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Does anyone have a list of the currently-worthwhile (e.g., not literally 100% useless all the time forever) book promo sites? My wife wrote a YA Fantasy and I've been out of the self-pub loop for so long that I don't know how to promote things anymore. 
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Oct 2, 2019 20:21
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It'd be easier if you put the third cover prototypes in a row with the first two, so we can see how the fit.
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Oct 2, 2019 20:43
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Grand Theft Autobot posted:I think this is true whether you self-publish or get published by a trad publisher. Well, that's god-damned depressing.
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Oct 3, 2019 02:43
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Remora posted:Well, that's god-damned depressing. Surveys of author income, particularly for just book-writing activities, show hilariously low earnings. I've been lurking this thread for months while working on a project. I'm probably a month or so off yet from finishing the manuscript, but I've got a cover artist, an editor, and an illustrator lined up. I'll post my blurb soon, because that's the closest to being complete.
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Oct 3, 2019 04:51
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Remora posted:Well, that's god-damned depressing. And thankfully, we know that's reliable data from digitalbookworld.com. There's no way digitalbookworld.com has any interest in skewing the survey. digitalbookworld.com only cares about reliably surveying authors to analyze their income (wait how the gently caress did they identify "aspiring" authors). I guess my point is, that chart is completely worthless garbage.
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Oct 3, 2019 06:22
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Sundae posted:Does anyone have a list of the currently-worthwhile (e.g., not literally 100% useless all the time forever) book promo sites? My wife wrote a YA Fantasy and I've been out of the self-pub loop for so long that I don't know how to promote things anymore. I won't speak for everyone but IMO Bookbub has increasingly cornered the market over the last few years and even a lot of the promo sites which aren't outright defunct are going to give you lovely return on investment. Robin Reads, The Fussy Librarian and Free/Bargain Booksy are sites I've had good results from in 2019. AMS is apparently also a big deal now but the consensus is you need to be prepared to plough a lot of money into it to make it work. How much is "a lot" is the question. Personally I was spending a few dollars a day (which ends up being close to $1,000 a year) and was seeing nothing and I wasn't prepared to spend any more than that on something it's very hard to measure the effectiveness of. pseudanonymous posted:And thankfully, we know that's reliable data from digitalbookworld.com. There's no way digitalbookworld.com has any interest in skewing the survey. digitalbookworld.com only cares about reliably surveying authors to analyze their income (wait how the gently caress did they identify "aspiring" authors). Even aside from that it really depends what you consider "low" earnings to be. There's absolutely no way I could make any kind of living off my writing income (and I don't even have dependents) but for a passive income stream from something I do anyway as a hobby/passion, I'm very pleased with my royalties. My day job is decent enough that I've never lived paycheque to paycheque, but I definitely feel like I have way more discretionary income than I used to, and the idea of buying a house (well, apartment) one day is no longer a completely unobtainable dream.
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Oct 3, 2019 07:41
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Going against the stream - the third is the best designed cover, but also the only one which doesn't say "South Pacific" to me. It looks like the action has shifted to the Australian outback.
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Oct 3, 2019 07:43
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Alright, I'm looking to release my (horror-adjacent) book mid-month to capitalize on Halloween hype. I'm still solidifying my full release strategy, but I'm about to put the book up for pre-order and need to pick a release date. Anyone have insight as to what day of the week would be best to release on? I could see Monday or Friday being equally good picks for different reasons. Or is it just better to go as soon as possible to get more time to build before the end of the month?
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Oct 3, 2019 17:59
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pseudanonymous posted:And thankfully, we know that's reliable data from digitalbookworld.com. There's no way digitalbookworld.com has any interest in skewing the survey. digitalbookworld.com only cares about reliably surveying authors to analyze their income (wait how the gently caress did they identify "aspiring" authors). It's pretty easy to glean sales data from Amazon sales rank. I can tell you a 50,000 sales rank is probably 100 copies a month. 5000 is 1000 copies a month - very roughly. No idea what 500 or 5 correlates to, but I can tell you that very few authors are making a living just off their books. Have you seen the fees authors charge for speaking? That's where some of the big money is...
