Joe Konrath Makes $15k A Week Selling His Backlist

Joe Konrath Makes $15k A Week On His Backlist Titles

In Backlist Then And Now Joe Konrath writes:

These past two years have been interesting, because I really haven't had a new IP of my own.

Of the last six novels I've written, five have been collaborations, and one was sci-fi under a pen name. No new stand-alones, either under JA Konrath or Jack Kilborn, and no new solo novels in my series.

And yet I'm making $15k a week.

How Joe Did It

Joe attributes his financial health to a combination of the following:

- Getting his rights returned
- Free promotions
- Paid advertising

Whatever Joe has been doing, it's paid off big! And not just in dollars.

In the ten years I was legacy published, I made about $450k. In the four years I've self-published, I've made over 1.1 million dollars.

The higher royalty rate, the control I have, and the very little self-promo I've had to do while self-publishing means I've never been happier as an author.

I'm very lucky. I get to write for a living. And I get to do it on my terms.

As nice as the money is, the peace of mind is even better.

I encourage you all to read Joe Konrath's original article, he talks at length about the early years of his career as a writer and the events surrounding his decision to put his work up for sale on Amazon.

I'm curious, how many of you were, at least partly, inspired by Joe, his words or his example? I was.

Other articles you might like:

- How To Be A More Productive Writer: Use A Voice Recorder
- Amanda Palmer's TED Talk: The Art Of Asking
- Short Story Structures: Several Ways Of Structuring Short Fiction

Photo credit: "Week #6 "Leap" [6of52]" by Camera Eye Photography under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.

How To Sell Books Without Using Amazon KDP Select

This is a continuation of yesterdays post, Edward Robinson And How To Sell Books Using Amazon KDP Select, but today we're going to talk about how to sell books either without using Select or by using a hybrid approach.

2. Selling Books Without Select

a. The power of permafree

There are many ways to use the permafree strategy (see: Writers: How To Use Permanently Free Books To Increase Sales).

- Make the first book of a series permanently free

- Write a book intending to make it permanently free

For instance, if you have a few blog posts you're especially proud of, compile them into a book and make it permanently free. I think you'd be guaranteed to get more traffic to your blog.

- Make one of your short stories or novellas permanently free

This should be one that you feel showcases your ability. Yes you'll lose some potential revenue but you could also think of it as passive marketing. After you publish the book you can and then completely ignore it and it does it's work without you having to tweet or blog or do absolutely anything! That's attractive to all writers who feel their most valuable asset is their time.

b. How to make a book permafree

This part is easy. Publish it through any and all online bookstores you can but make sure that at least one of them will allow you to sell the book for free. (I know Smashwords will let you do this.) The other bookstores will price-match and, eventually, make your book free as well.

I want to mention that I don't know how Amazon, or any other online retailer, feels about this.

3. Going Hybrid

a. Grow an audience for your series using select then pull it out of the program and publish it as widely as you can

Ed suggests starting your first couple of books in Select then transition out once you have 3 or more books in the series.

After you've written 3 books take them out of Select and, as a group, place them in all the online bookstores. Readers often want to know an author isn't going to promise the next book in the series then get busy with another writing project and never deliver.

Also, bookstores such as Barnes and Noble often promote new books. Ed writes:

... if you've got a squad of books, they help each other out. They pull each other up when one of them stumbles. BN, for instance, has a new releases list that goes back 90 days. You have a much better chance of climbing high up this list if you fire three titles at it all at once--giving browsers three chances to find your series--rather than hitting it with a single book at a time. There are cases in which books enter a state of positive reinforcement where they haul each other faster and faster down the track.

Great advice.

4. Experiment: Find What's Right For You

In the beginning I said we'd look at Ed's ways to sell your books without you doing a lot of promotion. This way involves trying a bit of everything, including promotion. He writes:

... when you move your books out of Amazon [Select], advertise or promote your books in some way. If you know a site that advertises to Nook users, book an ad for soon after your books go live on BN .... Do something. Anything at all to get some initial sales and, with any luck, provoke your books into continuing to sell.

Ed writes that in October he was dissatisfied with the sales of Breakers and its sequel Meltdown (both terrific books by the way). Here's what he did:

- A guest post on his friend's popular blog.
- Took out an ad.
-  Reduced the price of both books to 99 cents.

