Category marketing

May 9 2019

Marketing a Book when you’re an Artist (not a Businessman)

Image licensed from Shutterstock.

READING, WRITING, AND BUSINESS

Talented authors, especially in fiction, naturally excel with the art of writing.

Talented businessman (and women) who publish their writing have a distinct advantage when it comes to generating sales.

If there were only two books in the world, where one was written by a talented writer and the other was written by a talented businessman, if this was all I knew about the books, I would first want to read the book written by the talented writer.

It just seems to be a better fit, doesn’t it?

But when you visit Amazon, there aren’t just two books to choose from. There are tens of millions. And it’s hard to tell which of those may have been written by especially talented authors, and which are appealing more because of the marketing of businesspeople and which are successful mainly because of the merits of the actual writing.

Amazon dazzles you with dozens of brilliant pictures of book covers. You see bestseller lists which make you feel that those books must be selling well for a reason. Indeed, the reason may very well be marketing. You recognize the names of big publishers and popular authors who have succeeded in a very important aspect of marketing: They have branded their names into your brain.

Think for a moment. Can you think of any movies that you feel were so awful they should never have been made in the first place, yet somehow many people you know have actually watched it (and worse, may even talk about it, and not just to complain about it)?

It happens. Too often, it happens.

Of course, it happens with books, too.

The difference is that when you visit a theater, there are about a dozen newly released movies to choose from. When you visit Amazon, there are tens of thousands of books that have been released just in the past 30 days.

There are thousands of talented authors and thousands of wonderful books. Yet there are millions of books to choose from. And those that you would consider the “best” may not be so easy for you to find as a reader.

Such that even if you write a book that may be among the best books that readers in your genre would enjoy…

It’s very challenging for a talented author to get those books to sell.

Unfortunately, it might be better to be a good writer with excellent business skills than to be an amazing writer with absolutely no idea how to market.

But that doesn’t mean that a talented writer who lacks business skills can’t develop marketing skills.

It may grow very slowly. It may take a long time. There may be pitfalls along the way.

But any author can start marketing, and even if you just put a little time into a variety of marketing ideas here and there, you can continually expand your marketing net.

INDIRECT BOOK MARKETING

What is marketing? I like to think of it as “helping people in your target audience discover your book.”

I don’t enjoy business. I don’t like selling. But I do like helping people to discover my books. This definition works for me.

Before I had thought of this, marketing had seemed unappealing to me. Now I think of it in such a way that I enjoy the idea.

I don’t like it when salespeople interrupt what I’m doing to try to sell me something.

As an author, I try not to interrupt what people are doing to tell them about my book.

I prefer an indirect approach. There are a variety of ways that you can market your book indirectly.

  • People could hear about your book from someone else (other than you). If your book is worth recommending, you should consider how to get your book into the hands of people who might recommend it. Recommendations and word-of-mouth sales can be quite valuable.
  • People could first discover you, and then discover that you’re an author. One way to go about this is content marketing. For example, if you write nonfiction articles on a blog relating to your book, you could potentially generate daily search engine traffic to your blog, and then on your blog people will notice that you’re also an author. Simply end your article, Your Name, Author of Your Book.
  • People could interact with you, and then discover that you’re an author. You don’t even need to volunteer this. During most conversations, there are opportunities to answer questions like, “What do you do?” or “What have you done lately?”

The problem with marketing is that it isn’t magic.

You’re hoping that you can put forth a minimum of effort and generate hundreds of sales.

But the reality is that most successful long-term marketing takes time and effort.

Another problem is that you’d like to spend more time writing and less time marketing.

A possible solution is to spend a little time each day with marketing. It will add up.

Even if you market effectively, the results will probably come in far slower than you want.

Plan knowing that it may take much time. Be patient. Keep trying new things. Keep building your platform.

Try to keep the costs low (look for free options) unless you’re fortunate enough to earn enough sales that you can afford it without going in the red.

MARKETING BEGINS WITH THE CONTENT AND WORKS ITS WAY OUTWARD

It’s far easier to sell content that is amazing and that seems amazing than it is to sell content that’s just okay.

Step 1. Write content that is amazing. There are thousands of highly talented authors and there are thousands of amazing books. How amazing is your content? Is there some way that you could improve it?

Step 2. Make your content seem as amazing as it really is.

  • A book with an amazing cover seems amazing. A book with an okay cover doesn’t have nearly as much appeal. This is your chance to attract the attention of readers. Send the message that your content was worth putting a nice cover on it.
  • A book description that generates interest in your story helps the book seem amazing. (But don’t give the story away or readers won’t need to read the book.)
  • A book that quickly grabs the reader’s interest and holds onto it seems amazing. A book that loses the customer’s interest while the customer is just reading the Look Inside doesn’t sell.
  • A book that readers want to continue reading through the end, and then want to recommend to others really is an amazing book.
  • Typos, writing mistakes, formatting mistakes, etc. make your book seem far less amazing than it might really be. There are too many books on the market for customers to take a chance on mistakes.

Step 3. Get neutral opinions to help you assess the appeal of your cover, description, early chapters, and entire story.

The more appealing your book is from cover to cover, the more dividends marketing can pay.

From the business side of things, for too many books, 1 out of 1000 strangers who see the book’s cover will check it out, and 1 out 100 strangers who check the book out will buy it. For a book like this, you need 100,000 strangers to discover your book every day to sell an average of one copy to a stranger per day. Put another way, if your book is selling about one copy per day to strangers, there is a good chance that 100,000 see your book each day and that your product page is squandering a great deal of potential sales.

For a rare book that really has strong appeal from cover to cover, 1 out 10 strangers who check the book out will buy it, more people who see the book will click on it, and it benefits in other important ways, too:

  • It’s far more likely to generate many more sales from recommendations.
  • It’s far more likely to generate positive reviews from strangers.
  • It’s far more likely to generate sales from customers-also-bought lists.
  • It’s far more likely to generate good visibility on Amazon.

But first it needs to get discovered and get initial sales.

You still need good marketing. But the marketing is more likely to bring long-term rewards.

