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is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date.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
We all have a lot going on these days, and anything that saves time for our marketing efforts is a good thing.
You can watch the 19 minute video below or find it on YouTube here.
In the video, we discuss:
- How Jim has 16 years of internet marketing experience, was traditionally published by Wylie and then moved into self-publishing.
- Author Marketing has tools and training for authors and has two levels – free and premium. The free level includes a great service, the Free Book Submission Tool. It submits your free book to all the sites at once, saving a you a lot of time on submissions and it can get your free promo book on many sites. We discuss how free has changed but how it is still effective for some authors.
- Getting reviews is a core activity that you need to do to sell more books. It is social proof and it feeds the algorithms. But regular readers are not great at reviewing, it's not their natural response to reading a book. It's better to target people who actually write reviews more professionally. The problem is finding appropriate reviewers. You can go through Amazon manually and find top reviewers – check out this article for the manual option. BUT/ this takes time! Author Marketing Club has a premium tool that will do this work for you and return a list of reviewers who reviewed a similar book to yours. You can then submit to those people as usual, but the spade work of finding the reviewers has been done for you.
- The Book Descriptions needs to help your book stand out as well, and Author Marketing Club has advice on how to write a good description but it also has a tool that will help you format it with some HTML code that will make it fancier e.g. orange headlines. You can check it out in the Free Ebook on Sales Descriptions.
- Author Marketing Club also has training sessions, more tools and live sales page analysis and more. Jim's aim is to help authors with marketing.
- We also discuss where self-publishing is right now in the publishing eco-system and how the industry is changing. Also, how mobile cell-phones will be the reading device of the future.
You can find Jim on Twitter @JimKukral and his website www.JimKukral.com
Do you have any questions about getting book reviews or anything else that Author Marketing Club offers? Please do leave your comments and questions below.
View Comments (19)
does the program include featuring and promoting the book on their website as well?
Hi Ani,
Yes, all Premium members get their book promoted on our blog in an exclusive feature blog post, promoted to our social media channels as well. We also have a mailing that goes out on Sunday only for our Premium members books.
Ok, ic
thanx a lot
Will sign up asap :) sounds great
I am a member now - Thanx Joanna!
Ha! I was happy to see this in my email box today. I have been thinking about everything what was in this video for weeks. Talk about your great timing?!
Jim - I have a question about marketing short stories on the different platforms. It seems the marketing opportunities are limited because of their length, and therefore, a short story will not qualify for many promotional sites (because of said length). As such, what do you feel is the best approach to marketing short stories?
Joanna - signing up for your mailing list is the smartest thing I've done this month. Your email content is friggin' stellar. Cheers.
Hi Teeny,
Well, Amazon has decided to not allow books under 1k in words. Not sure if that is what you meant by "short". :) I didn't realize that sites wouldn't take submissions because of short length. At AMC we take every book, no matter what. Why discriminate?
To answer your question, short stories are great as series. Check out the Unicorn Western books for an example.
Cool. Thanks, Jim. I will remember to keep the file at least 1K in size. By "short" I meant 3,500 - 4,00o words. But I am sure 1K will not be a problem. Thanks!
Can't wait to peruse and join your site. I have been there before but I guess I didn't "realize" how much it really offered until this podcast.
Having problems on their web site. The link that should go to the free membership takes you to the premium membership page. The link that should be to register a new account, takes you to the home page. The link to the contact page seems to be restricted to members only.
I'm having the same issue. It makes you go around the website in circle.
Sigh. I thought it was me. I am having the same issues... Hm...
I'm sure Jim will get onto it :)
Sorry!!! We just put up a new sales page the other day and forgot to include the free link. It's there now. Sorry!!! How embarrassing. :) Scroll to bottom of page and click "I'll stick with Free".
Thanks for the speedy response! Just signed up. Yay!
Jim,
Thank you for sharing about your club and amazing tools.
I've been following you since I first sat beside you at a session at the very first Blog World Conference. You were singing the praises of the Flip camera that day, and it convinced me to get one. Technology has come a long way since then. I'm grateful that we have someone like you who understands the needs of the aspiring author who is not a geek nor interested in becoming one, but needs to market.
Thanks Joanna for bringing Jim on your site. Your endorsement means a lot.
Just joined and I'm impressed with the software. I'm launching a UK based crime series in September and I'll be using it to find reviewers. However it doesn't search the amazon.co.uk site only the .com site. And no plans to change to include the uk site.
I look at it as a way for UK authors to expand their presence in US which is a much bigger market. I think most authors would agree. Joanna can probably tell you that that is a much better strategy long term I bet.
Joanna and Jim,
This is wonderful and I'm so happy I discovered you at the optimal time as I'm working on my book description and looking for reviewers!
However, I paid for the Author Marketing's Premium service and I get caught in a loop--although there's no error message and I believe I've entered everything correctly.
I tried the contact, but it says it's only for Premium Members, which I believe I am now that I've paid. I just can't make a login sucessfully. HELP!
Charlene
Email me directly Charlene and my team will get it figured out for you.
Jim has been great for responding to me in email, thank you, and I did ask him to cancel my membership, but I am doing it with hesitation because I really wanted this service to work for me. I'd reconsider if someone can convince me how this service would help me sell books. For $105, what do you actually get? A list of reviewers? Someone told me that they got two five star reviews and they were happy with that. I could offer quite a few free books for $105 and get the same. The generator didn't work for me. It wouldn't accept the words the two words that are in my blurb. I had a lot of trouble maneuvering around the site, even getting in, but Jim helped me with that. I'd love a discussion of what this amount of money for the premium will give you that you can't get on your own? If I'm convinced I'll stick with it. Thanks