Ed kept the books at 99 cents for 5 days and, in that time, sold hundreds of copies. After the 5 days he raised the price of Breakers to $2.99 and Meltdown to $3.99. That was 6 weeks ago. They continue to sell at a rate of about 3 per day which works out to around $200 a month. Not bad at all!

All Things In Moderation

Perhaps the best strategy is to move your older books, books that have begun to build an audience, out of Select and distribute them  to as many online bookstores as possible. Put a new book, or one that is under-preforming, in Select to see if that will help.

As Ed says, Select is a tool that a writer can use. It's up to you.

Summing Up

Experiment and find out what's best for you. As Ed says, other folks can say whatever they like, but their experiences aren't your experiences. This is still the wild west of writing and publishing so all anyone can do is pass along what has worked for them.

No one knows what will work for you. You don't even know what will work for you, not unless you experiment.

As Dean Wesley Smith says, there's only one way to kill a career: Stop writing.

I know it's scary. I've been setting my writing and publishing goals for 2013 and I've felt an iron weight in my stomach, my heart starts to beat quicker when I think about putting my work out there. What if no one likes it?

These days I don't need a horror story to keep me up at night!

But that's all part of being a writer, and as I've mentioned to others, you don't have to publish under your own name. If you're nervous, create a pen name, put your work in a program like Select and see if it sells. If so, great! If not ... well, that's good to know. That's great feedback.

No matter how your work is received, if you follow Heinlein's rules then you're a professional writer and that's a pretty terrific thing to be.

#   #   #

What is your strategy for selling your books? Where do you tend to sell the most books (Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Smashwords, etc)?

Other articles you might like:

- How To Earn A Living As A Self-Published Writer
- Writers: How To Use Permanently Free Books To Increase Sales
- Amazon's KDP Select: The Best Long-Term Strategy?

Photo credit: "Winterlight" by Pink Sherbet Photography under Creative Commons Attribute 2.0.

The Best Way To Build A Writer's Platform Is To Write

Dean Wesley Smith holds that writers should write. Period. Sure "promotion can help book sales when done right and for the right reasons" but Dean advises authors:

Don't bother. Keep writing and selling. (The New World of Publishing: Promotion)

Don't promote, just write

That advice flies in the face of much of what independent writers have been told (for instance the advice John Locke gives in his book, How I Sold 1 Million Ebooks in 5 Months) so if you're skeptical I don't blame you. That said, best-selling author Erin Kern is a great example of what Dean's talking about.  First, though, here's what Dean says in his own words:

Put your story out on the market either to editors or readers and forget it and focus forward on learning and writing more stories. It can’t hurt you to have them out. No one will read them if they are a stinking pile of crap. So no big deal.

And if you happened to have gotten close to a story that works, then readers will pay you money for it without you doing a thing to push them. And you will then know and can take credit for writing a good story.

And when that happens, take the credit. You will deserve it.

Keep writing and learning and writing and learning and writing and learning.

There will be enough time down the road for promotion of the right book.

And keep having fun. (The New World of Publishing: Maybe You Wrote a Good Book)

In short, the best thing you can do as a writer to help sell your work is to write. Rather than spending time and money to market your last book, write a new one.

Dean Wesley Smith knows what he's talking about. He has written hundreds of books (I'm including his ghostwritten stories) and worked successfully in a high-risk, turbulent industry, for at least 30 years.

As part of my series on building a writer's platform I want to examine what Dean says about marketing and how it applies to platform building, but here's the short version. (And please keep in mind this is just my opinion.)

I think constantly writing stories, constantly putting new work out on the market (whether you submit work to editors or publish it yourself) is a smart way of building a platform! I don't think writing and platform building are separate; rather, they are two sides of the same coin.

For instance, if you write a horror story and it sells well you're branding yourself--or at least that pen name--as a horror writer. This happened to Stephen King. His first big book was Carrie and that went a long way to brand him, not only as a writer of horror, but of a certain kind of horror. The creepy, oh-my-gosh-I-can't-look-away white-knuckle kind.

Skeptical? Let's take a look at Erin Kern's fabulous success story.

