have had problems selling my book. With time good things happen? I am hoping. Trying to push out the second book in the series so I can price drop the first."Hi Sarah, it looks like your book is recently published, too. I'm not sure if the April 21 on Amazon or the May 2 on GoodReads is correct, but that is just 2 or 3 weeks.
I don't think 2.99 is too high, especially since it is also available on Kindle Unlimited.
The blurb seems a bit long and maybe a bit too explanatory. Just an idea, but I would drop the whole first paragraph of the blurb and get right to the excitement. It mentions the weapon on earth, but in your list of those searching there is no mention of any earthlings. that struck me as odd. Also, nothing in the blurb connected me to "Wildfire" or "Trinity" -- I figured King Fla’neiel was "The One, " but that is a guess.
It looks like some books list their genre on their GoodReads page, but I didn't see that on "How to Stop Wildfire."
A.L. wrote: "Honestly, and I hate to say this, I hate Twitter :-( I struggle to come up with tweets but I know I have to do it to get the word out about my book. I don't even have Facebook (sad, I know) but I do have a blog :D..."Everyone has a different experience, but we are not on FB and never have been. We did do a twitter experiment for a few and saw no benefit. We do have a blog and that is useful to ask for feedback and do thing like post free chapters. That has been useful, although I don't it sell many books.
I don't want to discourage anyone from doing anything that helps get their visibility, but if you hate doing something, why not stop doing it for a awhile and see what happens?
I suspect one thing that trips up new authors -- it did us -- is this focus on promotion when we have only one book out there. The "Big Splash" notion just doesn't work -- it doesn't even "work" for the Big 5, in the sense that even for them it's extremely low yield. How many books have they published in the past 20 years and how many Rowling's and GRRM's have resulted? The vast majority of books they pitch out do nothing. They are mired way down in the bestseller ranks right next to ours. But they can throw thousands of books out there, hoping a tiny fraction make it big.
We throw one. Marketing one book is like opening a store with one product. Sure, we might attract people with a lot to tweeting, and FB posts and paid ads, but in the end, we new authors have one product. And how many people are going to want that one product? But what if we had two products or three or four? Now the chances the people we attract will what something we are selling are magnified. So why not wait, unless marketing is something you enjoy?
Now I hate marketing (so does my co-author) so I spend a lot of time rationalizing why we shouldn't bother with it. So take this with the appropriate grain of salt. But marketing can backfire if an author rushes or tries to make too bog a splash when they have not enough to sell. Readers have a lot of choices. If they look at us once and don't find what they want, will they bother to look at us again later? Think of you reader "self" and the readers you know. What's the "check back later" rate? (For me, it's low -- I don't know about others.)
So yes, go slow and stay positive, and if you don't like doing something or it distracts you from your writing, think twice. Tine is on our side.
Sarah wrote: "I too have had problems selling my book. With time good things happen? I am hoping. Trying to push out the second book in the series so I can price drop the first."Just one data point (all usual caveats): What we released the second book in our series, we dropped the first to $0.99 (from $2.99) to entice people (KDP countdown sale). For whatever reason, both books sold batter at full price than the with the discount. So we concluded all that we accomplished was losing some money. When we released out 3rd book, discounting the first seemed to be more effective. YMMV.
One note: if you are on Amazon, Amazon has a 30-day and a 90-day algorithm for new releases. For most indie authors (especially new authors), the visibility Amazon will give you book in the first 30 days is greater than most anything we can do. The best strategy we've found is to let Amazon care the load for the first 30 days, and start offering discounts, etc, after that to keep the level of sales up once they start to fall off. We think it's better to try to stretch the tail of our sales than enhance the peak.
For the same reason, if you are considering listings or paid ads etc (which are time-limited), we believe those are more effective much later, when the book is out of the new-release category. It also seems to be good to try to generate some interest in your current books a couple of months before you plan to release your next book. That can prime some new readers and make them more likely to get the next book, since their interest will still be fairly fresh.
Just work up to come amazing and great advice, it nice to know that it's not just me out there finding it stressful but I also love the fact you have all said that it does pick up which is great.Thank you all for taking the time to answer my question xxx
A.L. wrote: "What I have noticed lately is that I have a lot more KOLL units sold on Amazon. Not sure why (or if that is a bad thing) but I will take what I can get. Maybe that too is a good thing. ..."We've also seen an increase in KOLL/KU for the last couple of month. The program (KU) seems to be picking up. (Amazon just announced that the April fund was $9.8 million, which I think is about a million up from march). I think KU/KOLL offers a good opportunity for readers to check out new authors at (in essence) no cost, and we still get paid!
With internet SEO, it's cumulative, like a snowball being rolled down a hill. The more content you post, the more people link to your tweets, your blog, your website, discuss your book with a link to your amazon page, the higher all your other sites will rank in the SERPS (search engine results page). Every tweet, blog post, online email blast with links to your websites, are opportunities for you to draw more traffic to your sites, which in turn are more opportunities for those people to link to your sites, which in turn will rank you higher in the SERPS, which in turn will ... Well, it keeps going.
You may not see a direct uptick in sales every time you tweet, but indie publishing is the long game, you're looking to grow your business over time. Keep at it, build your subscribers, build your email lists (if you do), and with time and continued publications, your web presence will grow, and consequently your online sales should gradually increase. Pennies add up. Tweets, blog posts, guest posts, links on other blogs all add up too.
