The Book Marketing Network

For book/ebook authors, publishers, & self-publishers

I'd like to start a new forum where people can talk about what's working for you right now in marketing your book.

I think this will help other authors to prioritize their activities if they can find out what's working for other people. This would be especially valuable to new authors.

I've share the hottest tool that I'm using right now. And that's Twitter. As you will note on the main page of this Book Marketing Network website, both my http://www.bookmarket.com website and this network have been rising in Alexa ranks (and visits) because of my use of Twitter.

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Hi Susan,
I guess I used the wrong word "advertise." I have my three books in Kindle for sale in B&N and others I called Amazon this morning and the representative had no idea how an author can get their books into the program. She emailed another dept and I should hear in 24 hours. A little frustrating.

How to get into the program is simple. Everything you need to know is  on the website. Amazon page for KDP select

Actually, B&N does NOT sell Kindle it sells NOOK versions. If you have it on sale there, you will have to take it OFF sale there, before you enroll in KDP select. You will find all this information at the link above.

Good luck!

Susan and Alberta, I've done this with several of my books over the past couple of months, with various degrees of success. Seems to depend upon the nature of the book, what categories it happens to be in, etc. One of my books ("Enjoy Your Money!") was downloaded over 15,000 times in a couple of days and subsequently went from selling about one per day to about 10 per day and stayed at this rate of sales for about 6 weeks, until it began to drop in rankings. But it has continued to sell more than it did before my free offer.

For other books I offered free, I don't know that it helped at all, but I saw no case in which I felt like it hurt a book. Typically, I think that almost any way to get my books out there helps in the long run.

Steve, I agree that the type of book does make a difference. My non-fiction book, a bio of two female musicians, did next to nothing. My novels do much better.

Steve, I'm confused on "free" books. I've been told that you have to take your book off every website and your own for Amazon to allow this for 90 days. Everyone seems to have a better sale with their books but I can't picture taking my books off my own website. It's like Amazon is trying to own every ebook out there. Am I wrong?

Alberta, the "exclusive" requirement is very simple. You cannot sell your book anywhere other than Amazon for 90 days. Period. Amazon is not trying to "own every ebook out there." They merely require you to sell your ebook ONLY on Amazon for NINETY DAYS. If you don't want to do this, don't sign up for it.

By the way, enrolling your book in KDP select also allows people to "borrow" it. You get paid for this, in some cases more than you would if it were a sale.

Thank you, Susan.  My publisher may set this up for me.

I have my book on Kindle. In order to offer it free, I have to also agree to let it be borrowed for 90 days. During that time I cannot sell my book in any other digital format. Paperback is OK. It's a package deal with Amazon. You can't have one without the other. I declined to take it.

Alberta, it certainly works for some books and not for others, so it's not a sure thing. In my case, I was selling very few e-books on B & N or Smashwords and wasn't offering it on any of my sites, so I didn't really risk anything.


By the way, you can continue to sell your print books in other outlets while doing the giveaway; this only applies to selling ebooks.

Hi Steve,

 

I spoke to my publisher today on this and she may put my book on the site. It's not out in paperback yet.

I can't under stand the free give aways along with the 99 cent ebook marketing without a  dollar figure rounding out the business plan. What do authors endup with actually? Do you have any dollar figures of what an author has grossed or netted in a book sale? So far all my arithmatic comes up way short of any bills I've uncurred or currently owe. Thanks Richard

I'm getting some reasonable sales numbers on my cozy mysteries (I think- for a near unknown), and I keep working at getting reviews, and posting my books where I can, but it's impossible to know where buyers are actually hearing about the books. I haven't ever seen a spike that can be tied to a book tour or a particular review.

The only thing I think I've done that really worked is that one of the stories in the series is free. It continues to get good downloads (1217 in August), and I like to think people are attracted to the rest of the series because they like the characters.

In August, I sold an average of 3.8 books a day.  Hoping for many more, of course!

All are eBooks only.

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