A SAMPLE OF MARKETING IDEAS

  • In the book itself. At the end, encourage readers to follow you on social media, visit your website, or sign up for a newsletter. List your other current and coming books. Offer a free sample (like a short chapter) of another book if it is similar to the current book.
  • Premarketing. For example, do a cover reveal to try to generate interest in your book before you publish it. Get beta readers involved in your book as you develop it.
  • Advance review copies. The idea is to give a free copy of your book, with the hope of obtaining an honest review in return. (Amazon doesn’t allow you to offer any other incentives other than a free copy of your book.) You can run an Amazon Giveaway or a Goodreads giveaway from your product page. An Amazon Giveaway is fairly inexpensive, especially with a small number of prizes. For ebooks, a Goodreads Giveaway is actually cost-effective if you give away 100 books (you don’t have to pay for the cost of the books, too; but for paperbacks you have to also buy author copies and pay to ship them yourself). Aside from giveaways, you can recruit people to send advance review copies to.
  • Start a blog. If you love to write, this is only natural. If you can write about nonfiction topics that relate to your book (even in fiction), short articles can eventually turn into a content-rich website that attracts daily visitors through search engines. Some authors write poetry on their blogs. Some make great photo blogs. There are many ways to engage an audience with a blog. If you interact with both readers and other bloggers, you can build a fairly popular blog.
  • Social media. You should have it (Facebook and Twitter at least). You should do something with it. At the very least, for those readers who enjoy Facebook and Twitter, you should have something for them. If you put the time into the social interaction aspect of it, you can make social media work better, but at least you should have something there.
  • The personal touch. Some authors are reluctant to try it, but the personal interaction (especially, in person, but online is better than nothing) can make a difference for an author who hasn’t yet built a following. Most people haven’t interacted with many authors in person. Even though the number of authors is rapidly going, many aren’t interacting in person. If a person interacts with an author and has a positive experience, the person is more likely to buy the book and also more likely to review the book or recommend it to others (but, of course, only if the content is that good). How can you setup local and regional opportunities to meet people in your target audience? It doesn’t have to be a signing (which may be hard to populate when you’re starting out). Groups of people in your target audience probably already exist: book clubs, senior centers, schools (for children’s books), and countless others. You just need to figure out how to get involved and take the initiative.
  • Bookmarks. I like these better than business cards. If the bookmark looks nice and doesn’t seem like an advertisement, it might actually get used, and then it will be a constant reminder about your book.
  • Promotions. Discounted (and even free) prices used to work more effectively with less effort. There are so many books discounted (or free) these days, it’s not easy to stand above the crowd. It makes it a challenge (like most marketing), but there is still potential. The big question is how to spread the word about your sale price. There are sites that can help, free or low cost, but not all are very helpful. Explore and hope you find a helpful one.
  • Advertising. This is tricky. Too many new authors spend too much and don’t target their advertisements as effectively as they could. When you’re starting out or when you’re not earning much in monthly royalties, you really can’t afford to overspend on advertising. Your ads compete with authors and publishers who sell many copies per month and so can afford to invest significant money on an advertising budget. So you have to be smart about it. Refrain from the temptation to bid high. If your ad isn’t performing well, it’s tempting to raise the bid. But effective ad campaigns often make effective use of keywords or other targeting criteria, plus have a great cover and highly appealing product page (including the Look Inside). Relevance is your best friend when it comes to advertising. With Amazon’s AMS (via KDP), for example, once an ad is deemed to rate high in terms of relevance (by getting a high click-through rate and a high sales frequency), it tends to perform better than other ads. In fact, such an ad can perform better at a lower bid (counterintuitively). If an ad rates low in relevance, it tends to perform poorly, even if the bid is raised high. When you set your keywords or other targeting criteria, you don’t just want popularity; you want strong relevance. It also helps to spend time brainstorming keywords (also worth doing before you publish).
  • Keep writing. Each time you publish a new book, you get renewed visibility with the last 30 days and last 90 days filters at Amazon. Many authors have asked, “What happened to my sales?” both 30 days and 90 days after publishing. Well, if these filters had been helping you (without your knowledge; how would you possibly know?), that could be the answer. Plus, you attract new readers, and slowly build a fan base. Few indie authors publish a single book and have great long-term success. Most effective indie authors have established a platform with several related books. If you can keep writing and publishing, as long as you’re getting some sales with each book, you should keep doing it. Most of us do it because we love writing so much that we just couldn’t stop, sales or not. If you’re not getting the sales, you need to rethink what types of books you should write, how to make the cover, how to write the description, etc. When things aren’t going well, you have to try making changes.
  • What are other indie authors who are having some measure of success doing with their marketing? It’s easy enough to find authors who are selling some books, and it’s really easy to find their blogs and social media. So it’s not hard to see some of the things that work for them.
  • Do you feel creative with your writing? If so, spend some time thinking how you might be creative with your marketing. Maybe a little creativity will attract some readers. Maybe you will think of a marketing strategy that isn’t overused (yet! it will be if it works for you and other authors find out) and be the first to adopt it. You shouldn’t be a one-strategy marketing machine (unless, of course, the first thing you try is a great success, then you should do it until it dries up). You should be exploring a variety of options that can help you widen your marketing net.

Even when marketing works, it often develops very slowly. Just because you don’t get any early results doesn’t mean you should give up.

Another important word is “branding.” You’re creating a brand. When people see marketing, they rarely stop what they’re doing and run to the store.

Rather, months later when they happen to be shopping for a product, people tend to buy a product that they’ve heard of.

You want your author name, or your book title, or your character’s name, or your series name to be something that people have heard of.

You want your cover to be something that people have seen before.

(In a good way.)

When that happens, you’ve succeeded in branding readers.

GIVE KARMA A CHANCE

I know, you’re eager to go market your book.

But first, spread the word about someone else’s book.

Maybe it will give you some good karma. Or maybe you just feel like being a good person.

You’d like a stranger to recommend your book to others.

So take a moment to recommend a stranger’s book to others. This will help you visualize what you want to happen to your own book.

Plus, you get to do a good deed.

I’m recommending The Legends of Windemere series by Charles E. Yallowitz (who has absolutely no idea that I’m mentioning his series today, although I have mentioned him in years past).

I finished the Legends of Windemere series and enjoyed it for the storyline and several of the characters which appealed to me.

Write Happy, Be Happy

Chris McMullen

Author of the Improve Your Math Fluency series of math workbooks and self-publishing guides

Dec 19 2017

Hope, Fear, and… Shopping for Books at Amazon

SHOPPING AT AMAZON

When browsing for a book (or other product) at Amazon, it’s amazing how much hope, fear, and other emotions factor into the shopping experience.

Whether you’re a customer, an author, or an Amazon seller, it may be worthwhile to take a moment to try to understand the psychology of Amazon sales.

Imagine yourself staring at a book detail page at Amazon.com, considering a book that caught your attention.

There are two types of criteria that may influence whether or not you purchase the book:

  • You may apply logical reasoning.
  • You may be influenced by your emotions.

For most customers, both aspects may factor into the purchase decision. Some customers generally rely much more on one aspect than the other.

It may not even be a conscious decision. Many people are influenced by emotional responses without even realizing it. Sometimes the emotional aspect is subtle. Sometimes it may impact us on a subconscious level.

Also, note that logical reasoning can’t decide everything. Sometimes, after a person who relies heavily on logic applies logic as far as he (or she) can take it, the person still isn’t sure. In that case, the person might use some emotional aspect to break the tie (or flip a coin).

If you’re a customer, you might learn to make wiser buying decisions by trying to understand how various aspects of the product page may influence you emotionally.

If you’re an author or an Amazon seller, you may wish to better understand how sales psychology may benefit you both short-term and long-term. (Note that what benefits you in the short-term may hurt in the long-term. They don’t always go hand in hand.)

A LITTLE SALES PSYCHOLOGY

Let’s break down an Amazon product page, considering how each element may influence a customer’s buying decision.

