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
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
We 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 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
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
For authors trying to use Facebook in their marketing efforts, it can seem overwhelming. That’s why I often advocate a step-by-step method: Learn just one Facebook “best practice” or attempt just one experiment at a time. With this approach, you’ll be able to master each technique and build your Facebook marketing prowess slowly over time, the same way you learned how to do almost anything. And so, for this article, I’m going to give you two ideas for using Facebook effectively as an author. One is just a theory for you to play with, while the other is a proven way to make your page more professional. Let’s jump right in. Continue reading Two Ideas for Authors on Facebook
It’s time for more ideas for pricing your self-published book! In this third part in the series, I want to show you how to look at your market to find data that will help you choose a good price. This process can be a little bit time-consuming, but it’s very much worth the effort.
When you’re bringing your book to market, it’s important to consider the expectations of the market based on existing books for sale. It’s highly unlikely that your book is something in a completely new category, which is to your advantage. Let’s look at how you can gather data from books similar to yours to help you decide how to price your own book. Continue reading How to Choose the Right Price for Your Book, Part 3
Welcome to the second part in this series on choosing the right price for your book. This time, we’re going to look at the concept of markup, specifically when it comes to pricing a paperback and leaving room in your price for sales. But first, let’s take a quick look at the concept of “pretty” pricing.
“Pretty” pricing is the idea that certain prices look better to customers than others. You can obviously choose any price you want, but research has indicated that ending a price in .95 or .99 may psychologically influence customers to feel like they are getting a better deal. For that reason I will be rounding all prices in this post to the nearest .95. (Why not .99? Well, because this is “pretty” pricing and I think .95 is prettier.)
And with that out of the way, let’s look at how to choose a price for a paperback.
Continue reading How to Choose the Right Price for Your Book, Part 2
Regardless of how often you write every day or how many books you’ve written, if you’ve published a book or are planning to publish a book, you are a professional author. You’ve probably heard that you will only be as professional as you act. So how can you act professional?
Is it wearing a suit and tie while you type your next manuscript?
No.
Is it writing exclusively on a typewriter?
Nope.
How about selling a bazillion books?
No.
Professionalism is much more intangible. It’s an attitude that says you take your work seriously. You are putting forth your best effort to be excellent in your craft as a writer, and you act in a way that lets others know you’re serious.
Because professionalism is an attitude, it’s difficult to put into concrete “do this” and “don’t do this” action steps. But I’ve come up with six things that are traits or actions of a professional author. This list is The Independent Author’s Professionalism Manifesto. Continue reading The Independent Author Professionalism Manifesto