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Nah, just leave enough to tease them into downloading the book. Yes...people are incredibly lazy so they need a little motivation lol.Splitter
C.S. Splitter wrote: "Nah, just leave enough to tease them into downloading the book. Yes...people are incredibly lazy so they need a little motivation lol.
Splitter"
Thanks. That's what I was thinking. The ebook's free at the moment, so at least my website readers won't have to pay to download it. It's about the best I can do.
Mona
Splitter"
Thanks. That's what I was thinking. The ebook's free at the moment, so at least my website readers won't have to pay to download it. It's about the best I can do.
Mona
I agree, a little peak will make people more curious to buy the book!! Congrats on your book, by the way, its very exciting!
Congrats, and I agree a peek preview is good. Good luck!
Thanks, guys. I just finished removing the blog posts, leaving only a short excerpt of each. Hopefully people will start to download the free ebook soon, and maybe even buy my book. The whole book promotion thing is exhausting! The writing's almost the easy part!
Ha! Ain't that the truth!! Fortunately being a member of this place is really helpful....(Concur re excerpts, btw!)
JAC
I leave samples of my works most sundays, I think it is normal. There are a lot of us who still hate reading reading on the computer so if they love your work they'll buy the paperback :)
I don't think you'll hurt sales even by leaving up full essays. If people love them, they'll want a convenient method of keeping them all together. When I published my writing craft book, I posted new excerpts on my blog, sometimes the full essay and sometimes a condensed version, but always something complete enough to be useful, so readers could see the value. And at the end of each post, I had a link to the book and a blurb about "For more tips, buy Advanced Plotting."I think you could actually hurt sales by just using teasers. Haven't you ever gotten a book from the library and thought it was so useful or wonderful that you wanted your own copy? It doesn't even matter that you read the whole thing. On the other hand, the teaser has to be really stellar to convince a reader to take action.
This might depend somewhat on the type of book, and since you've already made changes, you could see how it works before changing things again. Good luck!
Advanced Plotting
Thanks, Chris and Ottilie
I'd like to believe my readers will love my posts and decide to buy my book, but this just hasn't been the case. My book has been available for a number of months, but virtually no sales. People visit my website every day, some spend a long time and look at a lot of posts. No sales. People will say my writing really helped them and they love it, but no sales. Nothing. It's so disheartening.
All I could think to do is remove the full essays, because none of my readers seem to care enough to go past the website. I care about helping people, but I feel like my readers walk all over me.
This isn't about depriving them out of spite, though, I just need to take action because nothing's happening. If I get no sales and my website statistics become appalling, I can always put the posts back. Besides, there are still 26 full essays on my site - it's the 50 that are in the book that I only left excerpts of. I'm trying to do whatever will work.
Sorry if I seemed annoyed! It's just been an exhausting year. Eventually, eventually, I hope this will pay off.
Thanks, Mona
I'd like to believe my readers will love my posts and decide to buy my book, but this just hasn't been the case. My book has been available for a number of months, but virtually no sales. People visit my website every day, some spend a long time and look at a lot of posts. No sales. People will say my writing really helped them and they love it, but no sales. Nothing. It's so disheartening.
All I could think to do is remove the full essays, because none of my readers seem to care enough to go past the website. I care about helping people, but I feel like my readers walk all over me.
This isn't about depriving them out of spite, though, I just need to take action because nothing's happening. If I get no sales and my website statistics become appalling, I can always put the posts back. Besides, there are still 26 full essays on my site - it's the 50 that are in the book that I only left excerpts of. I'm trying to do whatever will work.
Sorry if I seemed annoyed! It's just been an exhausting year. Eventually, eventually, I hope this will pay off.
Thanks, Mona
J.A. wrote: "Ha! Ain't that the truth!! Fortunately being a member of this place is really helpful....
(Concur re excerpts, btw!)
JAC"
Yes, this group really helps. Makes me feel not so alone doing this. Thanks.
(Concur re excerpts, btw!)
JAC"
Yes, this group really helps. Makes me feel not so alone doing this. Thanks.
I go time without sales too, the trick is not to get disheartened and keep on rolling and trying new things!
Mona wrote: "If I get no sales and my website statistics become appalling, I can always put the posts back. ..."Experimentation is good! Let us know how it works.
You are making it as easy as possible for people to buy, right? Direct links to Amazon (and maybe other sellers)? Both electronic and print versions available?
Keep in mind also that experts say it takes seven times seeing something before people take action. Some of those visitors could eventually become buyers. I guess patience really is a virtue, but boy, it's hard sometimes.
So Mona you wrote a book based off of essays you wrote, what are the essays about? Was their a topic or just you writing? Im picturing just writing of thoughts but how would that be put into a book lol. Just curious.
Justin wrote: "So Mona you wrote a book based off of essays you wrote, what are the essays about? Was their a topic or just you writing? Im picturing just writing of thoughts but how would that be put into a book..."