  • Book cover (or product photo). This may send a strong visual signal, but may also suggest subtle emotional responses. You might think that the main message should be “Look at me,” but it’s actually better for the signal to be “Wow, that looks appealing.” An effective image does more than this: the subtler messages can carry influence. A picture can send a “positive” signal, inspiring the customer be in a better emotional state. A picture can have a “professional” tone. It can strive to earn “trust.” It can say “I look like the type of product you’re looking for.”
  • Reviews. Many reviews (both good and bad) carry marketing influence. Good reviews play on customers’ hopes, while critical reviews play on customers’ fears. Most of the time, it isn’t intentional, but of course there are both good and bad reviews that have been written with the intent of playing on hopes or fears. As a customer, it’s a challenge to glean helpful information from reviews without being influenced on an emotional level. As an author or Amazon seller, you must consider that many customers are skeptical to some extent about customer reviews. One possible fear is that the seller recruited reviews, so if the first 20 reviews are all glowing and the last 10 reviews are mostly bad, that by itself may act to “confirm” a customer’s fear that the seller recruited good reviews for a not-so-good product. In addition to customer reviews, there may be quotes from editorial reviews, and there may be review quotes in the description or Look Inside. There is another important aspect of reviews: If a product page plays on customer hopes by making a product seem better than it actually is, customer reviews help to offset this marketing tactic. Reviews are a strong reason that all authors and sellers should focus on long-term success (writing a great book or delivering a great product helps to get favorable reviews in the long run).
  • Description. Marketing copy is one of the most challenging forms of writing—and the proof of its effectiveness isn’t when several people tell you how impressed they are with what you wrote, but in what percentage of customers who read it proceed to purchase the product. An effective product description must be concise because most customers won’t read a long description in full (and if the description is long, most customers won’t even bother to click the Read More link to see the remainder of it). The few sentences that customers can see before the Read More link appears is valuable real estate: There is so much an author or seller needs to accomplish with a minimum of words. In terms of marketing influence, sellers want to create “customer engagement,” “arouse curiosity,” “inspire interest,” and perhaps even “create a sense of urgency” (but you’re not supposed to mention limited-time offers or pricing here). But the description also needs to provide valuable information about what to expect from the book (or other product). It may also need to create a sense of professionalism and trust. It needs to help create appeal. On top of that, the words need to flow well, be a good fit for expectations, and avoid spelling and grammar mistakes. There is one thing that a description shouldn’t do: It shouldn’t give the story away.
  • Title. Even the title can carry emotional influence. Have you ever read a title that had a little jingle that you got a kick out of, maybe put you in a good mood? The title needs to reinforce the visual message that the book cover (or product phot) sends. With fiction books, very short titles tend to be more effective (1 to 3 words). That’s partly because the eye is drawn to a short title in search results, and partly because many customers just look at the first few words when looking at search results. A title can help to create appeal (or just the opposite). Appeal is an important criteria, since appeal helps to put the customer in a happier state when making a purchase decision.
  • Look Inside. This can be the most valuable real estate on the product page. The customer must already be interested in order to be looking inside. This means that every other aspect of the product page has done its job: Now it’s up to the Look Inside to close the deal. The Look Inside has one important job to do: It just needs to send the message, “This book is everything you hoped it would be—based on the cover, description, title, and reviews—and MORE.” If it sends that message, the customer will almost certainly Buy Now. (But again, if the rest of the book doesn’t live up to the expectations created by the Look Inside, this will be exposed in customer reviews, and fewer customers will Look Inside in the future.) The Look Inside contains visual elements and writing, both of which need to help deliver the right messages. As with the description, the Look Inside must engage the customer and arouse curiosity (but without giving the story away), and like the book cover, the Look Inside needs to send the right visual signals.
  • Bio. A biography (or about me) section is a chance to demonstrate expertise or knowledgeability, but it’s also a chance to show humanity, individuality, and professionalism. For authors, if you can write an interesting biography, that bodes well for having written an interesting story (since very often readers aren’t interested in biographies). A picture that accompanies the biography offers another opportunity to send the right visual message.
  • Colors. There is even a psychology for interpreting colors. For example, a good cover designer selects a color scheme that is appropriate for the subject matter or story. Certain colors are better for attracting males or females, some colors work better for romance while others work better for mystery, some colors suggest professionalism, and some colors convey emotions (like happy or sad). Amazon uses color in text labels, prices, stars, buttons, and other elements of a product page. The prices are in red, which not only stands out well against a white background but may aid in creating a buying impulse (many stores use red for one of these two reasons: let’s assume they are using it for contrast and to catch attention, and if it happens to help a little to create a buying impulse, it’s just a happy bonus for the store).

We humans don’t always make the best decisions. Even humans who spend their lives solving very difficult problems quite skillfully can be prone to making a stupid everyday decision.

If humans tended to be better decision-makers, a lot of successful talk-show hosts would be out of business!

So when you’re shopping for a product, try to think about how you might make a wiser purchase decision. Try to think of which factors may be trying to influence you emotionally. Try to force yourself to rely somewhat more on logical reasoning and somewhat less on emotions.

Or forget it… just act impulsively and enjoy the splurge. You know you want to. 😉

If you’re an author or Amazon seller, try to think about how your Amazon product pages might influence customers emotionally. Don’t try to think of ways that you might take advantage of this in the short run because such ploys tend to backfire in the long run (killing sales later): For example, if the product page plays on the customer’s hope that it’s the most amazing product ever, disappointed customers will post critical reviews (which will play on future customers’ fears) and will return the product (and Amazon uses customer satisfaction metrics in its algorithms).

So you don’t want to oversell a product, making it seem way better than it is. But you do want to make it sound as good as it is. If it does deliver on customer hopes, the product page should show this.

You can also think about how your product page delivers both visually and in words important messages, such as “professional,” “positive,” “trust,” “expertise,” “creative,” or a particular subject matter or topic (like “romance” or “country”).

What is your customer hoping to get from your product? Among these hopes, what does your product actually deliver? You want to show the customer that your product delivers on the right hopes, and you want to disclose when it doesn’t deliver on other hopes.

What does your customer fear he or she may get from your product? You need to apply a similar reasoning here.

Write happy, be happy. 🙂

Chris McMullen

Copyright © 2017

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.

Feb 4 2016

Organic IS Better (for book marketing)

Image from Shutterstock.

Image from Shutterstock.

ORGANIC BOOK MARKETING

I take a long-term approach to book marketing.

My goal is to generate periodic sales over the course of several years.

I’m more interested in how well the book sells years after its release than how well it says when it makes its debut.

Granted, a book often gets its best traffic in the beginning, so anything you might do to improve that could be a significant boost.

But if you can get the book to sell consistently for years instead of tailing off, time can provide a huge boost of its own.

That’s the potential of organic book marketing, if you can pull it off effectively.

Organic book marketing also doesn’t tend to be depend as strongly on the latest marketing trends.

There are some fundamental marketing strategies that work long-term even in a dynamic market, whereas short-term strategies tend to be trendy.

We’ll consider several aspects of book marketing, and what it might mean to be organic.

BOOK REVIEWS

As a customer shopping for products at Amazon, if you read customer reviews, would you prefer to read organic reviews? I would.

What makes a review organic?

It can’t get any more organic than this:

  • A customer discovers a book.
  • The customer takes the initiative to review the book.
  • The customer leaves genuine feedback for the book.

Amazon considers a review to be more organic when the customer discovers the book on Amazon.com and the review shows the Verified Purchase label. Amazon’s new machine-learning algorithm, which determines which reviews get more exposure, favors a Verified Purchase.

The machine-learning algorithm looks at more than just whether or not the review is Verified. For example, it also looks at Yes vs. No votes. There are multiple factors. In general, most of these factors favor organic reviews.

Obviously, when a customer discovers a book in a bookstore, reads the book, and leaves a review on Amazon, it’s just as organic. Although it won’t have that Verified Purchase tag, potential customers will see an honest opinion to help them with their purchases.

Even if the customer discovers the book because the author employed effective interpersonal marketing skills, it’s still an organic review if the customer leaves unbiased feedback. In fact, customers are more likely to review a book having interacted with the author.

The problem, of course, is that customer book reviews often come at a very slow rate. It can take 100 to 200 sales, on average, to get a single review. (These numbers may vary considerably, depending on subgenre, for example.) And if the book is selling one copy every few days, that may very well seem like never.

And some book promotion sites, like BookBub, require a minimum number of reviews.

Thus, authors are tempted to look for less organic methods of seeking reviews.

Most customers think they can tell, to some extent, organic reviews from inorganic ones:

  • Suppose a book has a sales rank of 1,000,000, was released 30 days ago, and already has 20 reviews. It may seem suspicious.
  • Organic reviews tend to show a degree of balanced opinions, and a few tend to be off-the-wall. There is a certain variety of opinions and the expression of them typical of Amazon.
  • Checking out what else the reviewer has reviewed can also seem to tell a tale.

Amazon’s SEO can probably tell organic reviews from inorganic ones, to some extent. (Even if it doesn’t do this well now, it probably will in the future.)

If you can find effective ways to generate more sales, that will help to generate more organic reviews.

And then there is always review karma. This philosophy is to post reviews of books you have read, and hope that the universe returns the favor.

But that’s different from swapping reviews with fellow authors, which is not organic (and Amazon may choose not to support).

CONTENT MARKETING

The idea behind content marketing is to post valuable content for your target audience on a blog, website, or social media.

Organic content of high quality can generate significant traffic long-term, and is less susceptible to the latest trends in SEO.

In fact, SEO trends tend to adapt toward identifying organic content and eventually penalizing any SEO tactics that aim to “fool” search engines.

Also, organic content is more likely to please its target audience, and result in organic followers.

And no followers are better than organic followers.

An organic follower is someone who discovers your content, enjoys it or finds it helpful, follows you, and is actively aware of your future articles over a long period of time.