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Oct 3, 2019 20:38
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feedmyleg posted:Alright, I'm looking to release my (horror-adjacent) book mid-month to capitalize on Halloween hype. I'm still solidifying my full release strategy, but I'm about to put the book up for pre-order and need to pick a release date. Anyone have insight as to what day of the week would be best to release on? I could see Monday or Friday being equally good picks for different reasons. Or is it just better to go as soon as possible to get more time to build before the end of the month? I have personally never noticed any sort of appreciable difference in release-day sales based on the day of the week. n8r posted:It's pretty easy to glean sales data from Amazon sales rank. I can tell you a 50,000 sales rank is probably 100 copies a month. 5000 is 1000 copies a month - very roughly. No idea what 500 or 5 correlates to, but I can tell you that very few authors are making a living just off their books. Have you seen the fees authors charge for speaking? That's where some of the big money is... It's true that most people writing books don't make a livable income off their book sales. However, any chart about incomes from five years ago should be heavily questioned. That said, I don't think that chart is all that far off. I've never heard of DigitalBookWorld.com--Author Earnings Report was my go-to for industry earning numbers. AER was a fantastic analysis on author earnings, but it seems that Dataguy has moved on to start his own company, BookStat, so AER is defunct. KrunkMcGrunk fucked around with this message at 18:43 on Oct 4, 2019 |
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Oct 4, 2019 18:38
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The Authors Guild does a survey that largely confirms that data, fwiw https://www.authorsguild.org/industry-advocacy/six-takeaways-from-the-authors-guild-2018-authors-income-survey/
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Oct 5, 2019 02:54
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Don't you have to be trad to be part of the authors guild?
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Oct 5, 2019 22:44
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It says this: 46% traditionally published; 27% self-publish only; and 26% do both—meaning that slightly more than half of the respondents have done some self-publishing. My original point wasn't that people don't make any money, they definitely do. I was responding to the comment that to make money you have to write 4-6 books a year, which seems true for basically everyone trying to write books for a living, whether they are trad published or self-published.
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Oct 7, 2019 05:02
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Grand Theft Autobot posted:It says this: I don't know of too many traditional published authors who are authoring more than 1 book a year, aside from book factory guys like Patterson who are just writing a chapter in a book written by someone else. I guess what is a book in this instance?
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Oct 7, 2019 05:17
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pseudanonymous posted:I don't know of too many traditional published authors who are authoring more than 1 book a year, aside from book factory guys like Patterson who are just writing a chapter in a book written by someone else. I remember reading that harlequin romance writers do 4-6 novels a year. It looks like Stephen King manages 2-3 books most years. A quick look at genre authors like Mercedes Lackey, Peirs Anthony, Laurell K. Hamilton all seem to do 2-3 books a year. From reading author's notes over the years they aren't just doing 2-3 books a year, they were doing 2-3 books simultaneously. Writing one first draft, doing revisions on another, and final proofs and publishing on the third. Just doing the job for 8+ hours a day.
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Oct 7, 2019 06:12
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Facebook Aunt posted:I remember reading that harlequin romance writers do 4-6 novels a year. It looks like Stephen King manages 2-3 books most years. A quick look at genre authors like Mercedes Lackey, Peirs Anthony, Laurell K. Hamilton all seem to do 2-3 books a year. From reading author's notes over the years they aren't just doing 2-3 books a year, they were doing 2-3 books simultaneously. Writing one first draft, doing revisions on another, and final proofs and publishing on the third. Just doing the job for 8+ hours a day. This matches up with the Genre Authors that I've spoken to at conventions. They are also adding in speaking gigs, seminars, etc. KJA runs Wordfire press on the side as well to augment income. The other shift is that more of the well known authors are making the transition to Hybrid publishing where they have some works Traditionally published and are starting to Self Publish work as well. This works very well for them since they have built-in audiences. Readers don't buy based on Publisher, but they DO buy based on Author.
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Oct 7, 2019 15:46
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pseudanonymous posted:I don't know of too many traditional published authors who are authoring more than 1 book a year, aside from book factory guys like Patterson who are just writing a chapter in a book written by someone else. Right, but if all you're thinking about are guys like Colson Whitehead, who are out there winning Pulitzers and going on talk shows, then we're not talking about the same thing. I'm talking about the legion of garden-variety proles that nobody knows or cares about who wrote all the other books on the store shelves, or who e-pubbed Terrible Harry Potter Knockoff Book #8,734,562.