Igzy wrote: "With internet SEO, it's cumulative, like a snowball being rolled down a hill. The more content you post, the more people link to your tweets, your blog, your website, discuss your book with a link ..."Thanks for this great advice xxx
Igzy wrote: "With internet SEO, it's cumulative, like a snowball being rolled down a hill. The more content you post, the more people link to your tweets, your blog, your website, discuss your book with a link ..."This is quite true, but I'll add something that might be true (more or less, depending on your particular situation). First, if you are on Amazon, the value of the internal traffic on Amazon swamps the value of external traffic. Internal traffic is driven (as far as I can tell) by two things: keywords and "also bought" lists. If your book ends up the "also bought" list of a bestseller (especially more than one), that seems to be gold. But that is not something that can be controlled.
When it comes to external traffic, I'm going to present a counter-example: one example, and maybe over-dramatic but it gives food for thought. I know of a sci-fi author who has been writing for at least 15 years, mid-list, with many books out there. A couple of years ago, this author went indie (getting the rights back for most of their books). This author has a very popular blog: each blog post will garner 100-300 comments. That implies 10,000 people or more (maybe a lot more) are reading this blog. This author is also part of a circle of established sci-fi authors who seem to be fairly active on FB; they all have blogs and I don't know what else.
I track the sales ranking if this author pretty closely because we are in the same genre. One might suppose that all this blog traffic and FB activity, etc, for an established author who's supported by (and supports) other established authors, would sell books. But that does not appear to be the case. For the past two years, our books consistently outsell this author's books (on a book by book basis), and we have only a blog that gets maybe a visitor or two on a good day. Further, 90%+ of those visitors come from Amazon. So our blog sends basically no traffic to Amazon.
So what sells our books? I believe it's Amazon's internal traffic and word-of-mouth. And that's my real point here (sorry for taking so long to get to it). I tend to believe the value of blogging and such is not in search-engine rankings, it's in generating word-of-mouth. The search engine traffic we see is from searches for our MC's name, which people won't know unless they've already been told about our books.
So getting out there (blogging, etc) can generate sales, but not necessarily thru the mechanism of page ranks, FB likes, etc. Those are things that are easy to measure, so they capture attention and can assume an importance beyond their worth when it comes to selling a book. Be wary of putting too much stock in them.
As an Indie author, I'm always looking for ways to increase sales - not an easy thing when you're in a field of thousands and nobody has ever heard of you. There are all sorts of resources out there but I've found a couple that I've found useful and am in the process of employing. A British Indie author by the name of Rayne Hall has written a bunch of books, both fiction and non-fiction. Two of her writer's books that I've purchased are Twitter For Writers and why Does My Book Not Sell? Some of the stuff you may already know. Some of it you many know but never think to actually do. I highly recommend taking a look at both. Here's a link to her page on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_nos...
Check out this book - lots of good info here & it's free at the moment http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Indie-Aut...
I'd raise your price. 2.99 or 3.99 for a 283 "page" book is perfectly alright. If you want to run it at .99 for a promotion only keep it there for a few days. Better yet, use the KDP Select promo tools instead. That way, it will look discounted on the site. I'd only charge .99 for a short story or short novella. Otherwise, it looks like you are putting out a bad product and you are apologetic for its quality. Never shortchange yourself.
Moving on is the type of book that would get my attention as a reader. However, I myself don't buy books that have a cliff hanger. I will wait for reviews on books to say if a book has a cliff hanger or not before I buy. This is just my pet peeve. There are tons of other people who love the cliff hanger and the anticipation of the next part of the story.
Owen wrote: "Igzy wrote: "With internet SEO, it's cumulative, like a snowball being rolled down a hill. The more content you post, the more people link to your tweets, your blog, your website, discuss your book..."Very, very interesting. Thanks for your (more truthy) insight, Owen.
Nick wrote: "I'd raise your price. 2.99 or 3.99 for a 283 "page" book is perfectly alright. If you want to run it at .99 for a promotion only keep it there for a few days. Better yet, use the KDP Select promo t..."Thank you for this I will look at changing the price xx
Sienna wrote: "Moving on is the type of book that would get my attention as a reader. However, I myself don't buy books that have a cliff hanger. I will wait for reviews on books to say if a book has a cliff hang..."I was thinking that and once all the books are published I think that would help me :)
I can see where all readers come from with cliffhangers, so my goal is to get the next books written now xx
Did you place it on Amazon Unlimited? Brings you alot of visability and actually gets you readership for the next book.I was on the same place as you when i published my book almost a month ago. I get about 5 lends and borrows on KU and about 2-3 boughts every day, and without any promotion whatsoever.
And i agree with the guys earlier who talked about the Price? I was suprised to see books of 30-50 pages to sell for 1,99 or 2,99 and my book is 434 pages and took me two years and i sell it the same. I was thinking for chancging the price to a bit higher but i dont want to stop the sequence of steady buying that it has. But i sure did a mistake to price it so low.
It took me 1 1/2 years fo get 16 reviews on my debut novel. I solicited the heck out of bloggers, reviewers, gave away copies, etc... The bottom line is reviews is only one of the elements that help generate sales. A good marketing campaign and spending money in the right place is helpful, though spending money in the wrong places is just money down the drain. I am not marketting savvy and hate promotion end of the business, and it shows with poor sales even though I have a 4.2/5 stars.
One thing that helps, is a second novel, from what I hear. When they see more than one, the second one helps sell the first, especially if they are part of a series.
Best regards, Morris
One thing that helps, is a second novel, from what I hear. When they see more than one, the second one helps sell the first, especially if they are part of a series.
Best regards, Morris
But my book isn't selling and I don't know why this is, not sure what I am doing wrong.
If any one help I would love the advice on promoting/marketing.
Thank you all for taking the time to read this xx
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