My free WordPress blog just passed 300,000 views. It generates about 1000 views per day, presently, with most of the visitors discovering articles through search engines. And if you look around, you can find many other sites far more successful than mine.

It takes months to make content marketing work, but if you deliver valuable content to your target audience, there is much potential to get 100+ strangers to organically discover your site every day.

UNKNOWN ADVOCATES

This is what organic book marketing is all about.

When several people you have never met advocate your book on your behalf, organic book marketing can pay big long-term dividends.

But while it can be the best kind of marketing a book can get, it’s extremely hard to generate.

To get valuable word-of-mouth sales, referrals, and recommendations, you have to approach book marketing backwards.

Short-term book marketing says you need a great cover, then you need a blurb that hooks, then a Look Inside that compels the customer to buy the book, and last on the list is the actual content.

Organic book marketing says that the most important part of the book is the content, and everything else revolves around this.

Fiction authors need storytelling talent. Nonfiction authors need compelling information.

All authors need to write in a way that pleases readers.

And the book needs to be well-edited and formatted in order to be worthy of a recommendation. But the content is still foremost.

True, nobody will enjoy the book unless they first discover it, so the Look Inside, blurb, and cover figure into this.

But the approach is to first develop compelling content that will pay long-term dividends, and then build the packaging around that.

AMAZON SEO

Organic book marketing also tends to be favored by Amazon SEO.

For example, many customers search for books by typing keywords into the search field at Amazon.com.

There are several factors involved in determining the order of search results.

Some of these factors specifically favor organic book marketing.

For example, when customers search for books by keyword, click on your book, and then purchase your book, that organic sale establishes relevance for your book with that keyword.

The more organic sales you generate through keyword searches, the more exposure your book gains this way.

That’s why it’s so important to research (by that, I mean type a variety of keywords into Amazon, to see not only what’s popular, but where you have a chance of standing out among the crowd) which keywords have the best potential to give your unique book exposure.

If your keywords also appear organically in the title, subtitle, and book description (especially in bullet points)–though repetition may not help (other than the keyword from your keyword list matching a keyword in your description)–this may help your book compete in keyword searches (but remember, there are other factors too).

A keyword dump in your title or description will backfire. That’s not organic at all, and customers see that something is fishy. If you want to sell books, your title and subtitle need to make sense, and the description needs to read well and hook the reader without giving the story away.

Amazon wants to have satisfied customers. Amazon’s algorithm can tell such things as:

  • How well does this book sell when a customer discovers it for the first time on Amazon?
  • How satisfied are the customers who buy this book?
  • How many customers who buy this book go onto buy more books like this one?
  • Maybe it can even differentiate among customers, i.e. which kinds of buying history appears to be a better fit for a given book.

When a customer is searching for a book on Amazon, obviously Amazon would prefer to show customers books that perform well in these areas.

For this, you want to have a good conversion rate, which means the cover > blurb > Look Inside need to correlate well and be quite compelling, but you also need good customer satisfaction, but delivering exceptional content.

An organic approach to book marketing oriented around these points can pay significant long-term dividends.

WHAT WRITERS REALLY WANT

Many authors say things like: “I’d rather spend my time writing than marketing.”

Organic book marketing places more emphasis on the writing.

For marketing, there are ways to go about it that appeal to writers, like preparing content-rich articles relating to the topic of your book or writing content-rich emails for a newsletter (which allows you to send an announcement for your next book when it comes out).

Much of organic book marketing consists of writing your next book and writing content for your site or email newsletter.

Not 100%, though. You also want to widen your marketing net. But you can devote a little time each week to this, while still putting most of your time into writing.

You also need to do a little personal marketing, especially in the beginning, as that personal touch can go a long way toward getting the ball rolling in the beginning.

Organic book marketing can start out very slow, with no guarantee that it will ever pick up.

If sales do start out very slow, it takes strong faith in your writing to keep believing that the content is compelling enough to pay off several months down the road, if only you can weather the storm, keep writing, and drive enough initial sales to eventually get there.

But this approach does let writers focus on what they love to do most: write!

Write happy, be happy. 🙂

Chris McMullen

Copyright © 2016

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

Click here to view my Goodreads author page.

  • 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.

Comments

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Jan 24 2016

Relevance: The Key to Advertising/Marketing

Relevance

RELEVANCE

Many advertising and marketing concepts can be understood, and then applied, by considering this one word: relevance.

And what a difference relevance can make.

Yet, very often, the advertiser or marketer hasn’t given this concept due consideration.

In your wildest dreams, your audience is anyone who has a head.

But in reality, you throw your money away with such thinking.

Unless maybe you’re selling hairbrushes.

But even then, you’re wasting money showing your advertisement to people who are bald, strongly prefer combs, or don’t care about their appearance.

Let’s look at some specific examples of how the word relevance impacts advertising and marketing. (Many of the examples are specific to self-published books, but the same principle can be generalized to the sale of other kinds of products or services.)

BOOK COVER DESIGN

Can you imagine walking into a covenant to sell a book about how to plan the perfect spring break vacation?

Well, it’s not much different when 80% of your audience glances at the cover of your sci-fi thriller and expects it to be a western.

(If you’re thinking about the movie Cowboys & Aliens right now, you’re totally missing the point!)

If it looks like a western, it probably is a western, so if you’re looking for sci-fi, why waste your time checking it out?

When there are other sci-fi books that actually look like science fiction.

The most important goal of book cover design is to create a cover that is relevant to your specific target audience.

WRITING <—> MARKETING

There are two ways to approach the combination of writing and marketing that have good prospects for success.

If you can execute your approach well.

  • You can find an existing target audience* and write a book relevant for that audience. (Where you are interested in the topic and have the right experience to write it.)
  • Or you can write what interests you (and where you have the right experience), then find the audience relevant for what you’ve written and market to that audience.†

* You don’t have to write for the most popular audience. It can be a niche audience and still be quite successful.

† The latter carries more risk. The worst-case scenario is that the audience perfect for your book doesn’t even exist. It happens…

AMAZON MARKETING SERVICES

Billboard advertising doesn’t make sense for most books. Even though many people do read, only a fraction read any particular genre, and some of those readers are biased towards certain authors or subgenres, so that the majority of the people who see the billboard advertisement result in wasted impressions. On top of that, the sale of a single book usually results in a low royalty, so you can’t afford wasted impressions.

But if you sell automotive parts and advertise on a billboard overlooking a highway, nearly 100% of your audience drives a car, so even though many prefer to get their service done by a dealer or a mechanic, the advertisement is more effective because of the greatly improved relevance.

On top of that, most advertising largely involves branding, which requires repeated impressions over a long period of time. With advertising, the importance of relevance gets compounded through this repetition.

Where should you advertise your product (or service)? Think long and hard about where it would be highly relevant to show your product.

One reason to use Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) to advertise products that you sell on Amazon has to do with relevance:

  • Customers are already there browsing for similar products.
  • You’re not trying to persuade them to stop what they’re doing, leave one site, and visit another site.

To get the most out of AMS, focus on relevance.

For example, when advertising a KDP Select self-published Kindle e-book through AMS:

  • All else being equal, Amazon is more likely to show AMS ads that generate and maintain a high click-through rate. That’s a strong indication of relevance.
  • Precise targeting makes your ad more relevant to the customers who view it.
  • A cover that conveys the precise subgenre/subcategory and content at the tiny size shown in the ads is a big plus.
  • The short marketing pitch shown with the ad can also help to convey relevance.
  • Thus, relevance can help you generate impressions without raising your bid sky high.
  • Ultimately, the blurb, the rest of your product page, and the Look Inside must also be relevant to convert clicks into sales.

CONTENT MARKETING & SEO

I use a free WordPress blog. I will soon pass 300,000 views (if I haven’t already), as I average 500 to 800 visitors per day finding my blog through search engines.

Yet I don’t employ any SEO “tactics.”

My goal has always been simple: Provide helpful content to anyone interested in self-publishing.