Erin Kern

When Erin Kern published her first book, Looking For Trouble, she sold one copy in two weeks, and that was to her husband! She writes:

The first month Looking for Trouble was published (October 2010) I sold about 10 copies. The next month I sold 12.

And that was with lots of marketing. And when I say lots, I mean some reviews from romance websites, and the occasional feature.

Erin published Looking For Trouble in October 2010. Six months later the book started to take off and Erin saw the book's Amazon ranking steadily improve. What changed? Erin writes:

But my sales did eventually take off. In April 2011 I started seeing a steady uphill climb in ranking. By then I’d all but quit marketing and was basically working on my next book. In fact, the only change I’d made was the price of the book.

I lowered it from $2.99 to $.99.

The point? What sold the book was the book and finding the right price point. Erin writes:

To make a long story short, Looking for Trouble was on the Amazon top 100 for 4 months. Sometime in June, the book peaked at #6 in the paid Kindle store, and #1 on three different lists. In that month alone, I sold 38,000 copies. What was I doing to sell all these books?

Nothing.

The higher ranked your book is, the more exposure you get. Readers brows the bestseller lists all the time to see who they should read next.

Erin speculates that the self published book is the new query letter because it can get you noticed by agents, editors and publishers.

So, what's the truth about making it as a writer in this new age of digital publishing? Erin sums it up nicely:

You just have to write a great book (actually more than one would be helpful). My second book, Here Comes Trouble, was in the Amazon top 100 2 weeks after I published it.

Great advice! To write a great book, you have to write a lot and write regularly. It's a simple recipe for success but far from easy to follow.

I heartily recommend Erin Kern's article, Are Self-Published Books the New Query Letter?

Other articles you might like:
- Penelope Trunk: Blogging And Branding
- Building A Platform That Meets Your Needs
- Jim Butcher Begins Another Series, The Cinder Spires: It's Steampunk!

Articles referenced:
- Are Self-Published Books the New Query Letter?, by Erin Kern
- The New World of Publishing: Promotion, by Dean Wesley Smith
- The New World of Publishing: Maybe You Wrote a Good Book, by Dean Wesley Smith

Photo credit: Pascal Maramis

Does Every Writer Need A Platform?

In the first blog post of this series (What Is A Writer's Platform?) I discussed what a writer's platform is (a way, a vehicle, for reaching out to, and building, community). It is a way to reach out to your community, your audience, to those who want to read your work and will pay for the privilege.

Today I want to talk about who needs to build a platform.

Does every writer need a platform?
A writer can produce the most riveting prose imaginable but if you don't have readers you're not going to be able to pay the rent. And paying rent is important. I have no desire to end up under a bridge trying to wrestle the good cardboard box from Big Martha. Of course, one doesn't have to make a living through writing, but if you want to then you'll need readers to buy your work. It doesn't get more basic than that.

How does a writer get readers? By building a platform.

Simple, right? Yes, but don't let that make you too comfortable. Building a platform is one of those things that's simple but not easy. For instance, losing weight is simple: eat less; it's sure not easy though.

It's simple to build up a large Twitter following (I'll have more to say on this later), it's simple to blog regularly. You're a writer after all, producing a regular blog post is something you can do. But it's not easy. It's not easy to find the time to blog, it's not easy to think of topics to blog about. You have a busy life and other responsibilities gobble up your time like a teenager at an eating contest. But, in the end, either you're working your way toward becoming a professional writer or your not, and professional writers write.

Are you sure every writer needs a platform? 
Let me play devil's advocate for a moment. You might be thinking: No one had a Twitter account until six years ago or a Facebook account until eight years ago. This social media thing could be a fad. And as for writing blog posts, wouldn't it ultimately be more productive if I spent my time writing my next book? And, when I'm published, if my readers want to know what I've written I don't need to give them a website, they can go to Amazon or Barnes & Noble, or Kobo, or any one of the gazillion other online bookstores that are popping up like mushrooms after a rain, and do a search on my name.

You're right.

It is possible for a previously unpublished writer, one with no platform, to become famous overnight. This happened to Erin Morgenstern, author of The Night Circus. Of course she wrote for years and made sacrifices and toiled over her manuscript. AND she believed in it enough to submit it, to have it rejected, and to submit it again. Still, Erin's success was a bit like winning millions of dollars in a lottery. In fact, I think there are more big lottery winners than there are writers who have had this kind of luck!

