Daily Archives: May 27, 2015

May 27 2015

Book Promotion Opportunities for Authors (It’s Free)

Images from ShutterStock

Images from ShutterStock

BOOK PROMOTION OPPORTUNITIES

Marketing books is hard. I will try to help.

I have a few book promotion opportunities for authors.

Participation is FREE.

(1) Meet the Characters

I have a page on my Read Tuesday website called Meet the Characters.

On this page, readers find short creative pieces featuring one of the characters from various books.

The idea is that readers can learn about books without first seeing the cover or price.

Their first taste of the book is a character’s personality and the author’s writing style.

Many authors and readers have expressed positive feedback about this idea.

(If you like the idea, please tell a friend.)

But we need more authors to participate. Signing up is free.

The earlier you participate, the better the reader-to-book ratio works in your favor.

Once submissions grow enough, Meet the Characters will grow onto multiple pages, different pages dedicated to different genres.

This is potentially permanent exposure for your book, which will hopefully grow over time, with just a little work for you to do in the beginning.

I make no promises about results, but I do offer this opportunity at no cost to you.

Learn more about Meet the Characters and how to sign up here:

Meet the Characters

Meet the Characters Follow-Up

(2) Cover Reveal

I’ll be doing cover reveals for a few of my books in the coming weeks.

But why reveal only my own cover?

This is an opportunity to reveal the covers of several books alongside my own.

The first cover reveal will be soon, but if you miss that, don’t worry, there will be others.

Have you done a cover reveal recently? Will you do one soon?

If so, leave a comment. Once you’ve written a post about your cover reveal, leave a link to your post in the comments.

Remember, I’ll be doing multiple cover reveals, so I may not include all of the covers in the same reveal, but may choose to spread them out (it depends on the number).

(3) Book Contests

Similarly, I’ll be running a few Goodreads giveaways.

When I announce my book contest, I could also announce your book contest.

Goodreads giveaways are preferred, but I’ll consider others.

(Amazon Giveaways tend to finish quickly, so they would be hard to work in unless my post happens to be perfectly timed with your giveaway, which is unlikely.)

If you have a Goodreads giveaway that will be open sometime in June, leave a comment to let me know. If it happens to be running when I do one of my contest posts, I’ll include mention of your giveaway in my post.

(4) Special Categories

Many authors feel that their book doesn’t quite fit properly into any one of Amazon’s browse categories.

So I created a Cool & New Books page at Read Tuesday.

This will showcase books which would best be classified by categories not currently listed at Amazon.

Even if your book is getting by with the available categories, but would fit better in a new category that doesn’t exist, you may submit your book.

Here is your chance to stir reader interest in a brand new category.

The first authors to sign up will enjoy the greatest reader-to-book ratio.

Learn more about Cool & New Books and how to sign up here:

Cool & New Books

(5) More Opportunities

I expect to create more opportunities to help authors promote their books.

When they come, I’ll either announce them here on my blog or over on the Read Tuesday blog.

Follow me and follow Read Tuesday (if you don’t already) to stay tuned.

Write happy, be happy. 🙂

Chris McMullen

Copyright © 2015

Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

  • Volume 1 on formatting and publishing
  • Volume 2 on marketability and marketing
  • 4-in-1 Boxed set includes both volumes and more
  • Kindle Formatting Magic (coming soon)

Follow me at WordPress, find my author page on Facebook, or connect with me through Twitter.

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May 27 2015

Big Bang, Inflation, Steady-State (Marketing Strategies)

Image from ShutterStock

Image from ShutterStock

BOOK MARKETING STRATEGIES

One of the main book marketing strategies that I see focuses around a Big Bang.

Yet a book marketing strategy that focuses more on consistency may have better long-term potential.

There are benefits and disadvantages of each, which depend on the nature of the book and author.

And recent changes in the dynamic book publishing environment impact the decision for how to market.

BIG BANG

The Big Bang book marketing strategy focuses on driving as much traffic as possible to the book’s product page over a short period of time.

Pre-marketing and buzz-building are amped up for a powerful book launch with several early reviews and many early sales.

BookBub and related promotions are utilized to revitalize sales with additional Big Bangs throughout the year.

Email lists for a newsletter and online followings are grown to launch the next book with a Bigger Bang.

New content is released frequently to generate more Big Bangs.

STEADY-STATE

The steady-state book marketing strategy strives to fuel consistent sales.

Regular sales are favored more than sales spikes.