If the content is relevant to your audience, you have a strong organic marketing edge with much potential for long-term success.

Relevant content will naturally include the right keywords and keyphrases, lead to recommendations and referrals, generate followers, and encourage discussion.

You can blog successfully with short articles. What matters is that the content is relevant and helpful.

Trying to “fool” search engines into thinking that an article is relevant when it’s not won’t lead to long-term success.

THE DREADED BLURB

To help close the sale, the blurb needs to implicitly convince the customer (with help from the Look Inside) that the content is relevant to the buyer.

It must reinforce the subgenre/subcategory and content conveyed by the cover, title, category, and keywords.

The style of writing and storytelling must also be relevant to the customer.

It needs to be the kind of story and characters that the customer wants to read.

Without giving the story away. Because once the customer knows the story, it’s no longer relevant.

Fiction blurbs need to be short, while nonfiction blurbs should highlight important points with bullets, since the customer doesn’t want to waste time—not yet sure if reading the blurb is relevant or not.

Write happy, be happy. 🙂

Chris McMullen

Copyright © 2016

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 (now available)
Dec 26 2015

Book + Hook = Sales (Marketing Recipe for Authors)

Book Hook

BOOK MARKETING TIPS

Is your book full of hooks?

If you don’t understand the question, don’t worry. I’ll explain it shortly.

After I ask a different question.

Why did you read this article?

I realize that you haven’t committed yet. At any moment, you could walk away.

And so could customers when they check out your book. Remember that.

The hooks make the difference:

  • Did the title or image with this post grab your attention?
  • Did it make a promise, like more book sales?
  • Obviously, the beginning held your interest long enough for you to reach here.

YOUR BOOK NEEDS HOOKS

What is a hook?

A hook is something that catches your potential reader’s attention, arouses a reader’s curiosity, or engages your reader’s interest, for example. Anything that encourages potential customers to read your book effectively serves as a hook.

Your book should have several hooks:

  • Your title can actually have three hooks. (1) One hook comes from making a catchy title, a phrase that snaps the customer out of a trance. (2) Another hook conveys what the book is about, so when the customer reads the title, the customer knows the genre or subject. Be sure to put the right bait on your hook. (3) Any keywords in your title, subtitle, or series name help to hook readers through keyword searches. But you must balance this with 1 and 2. Also, shorter titles tend to sell better in fiction.
  • Your cover is another hook. For every 1000 or so customers that see your book cover, 1 may actually check out your book. It could be 1 out of 100. Or it could be 1 out of 10,000. But the difference can be huge. A cover also has multiple hooks. (1) What kind of book is this? That’s what every customer wants to know without having to work for it. Make it so easy that a customer can tell at a glance. (2) Even subconsciously. The right color scheme and font actually impact shopping behavior. It’s worth a little research. (3) Reinforce the title by making the most important keywords stand out even on a tiny thumbnail.
  • Your blurb is all about hooks. A customer reading your blurb is not committed. Not even to the first line. (1) The first line of your blurb can send 90% of your potential customers out the door. It’s your pick-up line. Pick this book up, please. But you have to be subtle. You need to arouse curiosity. Wake the customer from a trance, but use language the customer wants to hear. Make your blurb the dream date the customer has been yearning for. (2) You need to reinforce the subgenre or subcategory. The customer isn’t sure what kind of book this is. The title and cover create expectations. Don’t forget to make this clear in the blurb. Early in the blurb. (3) Concise is your friend, especially for fiction. Short sentences. Short blurb. Yet containing all the info the customer wants to know: What subgenre (implicit, but clear)? Engaging content (show it by example). What features will sell your book? Make these features—no, make the benefits of these features—clear, but be concise. For nonfiction, bullet points help break a long description into easy to identify points. (4) Cut out the material that customers don’t need to know, so only the hooks remain. For example, does the customer really need to know the names of multiple characters when just checking the book out? (5) Whatever material remains, make it seem more engaging. Trim and engage. Repeat. (6) Don’t spoil fiction. Definitely, don’t give away the ending. But don’t give away anything if you can avoid it. You don’t want the customer to feel like he or she already knows what will happen at some stage. Not knowing can help you sell books. There are words for this: Curiosity. Suspense. They are sales tools.
  • Your Look Inside is that last hook between the customer and a sale. Or walking away. And again, it should be full of hooks. Minimize the front matter to essentials that help sell your book, so the customer can reach the “hooks” without distraction. (1) The opening line is like the first line of your blurb. Many shoppers don’t get past that first line. (2) The customer isn’t committed to your book. The beginning needs to arouse curiosity and engage interest. Come out with your best stuff. Will a non-committed shopper read a lengthy build-up? You want the beginning to be so good that the customer clicks the magic Buy Now button. (3) Send a consistent message. The title and cover create expectations for a particular subgenre or subcategory. The blurb must reinforce the same message. And the Look Inside must also make this clear. Tell the customer (implicitly), “Yes, you’re in the right place. Now please make yourself at home.” (4) What will sell your book? Suspense? Curiosity? Fascination with a character? Language that flows well? Comb through your Look Inside to remove stuff that may inhibit sales, so that what remains will hook the reader.
  • It doesn’t end there. You don’t just want a purchase. You want the reader to continue onto the next chapter. You want the book to deliver on its promise so that the customer is already hooked on your next book. So that the customer helps you hook new readers. Word-of-mouth hooks are among the best hooks in the business. And the hardest to get.
  • Even the back matter can contain a hook: A captivating sample of one of your other books.
  • Let me back up a bit. Wise choice of keywords (or keyphrases) and categories can help you throw more hooks out into the sea of readers.
  • Hooks are everywhere. If people discover your blog, you want your blog to hook new readers, right? Well, then, your blog needs to be full of hooks. All of your marketing should have hooks. Even a catchy strapline—a phrase or sentence that helps create interest in your book (and also convey the right expectations)—can be used anywhere, even in daily conversations.

PRACTICE HOOKING (!)

(I really hope you don’t take this the wrong way!!)

Practice hooking your readers.

A great place to practice is with social media.

Every blog post, tweet, or Facebook post is an opportunity to practice hooking readers.

Learn how to write a title that achieves all of its three goals.

Learn how to find images that attract the right audience.

Learn how to say a lot in a little by learning how to use tweets effectively.

Social media offers a great way to practice, experiment, and learn the art of hooking readers.

But also practice from the other side. Practice getting hooked. Practice trying not to get hooked, and find yourself getting hooked despite that.

Check out successful books. Books that don’t sell because of name recognition or preexisting fan bases. Find new indie books that grow quickly, for example. Discover books with great hooks.

That can help you learn the art of hooking readers. See what kinds of hooks other authors use to hook their readers.

MARKETING WITH BOOK HOOKS

Think of writing as fishing.

You’re just one of millions of fishermen.

  • Location matters. You want to fish in a spot where there are plenty of fish. So you want to write a book that will attract readers. So write it with the customer in mind. What does the customer want? This question impacts your choice of topic, how you begin your book, how you write your book, how you package your book, etc.
  • There are a million fishing poles out there. You need lures and bait that will attract fish to you. Your title, cover, blurb, and Look Inside need effective hooks.
  • Authors wait patiently for readers to find their books. You need readers. You need them to discover your book. You need them to want to read your book once they discover it. The hooks on your product page and the hooks in your online and offline book marketing all help readers discover your book and decide to read it.

Write happy, be happy. 🙂

Chris McMullen

Copyright © 2015

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

Click here to view my Goodreads author page.

  • 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.

Comments

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Dec 22 2015

How to Motivate more Amazon Follows

Amazon Following

HOW TO GET MORE AMAZONS FOLLOWERS

Amazon just announced a new tool designed to help authors generate many more Amazon followers.

First, let me give a little background:

  • Customers can follow their favorite authors directly at Amazon.com.
  • It seems ideal for both customers and authors, EXCEPT…
  • Unfortunately, most customers don’t think to do this.
  • Customers need to visit the author page and click the button to follow the author. Few do it, presently.
  • Amazon lets you send an email to your Amazon followers after publishing a new Kindle edition. But first, you need Amazon followers.