So, do you need to go through the time-consuming task of building a platform? Honestly, I can't say. You could be the next Erin Morgenstern!

What I believe is this: The more people who know about you, who you are, what you write, the more people who read your work and recommend it to their friends, the more likely it is you'll be able to make enough money (and possibly more!) to do this writing thing full time.

How much time should I spend building a platform?
The devil's advocate is right about something: building a platform can gobble up your precious writing time. You certainly don't want to spend more time building your platform than you do writing! That said, even if you only have a half hour a day to write you might be able to find a way to engage in social media for short bursts during the day (while you're waiting in line for coffee, walking to the corner store, etc.).

If you don't have any time to spend on social media (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) it takes only a few minutes to put up a static page on the web. It's important to have an online 'home', something that tells people who you are, what you write and how they can reach you. After all, even if you don't want to hear from the general public, it would be a good idea to give agents, editors and publishers a way of contacting you.

In the next section I'm going to discuss the nuts and bolts of how to go about building a platform, starting with your online home: your website.

Other articles you might like:
- Building A Platform, Part One: What Is A Writer's Platform?
- NaNoWriMo: 5 Tips On How To Get Ready
- Jim Butcher On Writing
- Perfection Is The Death Of Creativity

Photo credit: BIGDOG3c

Can Wattpad Help You Sell Books?

What is Wattpad? 

For writers, Wattpad is a creative, welcoming and completely free community to connect with readers from around the world. Writers can build an engaged fan base, share their work with a huge audience and receive instant feedback on their stories.

There are millions of ways to make an impact on Wattpad! We see writers serializing their content, collaborating with readers over plot twists, interacting with fans on cover art and working together to create video trailers. (Wattpad, About)

Interesting. The question is: Can Wattpad help you sell books?

It did for Brittany Geragotelis. 13 million Wattpad users read Brittany's book, Life's a Witch, a contemorary retelling of the Salem witch trials. Bolstered by the positive feedback Brittany published her book on Amazon thorugh createspace.

Interestingly, Brittany Geragotelis was nearly published with Harper a few years before.

About six years ago [Brittany] she had an agent and came close to being published in the conventional manner. “My agent came close to a deal with Harper Children’s,” said Geragotellis ... “but it didn’t happen and my agent eventually dropped me.” (YA Author with Huge Wattpad Fan Base Tries Self-Publishing)

That is a familiar story! Fortunately for Brittany, Life's a Witch sold well and opened up a number of options for her. Ultimately she chose to enlist the help of an agent--Kevan Lyon of Marsal Lyon Literary Agency--and eventually sold her book at auction to "Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers in a three-book, six-figure deal that features an e-book prequel series to be released in 2012" (S&S Acquires Self-Pubbed 'Life's a Witch' in Three-Book Deal).

Not bad!

Of course that's just one story and Brittany Geragotelis's book was one of the most popular books on Wattpad, if not the most popular, but it has worked for other writers as well, writers such as David Gaughran. David writes:

Wattpad approached me just before Christmas [2011] to see if I would be interested in making some of my work available there (for free), and this seemed like a natural fit. I agreed to post some short stories, and to serialize A Storm Hits Valparaiso over five weeks. In return, Wattpad have pledged to promote my work to their community [...]. (What’s Up With Wattpad?)

It turns out David's book did very well, garnering over 2 million reads on Wattpad. Although David has taken his story down, you can still see his profile: David Gaughran over at Wattpad.

There's a great discussion on whether Wattpad can help authors sell books over on Lindsay Buroker's blog (Can Posting Stories on Wattpad Help You Sell Books?). The discussion in the comment section is especially good.

It's worth noting that Wattpad isn't only for writers:

During the summer of 2012, Wattpad in collaboration with Margaret Atwood, Canadian poet/novelist/literary critic, held the "Attys"; the first major poetry contest offering a chance to poets on Wattpad to compete against each other in one of two categories, either as an "Enthusiast" or a "Competitor" [emphasis mine]. (Wattpad, Wikipedia)

Have you tried Wattpad? If so, what did you think of the experience?