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Oct 7, 2019 18:18
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I was talking to someone a while ago who writes about author income and was saying it's sort of impossible to define how many people make a full-time living from their writing, because it's a freelance career and it depends on where you draw the line as to what counts as writing. By some definitions there's maybe two or three authors in Australia making a full-time living, by other definitions there are hundreds. Like, J.M. Coetzee teaches creative writing at the University of Adelaide and regularly does speaking tours. But he wouldn't be hired for either of those things if not for his novels. Should income which ultimately derives from your writing be considered separately to "pure" book sales and royalties? Obviously this doesn't apply to anyone in this thread, but it's interesting to bear in mind when looking at these kinds of surveys and studies.
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Oct 7, 2019 23:34
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Got my first self-pubbed novel going up for sale later this week and I'm just a nervous wreck. I imagine it gets easier with time but like, how do you deal with it initially? I've got to be marketing and promoting and selling myself and instead I'm spending 50% of my mental energy just trying to stop my eyelid from twitching.
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Oct 8, 2019 08:58
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freebooter posted:Obviously this doesn't apply to anyone in this thread Speak for yourself 
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Oct 8, 2019 12:03
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Got my first self-pubbed novel going up for sale later this week and I'm just a nervous wreck. Set your expectations accordingly and have a support group there for you or, treat it like Thunderdome. Link your book once it is out! Exmond fucked around with this message at 20:09 on Oct 9, 2019 |
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Oct 9, 2019 18:33
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Got my first self-pubbed novel going up for sale later this week and I'm just a nervous wreck. I know wildly successful self pubbed authors who are still like this. In fact, just this week, one said, completely earnestly, she's going to start drinking while writing to take the edge off of worrying about releases. It happens! But it does dull a bit when you're working on releasing your twelfth title and you know what to expect.
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Oct 9, 2019 20:10
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:Got my first self-pubbed novel going up for sale later this week and I'm just a nervous wreck. Your first few books will suck to release, especially if they're special to you. Becoming a nervous wreck is unavoidable. Make yourself a checklist of all the things you need to do to support your release. Any promo, mailing lists, review sites you're hitting up, adding the book to Goodreads, updating AuthorCentral, etc etc. Go down that list and do everything on it. You can check your book page on launch day to ensure that everything looks right and nothing bugged out, you didn't make any formatting errors in your blurb, etc etc. Once that's done, though, don't go looking at it. Get the poo poo done you have to get done. Don't F5 the rank. Don't read the reviews (IMHO never read reviews, period, unless they're something loving weird going on and they're all one-star or you have 10,000 of them out of nowhere or something), and definitely don't go F5ing your Goodreads reviews or ratings. I know that's going to be nearly possible to resist, but nothing good has ever come out of paying attention to what the anonymous online customers think of your work. It's a great way to spend a week in vodka therapy. Focus on the work you need to do for launch week and then either go take some time off or start on your next book, depending on your goals. Let your sales be the judge of success, not the reviews. Edit: Unrelated... does anyone want to take a stab at a new OP for this, or are you guys still okay with it? It's more than five years old now. Sundae fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Oct 10, 2019 |
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Oct 10, 2019 00:34
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I'm in the same boat. My first book launches on the 18th and I'm going to be a mess for the next month I'm sure. SurreptitiousMuffin (or anyone else!) if you're up for a review swap I'd be happy to send an ARC, just PM me. I'm going through my release checklist now and finishing up my marketing materials. Does anyone have any thoughts on my front cover:  Or my (somewhat revised) blurb: quote:Summer, 1959. An atomic monster is haunting the woods of small-town Bonnifield, and The Britannica Junior Detectives are going to find out what (or who!) it really is--unless romance gets in the way first. Or my trailer (aka the ad I'll be running on Facebook et al): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SDduJFp40w Or my website? I'm putting together a Facebook campaign right now for a pretty decent spend, and I'm looking into BookBub and the other similar services mentioned in this thread. I'm also slowly putting together a social presence but I'm not expecting much out of it because I'm awful at social media. I've decided that $3.99 was the sweet-spot between "this is cheap enough to take a risk on" and "this book is expensive enough that it might be good" but I'm open to thoughts on other price points. Since I'm a hobbyist and it's my first book, my real goal is going to be to get as many people as possible to read it, rather than try to make any money on it—or even to stay in the black. Does anyone have any tips on just casting as wide a net as possible?