So just imagine how awesome it would be IF…

  • Amazon offered a tool to help authors generate more Amazon follows.
  • Through this tool, Amazon motivated customers to follow authors.
  • Many customers took advantage of this opportunity to follow authors of interest.
  • Amazon follows rose from a mere dozen to hundreds or thousands for many authors.
  • When you publish your next Kindle e-book, you could send an email through Amazon to hundreds or thousands of Amazon followers.

This seems like a distinct possibility now.

Here is how it works:

  • Visit the product page for a print edition of your book. (Don’t have one? Check out CreateSpace.)
  • Update: You no longer need a print edition if you publish through KDP.
  • Scroll down to the bottom. Click on the option to list an Amazon giveaway.
  • Check the box to require contestants to follow you on Amazon. (This is new!)
  • Everyone who enters the contest now also follows you on Amazon.
  • The next time you publish via KDP, you’ll be invited to notify your Amazon followers of your latest e-book.

In the past, you could only generate Twitter followers or require contestants to watch a YouTube video.

Now, you can require contestants to simply follow you on Amazon.

Finally, Amazon came up with an idea to help authors generate more Amazon follows.

It’s a win-win-win situation:

  • Customers don’t have to hunt down the author through social media or newsletters. Follow authors right on Amazon.
  • Customers get a chance to win free print books in exchange for becoming Amazon followers.
  • Authors get exposure through the giveaway and grow their Amazon following.
  • Amazon, of course, sells more books.

MY AMAZON GIVEAWAY

Click the following link or image to enter my Amazon giveaway for a chance to win my mathematical pattern puzzles book.

When you enter the contest, you’ll become one of my Amazon followers. It will keep you updated of new books that I publish.

Click here to for a chance to win my pattern puzzles book.

AMAZON GIVEAWAY TIPS

  • When your Amazon Giveaway goes live, tweet about it.
  • Click the link in the giveaway email to tweet about it through Twitter.
  • Be sure to leave the #AmazonGiveaway hashtag in the tweet. This posts your tweet to the Amazon Giveaway page.
  • I’ve had better luck not adding an image directly to the tweet. (The cover for your book will probably still show automatically.) I seem to get more exposure by not including my own image.
  • Add 1 or 2 relevant hashtags to your tweet.

Write happy, be happy. 🙂

Chris McMullen

Copyright © 2015

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

Click here to view my Goodreads author page.

  • 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.

Comments

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Aug 12 2015

A Pleasant Surprise from @bookSCREAM #bookpromotion 99-cent #CountdownDeal

Image from ShutterStock.

Image from ShutterStock.

bookSCREAM

I received a pleasant surprise this morning.

I found myself mentioned in a tweet from @bookSCREAM:

@ChrisDMcMullen Another great deal! We featured HOW TO SELF-PUBLISH A BOOK in today’s newsletter! bkscr.me/9P9Um

Cover design by Melissa Stevens at theillustratedauthor.net

What a cool surprise.

I clicked on the link mentioned in the tweet and found my original self-publishing book featured with one of four non-fiction books on the bookSCREAM page.

  • How to Self-Publish a Book on Amazon.com
  • by Chris McMullen
  • Informative, Tips, Advice
  • $0.99 was $2.99

I like the concise description that they included with the ad: “informative, tips, advice.”

This was totally unexpected:

  • I didn’t contact or approach bookSCREAM.
  • I haven’t advertised my Countdown Deal anywhere. This is the first I’ve mentioned it just now.
  • bookSCREAM discovered my Countdown Deal all on their own.
  • bookSCREAM advertised my book promotion all on their own.
  • I only discovered their advertisement after they had placed the ad.

Very cool! Thank you, bookSCREAM.

What’s the opposite of being rejected by BookBub? Being featured by bookSCREAM out of the blue.

I was just testing out the Countdown Deals. My intention was to let it run unadvertised and see how it does.

However, I don’t mind that it picked up an external promotion all on its own. I don’t mind at all. 😉

Partly, I was also testing out the lower price. In the past, I haven’t had any success with 99 cents on any books (which is why you’ll find my Kindle e-books priced between $2.99 and $7.99, except for rare deals like this).

How to Self-Publish a book on Amazon.com is my original book on self-publishing. I originally published this back in May, 2009. A lot has changed since then, which is why I updated this book significantly in 2014, but it’s also why I have since published A Detailed Guide to Self-Publishing (Volumes 1 and 2). (I also have a four-book boxed set, which includes all of these.)

Of course, you can find a ton of FREE information about self-publishing right here on my blog.

I wouldn’t mind dropping the prices of my self-publishing books. But like I said, I haven’t had much success with 99 cents or $1.99. I wouldn’t mind making it more affordable to learn about self-publishing. (Again, you can learn much for free right on my blog. I would even make one or more of these books perma-free—these books are more about sharing knowledge and helping other authors—but it seems ridiculous that I would have to publish these books outside of Amazon to get them free on Amazon.)

But I thought I would test out lower prices with a few Countdown Deals to see if things may have changed recently.

And that’s when I received this pleasant surprise from bookSCREAM.

Unexpected free marketing for fellow authors is a great thing. It makes self-publishing better for everyone.

If it happens to you, pay it forward.

It’s about reading. All authors work together to inspire more quality reading.

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.

Comments

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Jul 10 2015

Book Marketing Magic: What You Can Learn from Amazon

Image from ShutterStock.

Image from ShutterStock.

BOOK MARKETING MAGIC

It would be hard to find anybody who can sell books better than Amazon.

At first, this seems like a great benefit of self-publishing. Just throw your book on Amazon, and the word’s greatest bookseller will sell your book for you, right?

Too bad it doesn’t work that way. Even though you may have heard others speak of book marketing, you stubbornly cling to the hope that you won’t need to learn it.

You just have to see for yourself to realize that you need to market your book.

And then book marketing seems like magic. Only you can’t find the right magic words. Or if you do, apparently you don’t pronounce them quite right. When you try using smoke, mirrors, and sleight of hand, it just doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to.

But it’s not really magic. You want easy and instant success. That really would be magic. That’s not marketing. That’s too-good-to-be-true luck that will never happen to you.

Book marketing is work. Think and plan long-term, learn effective long-term book marketing strategies, keep writing, and gradually add to your marketing with sights on a professional author platform several months in the future.

You can learn by watching others. And who better to watch than Amazon?

LEARN FROM AMAZON

It’s amazing how much you can learn about book marketing from Amazon.

This is where the fact that Amazon is an exceptional bookseller can help you.

You’re trying to sell books. You want to learn how. Watch the pro.

Obviously, I don’t mean you should create a website, pour millions of dollars into website development and advertising, and sell books yourself.

I mean to study Amazon’s marketing and make connections between how Amazon markets and what you can do to help market your own books.

Some examples follow.

CONTENT ENGAGEMENT

In my opinion, this is Amazon’s #1 marketing asset: content engagement.

The first step is that Amazon has amazing selection, convenience of shopping at home, and good prices.

With all that, plus good customer service, and already the top bookseller, you might think Amazon wouldn’t need to market at all.

Yet, Amazon does market, and markets very well. It shows you that even if you have a great book, you still need to market.