Other articles you might be interested in:
- Perfection Is The Death Of Creativity
- Jim Butcher On Writing
- NaNoWriMo: 5 Tips On How To Get Ready

Jane Friedman: How To Build An Awesome Twitter Bio

It is impossible to overemphasize the importance of Twitter in building my author platform. My Twitter Bio is my public face on Twitter, it's the first thing folks see and also what they use when deciding if I'm the sort the tweeter they want to follow.

Every writer owes it to themselves to make their Twitter bio the absolute best it can be. Enter Jane Friedman and her blog post

Jane breaks the Twitter bio into four components:

1. Photo
2. Name and handle
3. 160 character bio
4. Link

Jane Friedman goes into much more detail, here is the Coles Notes version:

1. Photo
- Clear and closely cropped image of your face
- High contrast

2. Name and handle
Name: Use your real name or a pen name. This is part of your platform so you want people to be able to find you easily.
Handle: You probably won't be able to come close to your real name, don't worry about it. Just pick something easy to remember and type.
Tip: Jane suggests not putting "author" as part of either your name or your handle.

3. 160 character bio
Bad:
- Inspirational quotes or aphorisms
- Excess marketing
- A description that is so general it could fit anyone.
Good:

- Tell people what you do. If you're a writer, tell them that.
- Let people know what you'll be tweeting about.
- Add some personality. People like humor.

Jane writes:

As far as that third item [add some personality], it’s popular for people to mention their hometowns or states, the universities they graduated from, or other things we share in meet-and-greet environments. That little bit of personality is more often than not what starts a conversation on Twitter. For me, it’s bourbon and usually my city of residence. (I do highly advocate listing your location—again, it’s likely to spark more connections.)

 Jane's bio is excellent. Here it is:

I share links on writing, publishing & tech. Web editor for @vqr + former publisher of @writersdigest. Bourbon lover & Hoosier native.

Charlottesville, VA, USA · http://janefriedman.com  

4. Link

Leave a link to your digital home. For most folks this will be a website or perhaps a blog. If you don't have a digital home and you're a writer hoping to sell your work, what are you waiting for? Get one! (This article may help: How To Build A Platform: Why Every Writer Needs A Website.)

To read the rest of Jane Friedman's article click here: Build a Better Author Bio for Twitter.

Jane's article inspired me to revamp my Twitter bio. If you'd like to see it, click here. While you're there say hi, I love hearing from readers. :-)

Other articles you might be interested in:
- 19 Ways To Grow Your Twitter Following
- Twylah: Turn Your Tweets Into A Blog
- Aherk! Makes Writing App 'Write Or Die' Look Tame

How To Sell 100 Books Per Day: 6 Things You Need To Do

Joe Konrath has just written an excellent blog post called Zero Sum. I'm going to blog tomorrow about what he says about the race to the bottom but what I'd like to talk about now is this statement of his:

They [writers] need 100 sales a day at $2.99 to live very well.

My reaction: Yes! 100 sales a day seems doable. Sortof. So, here it is, six things you need to do in order to sell 100 books a day:

1) Write a lot of good stories
This point, though obvious, bears restating. Part of putting out a good book is making sure it has been edited, proofed and professionally formatted. (Joe mentions that he uses www.52novels.com for formatting his books.)

Even if unedited, unproofed and poorly formatted books will sell--we've all read ebooks like this--at the very least making sure your books look professional will give you a competitive advantage.

2) Have a great product description and a professional cover
This is self-explanatory. Joe recommends Carl Graves.

One thing I've found helpful in writing a product description is Nathan Bransford's advice for writing queries. Nathan gives a helpful paint/write-by-number formula for doing this that got me started and, often, getting something half-decent on the page, something you can work with, is half the battle.

3) Price your book right
It's devilishly hard to determine what is a good price for a book. Joe writes, "Currently I'm $3.99 for novels, $2.99 for novellas (over 10k words) and story collections, and 99 cents for short stories. But this isn't set in stone."

How ebooks should be priced is a hotly debated issue. One thing I will say is, given the changes in Amazon's ranking algorithm, it's not worth pricing any novel-length work below $2.99. How high you want to go is up to you.

