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
It’s always an amazing feeling when you finish your latest book. You’re finally ready to release it, make your fans happy, and hopefully get some cash. You’re all set to hit that big red Launch button. But wait! Today, I want to tell you why you shouldn’t launch your book.
Yet. Continue reading Delay the Gratification of Launching Your Book
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
Okay, so you’ve decided to take the plunge and pay for a spot on a Kindle deal site. Yay! But now you have to decide which one to choose. And then you notice that they all have different prices, they all claim to be the best, your friends say this one is better, bloggers say you won’t get good results with that one, and on and on it goes.
If your head is spinning, fear not. We’re going to take a look at some ways you can evaluate a deal site before you buy the promotion. Continue reading How to Evaluate a Kindle Deal Site Before You Buy a Promotion
To wrap up this series on marketing budgets and promoting your book, I’d like to take a look at planning. I’ve explained why you should have a budget, and I’ve given you fifteen ways to promote your book for free or very cheap. Now it’s time to plan and schedule your campaigns (kinda like an army general).
Let’s start with the why, then get into how to make your plan. Continue reading How to Plan Your Promotions
By now, you should have plenty of ideas to give yourself a leg up in promoting your book—I’ve given you five ideas that are free and five that don’t cost much.
Today, I want to give you a smorgasbord of five more ideas. Four of these can be done for free, while the fifth idea will probably cost you somewhere around $10. Some of these ideas might require you to do a little bit more legwork and research, but they could be worth it to round out your promotional planning. Continue reading Five More Ways to Promote Your Book
We’ve talked about how and why to make a budget for promoting your book. We’ve discussed five ways you can promote your book for free. And now it’s time to talk about actually spending your marketing budget.
Today, I’ll give you five promotions you can do for $5 or less. I’ll also include some ideas for how you could spend a little more if you have a larger budget or decide you’d like to borrow from next month’s marketing fund. Let’s jump in! Continue reading Five Ways to Promote Your Book for Five Dollars
So, you’re a self-published author hoping to get out of the I-only-sell-a-few-books-a-month rut. You’ve set a marketing budget, no matter how small, maybe even just $5 a month. There’s just one problem: Now that you look at your shiny new budget, you feel like it’s really, really small.
Don’t worry! There are all sorts of promotions you can do for free! Let’s look at five of them. Continue reading Five Ways to Promote Your Book That Won’t Cost You a Dime
Do you know what a movie TV spot is? It’s simply a TV-commercial version of a movie trailer. These run about 30 seconds or less, and are generally very targeted to a specific audience. Studios will run multiple ads targeted to different groups of people, and TV is a great place to do that because one type of person likes one show, while another person will watch something entirely different. But both people enjoy the same movie.
I know you’re wondering what this has to do with you. You’re probably thinking, “I write books, not make movies. And I can’t even afford a TV ad in the first place!” I hear you. What I want to do is draw your attention to the concept behind movie TV ads—the idea of customizing your marketing efforts to reach more than one group of people. It’s something I see a lot of self-published authors gloss over in their marketing. Most self-publishers will pick a single message and hammer that home everywhere. You’ll have one talking point about your book—essentially limiting yourself to one audience.
But the goal of a movie ad is to get both types of people who will enjoy the film to buy a ticket. How can we do the same? Continue reading What Authors Can Learn About Marketing From TV Ads