Amazon is exceptional at motivating customer engagement. Here are a few examples:

  • Customers engage with the website as they browse Look Insides and read customer reviews.
  • After the purchase, they are further engaged with customers-also-bought list recommendations.
  • The customer review platform brings customers back to Amazon after the purchase to engage with the site again. A few customers return again to check on voting and comments.
  • Kindle Unlimited motivates customers to return time and again to browse for books. With the habit of shopping at Amazon, some subscribers begin to check Amazon first when they need to buy other products besides books.
  • Amazon Prime similarly engages customers. Although Prime customers can only borrow one book per month, Prime also engages customers with Amazon Prime Video, for example. Prime customers also tend to shop at Amazon first to take advantage of fee two-day shipping.
  • Amazon frequently releases new programs or revises current programs. Each revision or new program is news, so Amazon is often in the media. Many of the programs spark debate among authors or publishers, which creates additional free publicity. The internet is almost always buzzing with the latest developments at Amazon.
  • Customers (and authors) can subscribe to a variety of email newsletters. If those emails engage your interest, well, you’re hooked. You’ll be aware of the next development. You’ll see an advertisement for a new service. But the emails aren’t just advertisements. The KDP newsletter, for example, includes a variety of tips and success stories. Good content is needed to make these work.
  • Promotional prices and exclusive offers bring customers back to Amazon. I’ve received offers such as: free $20 gift card when you buy $100 in gift cards, exclusive offer for $15 appstore credit, and great sale prices on Kindle devices. Amazon offers a one-time discount on something that’s likely to hook customers by engaging them. Selling a Kindle device at a discount may lead to regular reading of Kindle ebooks, and a free appstore credit can hook you on apps—or just get you in the habit of using Amazon from your phone.
  • Customer discussion forums encourage customers to return and engage on the site.
  • The KDP community forum engages many self-published authors. It’s not just readers Amazon is engaging.
  • The sales and royalty reports also engage authors. Once you dive into self-publishing, it’s a challenge to not check on those reports constantly. Kindle Unlimited’s new pages read policy makes the reporting even more engaging, since pages are likely to be read throughout the day. Sales rank is another number that engages authors.
  • Although Amazon has Twitter and Facebook accounts both for customers and for authors, direct social media posts are a minor component of Amazon’s marketing platform. These seem to be there more for the customers who love social media or who want some way to engage with Amazon. Though if you explore Amazon’s Twitter and Facebook accounts, you will see that they post regular content and there is customer engagement there. And although the following is large by a typical author’s standards, compared to how many hits Amazon gets per day, it’s tiny in that regard.
  • Amazon launched a new Amazon Giveaway program, where anyone can run a contest by purchasing a new product and having Amazon ship the product directly to the winner. Contest sponsors (for books, usually these are authors) tweet to announce the giveaway with the #AmazonGiveaway hashtag, and often other Twitter users retweet the contests. This way, authors and Twitter users who love to promote contests do all the promotional work, while the hashtag attracts contest lovers through Amazon’s name. It’s a clever and effective use of Twitter hashtags.

HOW DOES THIS HELP YOU?

For one, you too can thrive on content engagement. Obviously, not in quite the same way.

To start with, you should have more than just one kind of content:

  • Your books are content, of course. That’s your main content.
  • Additional content can come in the form of a content-rich website, for example.

Creating a content-rich website is relatively easy, and you can find relevant nonfiction content even if your book is fiction.

Start out with a simple free blog and make regular (don’t have to be too long or too frequent) posts that have content relevant for your target audience. Blogging can start out very slow, but after months things can really accelerate. If you succeed in generating search engine traffic, you can pull in 100+ visitors per day from your target audience who didn’t already know about your book. My website began as a simple, free WordPress blog, and after a couple of years of growing, it nets hundreds of visitors per day.

Content is king. That is, what really matters most is quality content that your target audience will appreciate. That’s true about your books and also about your website, and any other kind of marketing content that you create. Some people can fool search engines with SEO tricks in the short run, but content rules in the long run.

Once you have the content, you want content engagement. You want your target audience to interact with your content.

Engaging your target audience brings multiple benefits:

  • If your readers regularly interact with you, they will be aware of your future releases. But you need engaging content to attract them and hold their interest.
  • Lively interaction looks good to newcomers, and helps invite their participation, so that your engaging content reaches beyond your existing fan base.
  • Branding, a huge part of marketing, requires repetition. Content engagement gives you that repetition, helping your brand your name and image as author.
  • Your audience gets a chance to see your personality. That personal touch can help drive sales, and is more likely to inspire reviews.

Here are some examples of how, like Amazon, you can engage your customers with content:

  • It’s kind of funny, but creating new content also helps with content engagement. Each time you release a new book (or even a story), it gives you another chance to engage your audience with it (and grow your audience, too). It’s another chance to create anticipation, do a cover reveal, and invite feedback. You also get new exposure in Amazon’s new release categories each time you release a new book (or a different edition of the same book).
  • Blogging provides a regular supply of new content to help engage your audience. Amazon is constantly engaging customers with new products or new programs. Your blog helps you regularly (even once a week is regular) provide opportunities to get discovered by new potential readers and to interact further with current fans. If the content is rich, you have good long-term potential for search engine discovery.
  • Another way to engage your audience is to request feedback. Amazon seeks feedback from customers via reviews. Authors can ask for feedback on cover reveals, blurb reveals, ideas for future stories, etc. In addition to engaging your audience, this can help create buzz for new releases or works-in-progress.
  • You can create an email newsletter, following Amazon’s example. Amazon includes valuable content, like tips, stories, or promotional discounts, in its email newsletter to make it worthwhile to join the newsletter and to check it out. That’s what you need: an incentive for fans to subscribe and to keep checking it out once a month or so.
  • Amazon provides good customer service, with a good return policy. Authors can also supply good personal service. Content engagement lets you provide that personal touch, and show your personality and character. Personal interactions, online and in person, improve an author’s chances for sales and reviews.
  • Much like Amazon, authors can offer short-term promotional prices. But, unlike Amazon, which already has a large following, authors must either externally advertise their promotional prices, or must grow a large subscriber base (such as through an email newsletter or an engaged online following). One thing Amazon likes to do is offer a discount on a product that’s highly likely to lead to additional sales. Series authors, for example, can discount the first in a series, hoping that readers will want to read the rest of the series.
  • Amazon is often creating buzz. Some new program or revised program has Amazon in the news much of the time. What are you doing that’s new? What are you doing that’s newsworthy? If you get yourself some media coverage, you also get to mention your book in the news. Good old-fashioned media coverage can offer nice exposure. Start small and local, where you’re more likely to have opportunities, and work your way outward as you gain experience.
  • You can hold contests. You can run an Amazon Giveaway for a print book, or a Goodreads Giveaway, or hold some other kind of contest.
  • Follow Amazon, Amazon KDP, and CreateSpace at Facebook and Twitter. You’ll get good ideas for ways to use these tools to engage your audience. Study how often they post, whether to include images, how they use images, what size images they use, etc.

OTHER MARKETING YOU CAN LEARN

There is more you can learn from Amazon about book marketing. Here are a few more examples:

  • When you shop at Amazon, what you see are pages of cover thumbnails. Amazon strives to create visual interest. It’s a strong part of marketing. Your own cover thumbnail can help you with this. But so can the images that you use for blog or Facebook posts, for example.
  • If you read a long book description at Amazon, you’ll note that it often gets cut off. Customers must click a Read More link to read the rest. What Amazon is telling you is that customers have a short attention span, and won’t read too much just to decide which book to read. The Read More flag is saying, “Make sure your most important information comes before this part of your description.” (Otherwise, most people won’t see it.)
  • By organizing the bestsellers in subcategories, Amazon is the perfect repository for you to research how to write and sell a book in the genre or category of your choice. Study the covers, titles, blurbs, Look Insides, biographies, author photos, and product pages. Find those authors online and see what their author pages look like and learn their marketing strategies.

The next time you find yourself interested in a new product at Amazon, stop and think about how you got interested in that product. Is there a lesson that you can learn here? There probably is.

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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Jun 21 2015

Marketing your book on Father’s Day and other holidays

Images from ShutterStock.

Images from ShutterStock.

MARKETING BOOKS NEAR HOLIDAYS

Father’s Day and other holidays can be book marketing opportunities.

Did you take advantage of this book marketing opportunity this Father’s Day? You could have.

If not, Independence Day in the US is coming up soon.

So how could Father’s Day be a book marketing opportunity?

Here are a few ways:

  • Your book might make for a nice gift for dads.
  • The father-son relationship may be a significant part of your novel.
  • Your nonfiction book might relate to tools, classic cars, or something that many fathers may enjoy.