One main goal is to sustain sales long-term.

Another main goal is to reach a point where sales generate much on their own.

INFLATION

The inflation book strategy is similar to the steady-state strategy.

Emphasis is placed on long-term growth.

It’s not sufficient to sustain sales; the goal is to improve sales annually.

New content is released to help improve sales.

Branding, word-of-mouth, and long-term strategies are applied to generate future sales.

COMPARISON OF BOOK MARKETING STRATEGIES

Many successful indie fiction authors that I have met have used the Big Bang book marketing strategy quite effectively.

Traditional publishers often launch their books with a Big Bang.

I have drawn my success in nonfiction with the inflation book marketing strategy.

There are also popular authors who have earned their success with a combination of Big Bang and inflation strategies.

Personally, given a choice, I prefer sales consistency to sales spikes. That’s the key to long-term success.

You aren’t presented with a choice, though. For some books, a Big Bang is more attainable than sales consistency.

But if you can have both sales spikes and annual sales growth, you get the best of both worlds.

Furthermore, some recent changes in book publishing dynamics may shift the balance a little.

BIG BANG BENEFITS

If you succeed in generating many sales over a short time, your Amazon.com sales rank can really soar.

This improves your chances of landing on a hot new release or top 100 bestseller list (at least in a subcategory).

Some customers browse through the bestseller lists, so this is your one shot to reach those readers.

Frequent sales help give your book additional exposure through customers-also-bought lists, recommendations, etc.

In can take 100 to 1000 sales to get a review, so the sooner you get your sales, the sooner you get customer reviews.

You also get word-of-mouth exposure sooner, and you can build a fan club faster, which helps you release your new books.

If you have other similar books, a sales spike in one book can feed sales to your other books.

BIG BANG DRAWBACKS

It’s hard to maintain a stellar sales rank, which limits the benefits.

If you generate a lot of early reviews from an early sales spike, once the sales rank drops off, the review-to-sales-rank ratio may arouse customer suspicion. (But you can run new short-term promotions in the future to help revive your sales rank.)

Some of the popular methods of Big Bang book marketing, like BookBub and other advertisements, can be somewhat expensive, which makes Big Bang marketing riskier.

Amazon may have recently changed their algorithm to limit the long-term influence of sales spikes on sales rank.

If you could get many of those same sales distributed more evenly over a longer period (not that this is easy to do: a short-term promotion is easier), such sales consistency might have a better long-term impact on sales rank. (Analyzing which factors impact sales rank is complicated, though, and so this might not actually be quite the case.)

It can take a lot of work over a short period to create a high level of anticipation and to generate many early sales.

CONSISTENCY BENEFITS

Consistent sales over a long period lend better stability to your Amazon sales rank.

This may now also have a stronger long-term influence on your sales rank.

Customer reviews are more likely to seem aligned with sales rank at any given time.

Your book is less susceptible to one untimely influential review, technical problems beyond your control, etc.

If you invest in advertising, you can do it with a long-term promotional plan, risking less per month than with the short-term promotions involved in Big Bang marketing.

There is much long-term potential if you succeed in driving consistent sales over a long period.

Your first few books haven’t dropped off the chart when you release a new book, which makes it easier to help a new release feed sales to your older books.

You spread your work load out over a longer period.

CONSISTENCY DRAWBACKS

It takes very frequent sales to get the best exposure with bestseller and hot new release lists.

It’s not easy to generate consistent, long-term sales over a long period of time.

You need to find effective, long-term marketing strategies, and it takes dedication and patience to see them through.

Consistent sales over a long period often requires releasing new content periodically.

It takes longer to recover your investment, and more time to grow your sales.

While it would be great to achieve both, you do have to make some decisions that lean one way or the other.

For example, if you tell everyone you know about your new release at the same time, many are likely to buy it on the same day. But if you tell different groups on different days, you might get more consistent sales. Each option has its benefits and drawbacks. (Though if your book will be on sale for a short period, why not be a nice guy or gal and let people you know in on the deal?)

Write happy, be happy. 🙂

Chris McMullen

Copyright © 2015

Chris McMullen, Author of A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing with Amazon and Other Online Booksellers

  • Volume 1 on formatting and publishing
  • Volume 2 on marketability and marketing
  • 4-in-1 Boxed set includes both volumes and more
  • Kindle Formatting Magic (coming soon)

Follow me at WordPress, find my author page on Facebook, or connect with me through Twitter.

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