4) Promote your books 
Have free giveaways to encourage reviews, write guest posts to announce sales, sell your books on different platforms, and so on. Those are a few of the things things you can do to promote your books. Here are some things Joe recommends not bothering with:

1. Advertising. It doesn't work on me, so I don't use it on other people. That's a cardinal rule of mine. I only use something or believe it works if I do it as a consumer.

2. Social media. Occasional tweets of Facebook announcements are fine. At most, once a week. Maybe once a day if you have a new release, but end it after a few days. Otherwise people get sick of you.

3. Publicity. I've already blogged that getting my name in the press doesn't lead to sales. You probably don't need a publicist.

4. Spamming. I have a newsletter, and use it a few times a year. I don't use it everytime I upload something new to Kindle. And I don't pimp my work on other peoples' blog or forums unless invited to do so, or there's a section for it.

Joe ends by writing:

I want to end this blog entry by telling writers: Don't Be Afraid. Yes, the future will be different. Yes, things will change. But there will always be a need for storytellers, and if you hold onto your rights, you'll be in a good position to exploit those rights no matter what the future holds.

I think this is an exciting time to be a writer. New possibilities for sales and distribution are opening up, writers are getting the lion's share of the royalties on most of their book sales and as a group we're starting to think more like business people and are taking charge of our careers. Go us!

Remember, in order to write a lot of good books we have to follow Heinlein's first rule: Writer's write. I hope you all have a productive day. Cheers!

Related reading:
- Kobo's Self-Publishing Portal: Report From A Beta Tester
- Query Tracker: Keep Track Of Your Stories
- 10 Reasons Why Stories Get Rejected

How Important Is It To Promote Your Books?

Book Promotion

Kris Rusch says: not very. She writes:

The person who disagreed with me ... was convinced I didn’t know what I was talking about when it came to the necessity of promoting work, particularly for a new writer. The writer actually said that I had never had a point in my career where I was unknown, which made me laugh. Um, we were all beginning writers once upon a time.

The writer challenged me to self-publish things under a super secret pen name, and was convinced I would understand then why new writers need to promote. I actually responded to this one—I usually don’t—because of the challenge, and because I’d met it  years ago.

I have four things up under four super-secret pen names, things which I put up with no promotion. One outsells everything I do under my name and my known pen names. One isn’t doing very well at all, and two are doing okay. All outsell some titles I have under the Rusch name. So I have met the challenge, plus some.

Because I had to explain to this new writer that back in the Dark Ages of Publishing when I started, there was no such thing as Twitter, blogging, Facebook, and the like. If a writer wanted to promote her work, she had to spend more than her advance to do so. Because even back then, publishers didn’t promote 95% of the books they published. Those books would sink or swim based on sales in bookstores that might or might not carry the books. Some of my early work wasn’t even listed with description and a cover photo in the publisher’s catalog. Just a one line listing under “Also Available” which was arranged by genre.

So how did a writer sell a lot of copies of her book? She wrote another. Back in the Dark Ages of Publishing, before the conglomerate bean counters got involved, most writers (even new writers) got a multibook contract. Because publishers knew it was the number of titles on the shelf that sold books, not the quality of an as-yet-unread single title, that got a reader to pick up a book.

So I not only met the challenge in this new world of publishing, I met that challenge every time I had traditionally published a book with a brand new name on the spine.

Read the rest of Kris' post here: The Business Rusch: Careers, Critics, and Professors

It's nice to know a writer can make a living using her craft without needing to promote.

I wonder though, if Kris had promoted her work perhaps she would have sold even more books. I guess then the question would be: would she sell enough copies to make the promotion worth it. If, rather than spending time and money on the promotion, she had just written, would she have made more money in the end? I could see that being the case.

Kris' post this week is wonderful, as always, and very encouraging. It follows her and Dean's theme of: Just write! I don't think we can get better advice than that.

Related reading:
- Henry Miller's 11 Writing Commandments
- Kris Rusch: The Value of Imperfection

The Vandal's 10 Ways To Promote Your Book

10 Ways To Promote Your Book

Derek Haines' blog is one that I read regularly, it was one of his posts that convinced me to set up my own website, although that is still a work in progress. Here are the first 5 of his 10 ways to promote your books, the remaining 5 can be found on his website.