My essays are all Christian devotions. They're all about God's love. They have the same feel, but some are longer than others. On average each essay is about 300 words. They work together as a book, I think, because they follow a progression of me growing as a Christian. It's not a typical devotional, but it works very well.
Just thought I'd mention I've had some downloads of my free ebook the last few days, which is better than before. Also, Smashwords just distributed my ebook to the various sellers, so hopefully that will pay off. I won't make any money, but generating interest is good. Then maybe some people will buy the paperback.
Thanks, Mona
My essays are all Christian devotions. They're all about God's love. They have the same feel, but some are longer than others. On average each essay is about 300 words. They work together as a book, I think, because they follow a progression of me growing as a Christian. It's not a typical devotional, but it works very well.
Just thought I'd mention I've had some downloads of my free ebook the last few days, which is better than before. Also, Smashwords just distributed my ebook to the various sellers, so hopefully that will pay off. I won't make any money, but generating interest is good. Then maybe some people will buy the paperback.
Thanks, Mona
Chris wrote: "You are making it as easy as possible for people to buy, right? Direct links to Amazon (and maybe other sellers)? Both electronic and print versions available..."
My book is available in paperback and ebook. The paperback's available on Amazon, and I have a link to my Amazon book page on my website, Goodreads and Smashwords.
The ebook is available through Smashwords and some other places - more to come. I have links to everywhere it's available on my website. The website links are on the home page, and my book page. I might put a link in the sidebar on my site, just so people can see my book on every page.
Of course, people can find the book on the individual sites, e.g. Barnes & Noble, but I'm not sure how visible it is.
Thanks, Mona
My book is available in paperback and ebook. The paperback's available on Amazon, and I have a link to my Amazon book page on my website, Goodreads and Smashwords.
The ebook is available through Smashwords and some other places - more to come. I have links to everywhere it's available on my website. The website links are on the home page, and my book page. I might put a link in the sidebar on my site, just so people can see my book on every page.
Of course, people can find the book on the individual sites, e.g. Barnes & Noble, but I'm not sure how visible it is.
Thanks, Mona
Oh ok, that sounds pretty interesting. I like how you wrote enough to make it into a book. Best of luck to you! :)
I just wanted to provide an update to my progress. My website statistics have gotten much worse lately, since I removed all the essays that are in my book, but I'm having a fair amount of success with people downloading my free ebook.
On Barnes and Noble my sales ranking is not bad at all - currently about 4000, and getting lower every day. I know it could suddenly get worse, but at the moment it's doing well.
On the US iTunes store my book is getting downloaded a fair bit, and someone gave it a positive review. And today I noticed my book in the "New and Noteworthy" section on the Christian book page, which only contains 20 books! (New and Noteworthy, I mean). That made me super happy.
As to whether having less available on my website is leading to people downloading my book - maybe, but I think people might just be searching on the book websites and finding it. I'm not sure.
No paperback sales yet, but hopefully that will come eventually.
Thanks, Mona
On Barnes and Noble my sales ranking is not bad at all - currently about 4000, and getting lower every day. I know it could suddenly get worse, but at the moment it's doing well.
On the US iTunes store my book is getting downloaded a fair bit, and someone gave it a positive review. And today I noticed my book in the "New and Noteworthy" section on the Christian book page, which only contains 20 books! (New and Noteworthy, I mean). That made me super happy.
As to whether having less available on my website is leading to people downloading my book - maybe, but I think people might just be searching on the book websites and finding it. I'm not sure.
No paperback sales yet, but hopefully that will come eventually.
Thanks, Mona
Mona wrote: "I just wanted to provide an update to my progress. My website statistics have gotten much worse lately, since I removed all the essays that are in my book, but I'm having a fair amount of success w..."Mona, would you like to trade links? You feature a link to my site on yours and I'll do the same for you on mine? I'm on the same boat with the whole web statistics, some days its on other days its just dead. i figured we cud help each other out, not much but something, post your link on here and let me know if your interested.
Congratulations Mona!! That is fantastic!
Girl, Congrats and my advice is that everyone loves a little tease ;)
I've written a book, which is a collection of 50 essays I used to have on my blog. I edited them thoroughly before putting them in a book, so the end result is more polished.
I didn't know what to do about the essays still being on my site. I ended up removing about half of them, leaving just a short excerpt, and a link saying to check out my book on Amazon. The other essays are still on my website, as well as around 25 new essays, which aren't in the book. The ebook is now free on Smashwords, and the paperback for sale on Amazon.
My problem is, do you think people won't bother downloading the free ebook, let alone buying the paperback, if so much is available on my website?
The obvious answer is to remove all of the posts that are in the book, but my website gets a fair amount of visitors, and I don't want to lose them or annoy them. My website is a lot more successful than my book, which really doesn't sell at all.
Do you guys think I should remove the essays that are in the book from my website? I'd appreciate any advice. Here's a link to my site. It has Christian themes.
http://monahannadevotions.com
Thanks, Mona