If your book might make for a nice Father’s Day gift, you have the opportunity to say, basically, “Here’s a Father’s Day gift idea,” instead of another, “Check out my book,” message.

Or you might put your book on sale temporarily and advertise the promotion. You can advertise not just that your book is on sale, but that it would be a nice gift for dads.

Check out this example on Read Tuesday, which collected some Father’s Day gift book ideas.

Some authors use the holidays which best relate to their books to get media coverage through press releases. Local papers are looking for holiday themed articles, and your book’s relevance to a holiday might be a good fit. You don’t know until you try.

But Father’s Day is just one of many holidays:

  • December 31, New Year’s Eve. Great for books that tie into New Year’s resolutions.
  • February 14, Valentine’s Day. This one may be too obvious.
  • March 17, St. Patrick’s Day. Have an Irish theme to your book? Is part of your book set in Ireland?
  • March/April, Easter Sunday. One of many religious holidays.
  • April 1, April Fool’s Day. I suppose you could even use a practical joke as part of your marketing strategy.
  • May 5, Cinco de Mayo. But if you have a book that relates to Mexico in some way, beware that May 5 is not Mexico’s Independence Day (which falls on September 16, another opportunity to market your books a few months later).
  • May, Mother’s Day. Would your book make a nice gift for moms? Does it feature a strong mother-daughter relationship?
  • June, Father’s Day. Covered that earlier.
  • July 4, Independence Day. Patriotic books get a few holidays, including Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day.
  • November, Thanksgiving. It could be a book that relates to the spirit of giving thanks.
  • December 25, Christmas. A huge day in the US for gift giving, even with gifts that don’t directly relate to the religious holiday.

Which days (possibly not on my short list) are the best fit for your books? Those times offer your book marketing opportunities. Look out for them.

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.

Jun 14 2015

How to Market a Book with a Blog

Image from ShutterStock. Space Age font from http://mickeyavenue.com/fonts/spaceage/license.php.

Image from ShutterStock. Space Age font from http://mickeyavenue.com/fonts/spaceage/license.php.

MARKET A BOOK WITH A BLOG

My self-publishing blog currently has 150,000 views, with 350 to 550 views per day, and 5990 followers.

Most of my blog traffic comes from search engines, so it functions as a content-rich website.

A blog can be a highly effective marketing tool if you can draw in hundreds of visitors per day.

People discovering your blog through search engines don’t already know about your book, so this can be great exposure for your book.

It’s not just for nonfiction books.

In fact, I just launched a new blog for a science fiction series that I’m working on, called Alien Curiosity.

You can check it out here, in case you want to see what my blog for a coming fiction series looks like:

http://aliencuriosity.com

Feel free to follow my Alien Curiosity blog to see how I use it.

Note that I launched my blog months in advance of when I will release my science fiction series.

My goal is to have hundreds of visitors discovering my Alien Curiosity blog before I publish the first volume.

BLOGGING TIPS FOR AUTHORS

Realize that you have two separate audiences:

  • There is your current audience of followers and fans, who are likely to give your post initial views, likes, comments, and occasional shares.
  • Then there is your future audience who may discover your post through search engines.

Both audiences are important:

  • Fans and followers make your blog lively and interactive through likes, comments, and shares, and followers who are genuinely interested in your writing can give you initial support when you launch a new book.
  • Search engine visitors are people in your target audience who don’t already know about your book, which gives your blog a very wide and powerful reach.

Choose your content with both audiences in mind:

  • Prepare content that is likely to draw in search engine visitors from your target audience (so the content needs to be relevant to your book and its audience).
  • But the content also needs to interest and engage your current following (and that audience may be somewhat different from the audience for your book; many may be bloggers themselves, so you may share common writing interests, for example).

How to interpret your blogging stats:

  • In the early months, views, likes, follows, and shares will probably be scarce. Even the best blogs often start out very slow. Don’t sweat this data.
  • You start with zero followers, just like everyone else. It will take time, many posts, and even marketing your own blog (include a link in your book along with a reason to visit—it works both ways) to slowly gain traction. Don’t sweat the beginning.
  • The key is that blog stats can accelerate after months of blogging. If you can get your blog stats to steadily grow, this is a positive indicator.
  • Once you have several posts, look at the visitors you’re getting (or not getting) from search engines. If your search engine traffic is steadily growing (even if slowly), your blog has excellent long-term potential.

Your blog has two goals:

  • Slowly build a following and grow your views, likes, comments, and shares.
  • Strive to get 100+ daily visitors to find your blog through search engines (and don’t stop there). 100 daily visitors means that 3000 people who didn’t know about your book are discovering your blog every month.

Remember, these are long-term goals. It doesn’t happen overnight.

To help grow your following, be interactive. Find blogs that interest you. Read those blogs, like them if you enjoy them, leave comments, and reblog those that may be relevant for your followers.

To help gain search engine traction:

  • Content is king and will survive longer than the latest SEO tactics. Write good content that will attract your target audience. (For fiction books, you can still find relevant nonfiction content to blog about.)
  • You needn’t post every day. Once weekly can work. Posts needn’t be lengthy. Around 1000 words can work. (But there isn’t just one size that works. Some bloggers are highly effective with a very short daily post, others are effective with much longer, less frequent posts. But if you write very long posts, you really need great content to attract readers.)
  • Choose 3-5 broad categories that fit your article well. Choose 3-5 specific tags that are perfect fits for your article. For example, I wrote a post about Amazon & Goodreads giveaways. My categories were quite broad (yet relevant): Amazon, books, contest, giveaway, and Goodreads. My tags were much more specific: Amazon giveaway, book contest, free books, and Goodreads giveaway. I like for the tags to extend the categories by adding one or two words to make a keyphrase. But that’s not the only way to do it: See this WordPress example.
  • Start typing keyphrases into the Google search field and it will pull up popular matches. You at least want to make sure that your keyphrase is searched for daily. (Google also has apps to help you judge popularity. But you also have to consider, would you rather be on page 12 of the most popular keyphrase, or page 2 of a less popular one that’s still searched hundreds of times per day?)
  • The keywords and keyphrases that you used for categories and tags should appear quite naturally in the content of your post. Your post should have headings or subheadings. Chances are that one or more of these headings can include those keywords; other keywords will fit into the body text. First and foremost, your post needs to read well (and definitely not like a jumble of keywords). And you don’t want to overdo it. (Google can smell a rat.) The keywords and keyphrases should be a natural fit for your content, and if so, it should be easy to use them in a natural way.
  • Write your post so that it’s skim-friendly. That’s right, most people don’t read every blog article in its entirety, but skim through it. They skim to pick up the main points, to see how much the article interests them, and to decide which parts to read. They might read all of it, but you can’t count on everyone reading every article in its entirety. So make it skim-friendly. Use headings and subheadings to help organize your content. Use bullet points. Use boldface, italics, and color. But use them sparingly so that it’s effective. You can even use images as a visual aid.
  • Every post should have at least one relevant image. That visual appeal helps people decide which articles in their WordPress Reader to check out. You can also use the images for your posts to brand your image as a blogger; you just need a consistent style.

Be patient. You can’t build Rome in a day, not even a blog about Rome. 🙂

Many bloggers give up after a few months, not realizing that their blog stats may accelerate at some point. (If you stick with it, the dropout rate actually works in your favor.)

Do research:

  • Check out other blogs. See how other bloggers use their blogs effectively. There are many different ways to do it well. You can find great ideas just by checking out other blogs and interacting with other bloggers.
  • Try to learn a little SEO. It’s not really about knowing the latest trends, but about finding things that are likely to work long-term. Those who try to use SEO to fool Google often plummet way down the lists once Google catches on. Those who have great content are likely to rise to the top over time. But there are ways to help present great content in a way that’s search engine friendly, and those are the subtle tips you’re looking for.

Some variety is okay for your blog. Sometimes, when you explore something new for your blog, it winds up being better than what you were doing before.

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.