OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn
There are two main ways that people will find your books.
This is all about your book retailer sales page, targeted email marketing and promotions and other things that have nothing to do with your “platform”. After all, how many books do you pick up where you know nothing about the authors at all? Quite a few I'd imagine.
(2) Through you
This is all about your platform and how you reach people in the world. This includes content marketing, social, multimedia, PR and anything that relates to you.
One thing to keep in mind when weighing up how to spend your time is that you can never sell as many books as Amazon can. (Or Kobo or Nook or any of the other stores who have rampant readers.)
Now I believe that (2) is important. I have spent a lot of time and effort building my own platform and it has changed my life. I'm a full-time author-entrepreneur because of this site. BUT/ I definitely sell more books to people who haven't got a clue who I am and nor do they care.
Readers shopping on Amazon buy more books
David Gaughran is an author and a blogger with a strong voice in the indie camp. His in-depth, critical and intelligent analysis of the publishing scene is well worth following. His first book on self-publishing was ‘Let's Get Digital: How to self-publish and why you should‘ and now he has released ‘Let's Get Visible: How to get noticed and sell more books.'
You need to immediately allocate a couple of hours to reading this and assessing what you need to change. Here's a couple of things I learned (and I've been at this a while!)
(1) Amazon algorithms are different for different charts and different territories
I'm not one of those people who likes to track data, but I have known for a long time how important the Amazon algorithms are for selling books. What I didn't know was the difference between the Sales Rank, the Recommendation Engine, Bestseller Lists, Popularity lists, Top-Rated in Categories, Hot New Releases, Movers & Shakers and all the other ways you can target the lists and prime the sales pump.
There's also a fantastic section on choosing the best categories for your book, which is certainly how the ARKANE books have sold. If I had stayed in Action-Adventure, I wouldn't have sold so many, but I moved to Religious Fiction and have been in and out of the bestseller charts since release.
(2) Staggering your launch is better for long-term sales than a big initial spike
A few years back there was a boom in ‘Amazon Bestseller' promos where people would try to spike sales on one day, hit the charts and that would make everything a success. However, Amazon's whole aim is to give people fantastic content and those kinds of programs were boosting books that didn't necessarily deserve visibility. David talks about how the algorithm now pushes those books back down as fast as they rose, so when you launch, you want to have a slow start, with sales spaced out over time. He has a lot of specific ideas around the launch, definitely worth taking note of.
There's also a great section on free pulsing and price pulsing which you should read if you're still confused about ebook pricing! Plus a detailed method of evaluating paid advertising and doing group promotions.
The book also reiterates that most of these strategies are only effective when you have a couple of books out.
I'm as guilty as anyone of focusing on selling the first book, but it's always important to remember that the one of the best ways to sell more books is to write more books!
Highly recommended. Go get your copy now and get your book sales moving!
There's also a special price on Let's Get Digital for the launch, so get that if you haven't already!
You can find David's fantastic blog here and he's on twitter @davidgaughran
You can also listen to a great interview with David on the empowerment of indie publishing.
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1 2 Next »I only have so much time. I've been building my platform for my self-published books. It's tough. The few who have bought and read my books have nothing but rave reviews, but getting more people away if my work seems like pulling teeth.
That was supposed to be "aware of my work," not "away if my work." Sorry.
Hi Dan. It's incredibly hard to interest anyone in a creative endeavour - and that goes for all artistic fields. Selling a creative object is a much different marketing challenge to any other product. We are lucky in the writing field that the things we sell are largely digital, and we only have to pay to produce them once and then can sell (in theory) infinite copies without having to produce something else or spend any more money.
That doesn't make it easy; in fact, the openness and relative ease of digital publishing means there is a flood of titles which your book can get lost in. As such, marketing is the area where authors tend struggle most of all (as opposed to the writing part or the publishing part). The aim of this book was to teach authors an effective method for getting visibility for their books on Amazon - one that won't eat too much into writing time (and indeed should free up more writing time if you have been using time-heavy promotional methods).
The sample should give you a pretty good idea if you would find the marketing approach useful - the introduction covers all the main topics of the book.
Good information. It is well-worth keeping in a folder for future reference. I will keep it in mind, the facts.
Staggering the launch is such a break from tradition--great idea, seems so logical.
Thank you for the great article.
Hi Gina. The theory behind a staggered launch is as Joanna outlined: Amazon's algorithms will detect a one-off sales spike and push books down as quickly as they rose. The launch strategy I outline seeks to counter that, by staggering news of your launch over three or four days. This means your book will land at a lower level in the charts than if you hit everything at once, but you will sell much more copies during that first month because your spike won't fade as quickly.
A side benefit: it makes for a much less stressful launch!
Thank you. I like the concept of changing categories every few months to see if that helps. I'm also very intrigued with Amazon's Secret Algorithm for Sales Rank (as every indie should be) and put this data together in 2011 to help make sense of it, http://ebooksuccess4free.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/amazon-sales-rank-secret-algorithm-exposed/
I'm still digesting the Let's Get Visible Facts, but I learned a lot and changed my categories. Hours later, Amazon added to the category lists. I think the key is to stay flexible and move fast if you spot a change that benefits you.
I saw that category change and was wondering if I would have to amend a book that's barely out a week!
Looking over the new sub-categories, it appears that some genres have got lots of new additions - particularly Romance, NA, and SF - and others are still poorly served. There are over 25,000 books in Historical Fiction with no subdivision. For point of reference, SF has 50,000 books and 20 sub-categories! I'm hoping that will change in time, as it makes it difficult for authors in genres with no subdivisions.
Overall, the changes are good and the general advice still holds: find the most granular sub-category for your work that you can (assuming it is suitable of course).
Hi David & Joanna:
I'm still reading David's book and enjoying it so far. But here's one from The Stupid Question Department: when David describes the category placement strategies in the book he describes a fuller menu of category and sub-category options than I find on my KDP admin. What am I missing here?
Thanks so much,
Daniel
Amazon has been tinkering with the category system in the last week or so. Options that were previously selectable from KDP are now not. But you can still get your books in those categories (things like Kindle Singles aside, obviously) via the process outlined in the book - namely, by selecting Non-Classifiable, and then emailing KDP with the *full exact path* of the sub-category you want. As I warned in the book, sometimes you get pushback from KDP reps - you might need to try a few times but you will get in there eventually (and it is worth the hassle).
I'm reading LET'S GET VISIBLE on my Kobo e-book right now - but I can't seem to shake the Olivia Newton John ear-velcro.
Let's get visible, visible...I wanna get visible...let me hear your e-book talk, your e-book talk...
Yes, the historical fiction category needs some major love at the "zon." I was afraid to go with non-classifiable, but I may give it a whirl next.
David,
you might want to email me. There are several significant issues with your article and I'd like to talk about them privately rather then dredging them up here :-)
Hi Carolyn,
It's not my article (Joanne wrote this), but it's about my book so feel free to fire away. You can raise your issues here or by email (david dot gaughran at gmail dot com). I'm happy either way.
Dave
I did the category switch a few months back and noticed a huge difference in sales. Before I was in the crowded urban fantasy category, and moved to dark fantasy (which fits the book just as well). I had to e-mail Amazon because at the time they didn't have that as an option to select, and it was hassle free.
I just moved my series 2nd category, and again noticed an increase in sales. This time I did have to do several e-mails to get the books situated where I wanted, but it was worth it. Category management is a great tool if you can work it within your book's genre.