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Oct 10, 2019 00:54
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Feed, that looks amazing man. I'd be all over that book. I'm presently working on a book I hope to get traditionally published and one for Self Publishing, later in January. Marketing is just not something I'm looking forward to considering
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Oct 10, 2019 01:17
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Happy to do ARC swaps. It'll probably be epub for goons (unless you're in NZ/AU) because shipping is a motherfucker but the final book is ready to go. 255 pages 6x9, release is planned for November 8th. Witchy New Weird, LGBT, lots of fun fungi.
SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 06:45 on Oct 10, 2019 |
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Oct 10, 2019 06:20
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feedmyleg posted:I'm in the same boat. My first book launches on the 18th and I'm going to be a mess for the next month I'm sure. SurreptitiousMuffin (or anyone else!) if you're up for a review swap I'd be happy to send an ARC, just PM me. This stuff is all first rate.
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Oct 12, 2019 15:37
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feedmyleg posted:I'm in the same boat. My first book launches on the 18th and I'm going to be a mess for the next month I'm sure. SurreptitiousMuffin (or anyone else!) if you're up for a review swap I'd be happy to send an ARC, just PM me. Whoa, that's an amazing amount of effort dude and everything looks professional! I preordered your book, good luck!
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Oct 16, 2019 17:12
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If the book actually gets popular, would using the name Britannica as the name of the kids get you into trouble?
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Oct 16, 2019 18:23
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Thanks so much everyone! Preorder is highly appreciated. It's all very encouraging  I submitted my final ebook on Monday and I'm putting together the print version right now. It feels a bit unreal. If anyone wants to tap my cover artist hit me up, they're amazing and I couldn't believe how affordable they were for how fantastic the work is. As for the Britannica name, I never refer to The Encyclopedia Britannica (though I do call the character "the boy with the encyclopedic brain") but it's both a play on the character's actual last name (Oxford) and I did a trademark search before I went with that name and found lots of registered trademarks with Britannica in them, so I think I should be covered. Hopefully I don't screw it all up in the marketing!
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Oct 16, 2019 20:38
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Yeah Britannica is a Latin term and IIRC you can't copyright a regular word?
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Oct 16, 2019 23:25
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They wouldn't care either way. it's why you can have a McDonald or whatever
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Oct 17, 2019 01:25
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Burkion posted:They wouldn't care either way. I beleive there are other reasons why you can use the name McDonald. McDonald means Son of Donald. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_name It comes waaaay before McDonalds the company. That would be like trying to copyright the word space marine!
