How I Went From One Sale in February to 100+ Sales in March

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How I Went From One Sale in February to 100+ Sales in March

At the end of February, I noticed a very depressing fact: I had sold exactly one book the entire month. One paperback. That was my entire sales count for February.

Now, before you assume that I’m one of those authors who can’t sell any books ever, let me tell you that before February’s slump, I’d moved hundreds of copies of Finding the Core of Your Story over its lifetime. I can sell a dozen or more copies each month without any promotion.

But it was clear that I needed a boost to get things going again. So I put together a promotion that knocked my socks off. Between my two books, I sold 143 copies in March.

What did I do to go from just one sale to more than 100 in a single month? Read on! Continue reading How I Went From One Sale in February to 100+ Sales in March →

Which HTML Tags Should You Use in Your Amazon Description?

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We’ve looked before at how to write a great Amazon description and how to format that Amazon description with HTML tags. What we haven’t looked at in depth yet is which HTML tags you actually should use in that description. Amazon allows a pretty big list of options, but not all of them will help you to present your book in a way that will help you sell more copies. Today, let’s take a look at which HTML tags are worth using in your Amazon description and why.

Continue reading Which HTML Tags Should You Use in Your Amazon Description? →

How to Find Your Book’s Target Audiences

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How to Find Your Book's Target Audiences

All right, everybody! Today we’re going to do a little exercise to help you generate a bunch of ideas for you to use to create a target audience for a Facebook or Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) ad. To do this exercise, you’re going to need a piece of paper, something to write with, and a timer.

Got everything ready? Great! Let’s jump in. Continue reading How to Find Your Book’s Target Audiences →

Why You Should Track Your Book Sales + Bonus FREE Sales Tracker Template

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Why You Should Track Your Book Sales

I’ve written before about things you should do instead of obsessively checking your sales stats. But, of course, at some point you do need to check those stats and see how your book is doing. And that’s when you realize that you need some way to track your sales.

How does that look? Do you need special software? How often should you check?

We’ll get into the how in a minute. First, let’s look at why you should be tracking your sales. Continue reading Why You Should Track Your Book Sales + Bonus FREE Sales Tracker Template →

Amazon Now Offers Paperbacks Through KDP — Should You Use It?

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If you haven’t yet heard the news, Amazon recently rolled out a new feature on its KDP site: paperbacks! The new paperback features are considered to be in beta, but if you want to get your books into the program, Amazon has thrown open the doors to let authors start using it now.

Even better, Amazon allows you to import your existing CreateSpace books (remember, Amazon owns CreateSpace), so there’s no new ISBN to assign. You can bring in any paperbacks you already have set up on CreateSpace and get them onto the new system right away.

But do you want to? Let’s look at the pros and cons of Amazon’s new paperback offerings. Continue reading Amazon Now Offers Paperbacks Through KDP — Should You Use It? →

Six Marketing Actions to Do Instead of Checking Your Sales Stats

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Obsessive Stats CheckingWe indie authors can be obsessive stats-checkers. You know how it goes: “It’s been an hour… better check my stats. Maybe I sold another book!

“…Nope. But maybe I’ll have sold one in another hour…”

And on it goes. We tell ourselves not to check. We even realize that it’s a little depressing to check in multiple times every day to see that we haven’t sold any more books. So today let’s think about six things you can do to drive sales of your book instead of obsessively checking your stats. Continue reading Six Marketing Actions to Do Instead of Checking Your Sales Stats →

Marketing by Comparison

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Marketing by Comparison

Marketing your book by comparing it to other books is something that Amazon already does for you. There’s a whole section on every book in the Amazon store labeled Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought. The goal of this section is to get a potential customer to buy something based on their interest in another product.

If this is a marketing method that works well enough that Amazon uses it on every product, it seems like one we should take a look at! The “also boughts” section on Amazon can’t be edited, but there are things you can do to get your book in front of people based on what they are already interested in. Let’s see how you can make this strategy work for you. Continue reading Marketing by Comparison →

The Top Three Story Pitch Mistakes

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The Top Three Story Pitch Mistakes

If you’ve read Fix My Story for very long, you probably know that I’m big on story pitches. I call them by their Hollywood name of loglines. I’ve even written a book or two about how to make your story pitch amazing. It’s a passion of mine to make sure every storyteller who comes into my sphere of influence knows how to write a great story pitch.

Today, I want to go back to basics on story pitching. To do that, let’s look at the top three mistakes I see most often in story pitches. Continue reading The Top Three Story Pitch Mistakes →

The Ultimate Indie Author Book Pre-Launch Checklist

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Ultimate Indie Author Book Pre-Launch Checklist

When you’re getting ready to launch a new book, doesn’t it feel overwhelming to think about all the steps you need to make sure are done first? Sometimes, you can’t help but wonder if you’re missing a step or three. Well, in this article, I’ve created a checklist of everything you should do to get your book ready to launch and make a splash. It’s designed to help you think through the process and make sure you don’t forget anything.

In addition to the checklist, I’ve included links to plenty of articles from the archives that are relevant to each step, which will help you get up to speed on how to successfully accomplish each step on the list.

So, without further ado, here is The Ultimate Indie Author Book Pre-Launch Checklist. Continue reading The Ultimate Indie Author Book Pre-Launch Checklist →

The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Right Price for Your Book

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The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Right Price for Your Book

One of the biggest challenges we indie authors face is pretty much the entire process of setting a price for a book. I know plenty of authors, including myself, who have spent days or weeks agonizing over which price to choose. And then once the price has been set, these same authors still wonder if they made the right decision.

I believe that while choosing the right price is a difficult part of self-publishing, it’s not something you have to do blindly. And so in this mega-post, I’m going to explore a number of ways you can gather data to help you price your book without so much second-guessing. I’ll also show you how to do market research that will give you incredible amounts of insight into what price your market expects. Continue reading The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Right Price for Your Book →