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Oct 17, 2019 22:43
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So, uh, apparently I'm really bad at marketing? This is my first book so I have no established authorial presence or mailing list, I've never been a part of any community that is book-related online, and I have no significant social media presence outside of my personal FB/Insta accounts—so those are the holes I'm starting out in. I launched my book on the 18th and have had sold ~80 copies across Kindle and paperback. I'd say at least half of those are people I know, if not closer to 75%. I've been running small Facebook ad sets to hone in on my audience and I'm down to a $0.35 cost-per-click, which I understand to be quite good. The problem is that none of these seem to be converting to sales—I ramped up my Facebook ad-spend yesterday for Halloween week (my book is somewhat spooky) and spent $60 to get ~200 link clicks that resulted in... 2 sales. And even then, one of those was paperback, which I believe only show when they ship, not when they're bought, so let's call that 1 sale. I'm even getting a smattering of likes and comments on my Facebook ads and have converted a whopping 13 of those to page likes. Like... how did I get 8 likes on my ads last night but 1 sale? I've got the thing on KU but I'm not seeing a single unit shipped there, despite running a couple of ads specifically calling out that it was on KU. I've got seven 5-star reviews, all from friends. I've changed my blurb a few times but have seen no uptick in sales associated. I ran a couple of ads on BookBub which had dismal 0.08% and 0.18% CTRs. I'm running a Bargain Booksy promotion this week. I know this isn't terribly outside of the norm, but it's very demoralizing. I figured I'd at least be able to get a few sales per day with a pretty low ad spend. I thought I'd gotten a pretty good handle on my prime demographic, the "Cozy Mystery" reader. According to Facebook insights my clicks are mostly coming from liberal women in their 30s-60s so I've been trying to target them, but I'm just having such a hard time getting any traction at all. It makes me feel like I'm missing something extremely obvious. Can anyone take a look at my Amazon listing and tell me if anything obviously doesn't work there? At this point I wonder if my book isn't just too niche? I know my next step is to get out there more and just feel skeezy plastering my book all over Facebook groups and messaging individuals on Tumblr and reaching out to blogs and figuring out how to convince people to get on a mailing list and whatever, but I was hoping to at least get a steady drip of sales from ads before then so I could focus my time and energy on it. But I've been putting ~4 hours a day into this since launch and seeing nothing come of it is pretty depressing. Any advice at all would be appreciated. feedmyleg fucked around with this message at 12:36 on Oct 29, 2019 |
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Oct 29, 2019 12:16
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feedmyleg posted:So, uh, apparently I'm really bad at marketing? This is my first book so I have no established authorial presence or mailing list, I've never been a part of any community that is book-related online, and I have no significant social media presence outside of my personal FB/Insta accounts—so those are the holes I'm starting out in. I think the key to success via self-publishing on Amazon is to have a big back catalog. If you have like a series of 3 books and 1 book related to them, you give away the 1 book for free as a reader magnet, and people buy the other three after they read the other book. I think a lot of kindle only readers who buy self-published ebooks are looking for an author with a catalog so they can safely immerse themselves in the story. You can also use the reader magnet to get people on your mailing list, or have a separate mailing list. All the people I see talking about making decent money have like 8+ books. the other option is to be so good at writing people organically read your book then tell their friends about it. There's probably a middle ground but... I think trying to make too much of a first book is a mistake. Though I'm definitely not an expert, this is just going by a few months of browsing a lot of "how to" kindle stuff and chatting in discord with various authors.
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Oct 29, 2019 15:14
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pseudanonymous posted:I think trying to make too much of a first book is a mistake. Though I'm definitely not an expert, this is just going by a few months of browsing a lot of "how to" kindle stuff and chatting in discord with various authors. This is good advice. You need read through to generate sales. The reviews and such on your first book will slowly build and you can market the series once you have a few books going. Keep plugging at it. The people making big money are publishing at an incredibly fast pace so the readers continue to read through as quickly as their appetite allows. Getting them suckered in by marketing a cheap book 1 or a "box set" or something like that with lots to follow it up I seems to be the key.
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Oct 29, 2019 16:33
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Well, that's the thing, though: I'm not trying to make money. I'm just trying to get anyone at all to click that Buy button and read it. I'm happy to be in the red on this thing, but my $60 customer yesterday did not instill confidence that I can do that in anything resembling a sustainable way.
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Oct 29, 2019 18:27
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Well, the cover's good, I laughed out loud at the "Look Inside!" excerpt and I just grabbed it on my Kindle Unlimited and will spend actual hours of my life upping your KU page count. So I think you've got a clearly good book with a great cover there, so you've met the quality bar and 100% of your problem is cracking how to market it ...
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Oct 29, 2019 19:44
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Boy am I going to be paying attention to this while I figure out how marketing with very little money is going to work
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Oct 29, 2019 20:49
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feedmyleg posted:Well, that's the thing, though: I'm not trying to make money. I'm just trying to get anyone at all to click that Buy button and read it. I'm happy to be in the red on this thing, but my $60 customer yesterday did not instill confidence that I can do that in anything resembling a sustainable way. I think what you have is extraordinarily good, and that what you are struggling with is just a sign of the times. It's hard to get people interested in reading, and even harder to ask them to try out your first book. Keep at it, someone once told me the best marketing for your book, is writing your next book.
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Oct 29, 2019 21:20
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