1. Use a Facebook Page. I made the mistake of using my personal Facebook profile for too long before realising my error. Keep your personal life away from your book marketing and set up a Page. It’s more professional and much easier to manage.
2. Always be positive. It doesn’t matter in what form your communication takes. Whether it be posting on Twitter, Facebook or another social platform, never be negative. Even if you are insulted, do not react. Ignore, and even block that user. Keep what you post friendly, informative, complimentary and of course also add news or interesting tit bits about your books.
3. Use multiple Twitter accounts. This may have been frowned on earlier, but I believe it’s a necessity for effective promotion. It serves to keep your main account, that is the one using your own name, relatively free of direct promotional material. As it is the account you use to interact with friends and probably other writers, filling your own timeline with book promotion is not going to be received well. By setting up another account (or two), you can aim at different target groups to follow and build a new following. Of course you need to add content to these accounts, but there are many ways to almost automate the process. Think about posting interesting bloggers, related news stories or even selective retweeting. Then add your promotional content in between.
4. Use Stumbleupon. This is a great way to get your books and blog posts discovered, and by a large audience. Stumbleupon is second only to Twitter for me in attracting new traffic to my blog.
5. Write and publish under a pen name. This may sound off topic when talking about self promotion, but it’s a great way to experiment and try new writing ideas. Amazon allows publishing under a pen name on your own account, so it opens up a lot of possibilities. I have used it to experiment with writing short novellas in new genres. To do a little promotion and test the market, I use one of my secondary Twitter accounts. If it looks like it could work, you can then unpublish, change the cover and title as well as make any other changes you think would improve the book then republish under your own name. As you hold the rights under both names, there’s no problem in republishing the same book again under your own name.

To read the rest of Derek's article, click here: 10 Ideas To Promote Self Published Books

[Update (Oct 29, 2012): I just re-read the above direct quotation from Derek's blog and was shocked. I'm not sure if Derek Haines has changed his opinion about using multiple Twitter accounts to promote ones books, but doing this is NOT best practices.

Honesty is the best policy. Represent yourself as yourself. If you want multiple Twitter accounts, that's fine, just be sure to clearly identify yourself as the account holder of each one.]

I have a StumbleUpon account, but hadn't thought of using it to promote my own books. Great idea! This is one of the reasons why I love the wonderful community of indie bloggers, they're so marvelously helpful.

[Update (Oct 29, 2012): I never used my StumbleUpon account to promote my books or my blog, at least not in any way objectionable. And, as you can see if you look at the account, I clearly identified myself as Karen Woodward. I'm not passing judgement on anyone who used the sort of tactics Derek describes, I just want to make it clear I never followed suit and that I do not recommend the practice.]

Here's a tip of my own: Pinterest. I've been using it off and on for the past few weeks just because it's fun, but I think it could be a great way to share links with a new audience. In case you're interested, here's my Pinterest page.

Cheers!

Book Promotion Tips for Hardcore Introverts

Hardcore introvert, that's me! I just found Lindsay Buroker through twitter (@GoblinWriter) and I just had to share a few of her tips for how introverts can flourish on the web:

Ignore the people who try to be everywhere (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, every forum, etc.), using these platforms as billboards for their stuff, sending out grating sales pitches all the time. If they’re selling books, it’s in spite of what they’re doing there rather than because of it.

So, what do you do?

1. Start a blog (if you’re like me, you’ll be most comfortable sharing your thoughts, and maybe throwing in a post or two about your books, on your own site because it’s a place people have voluntarily chosen to visit — you’re not bugging anyone in a “public” venue).

2. Pick one or two social media sites to get involved on (I’ve been on Twitter for ages — I like it since you’re forced to keep messages short so it’s not a big time sink — and I’ve recently started doing more with Facebook, since much of my target audience hangs out there).

3. Use those sites to get to know your fans (or people who, based on their profiles, might become your fans!), and also use them to promote interesting posts on your blog. People are a lot more likely to click on a link to a possibly-useful-to-them blog post than they are to click on a buy-my-book link. Then, through your blog, people can get to know your writing style and what you’re all about. (I use affiliate links to track sales that originate from my blog, and I sell more than I’d expect, given that I write about e-publishing instead of fantasy or something specifically for my target audience.)

You can read the entire article here: Book Promotion Tips for Hardcore Introverts

What's An Author Brand?

What is an author brand? I've been asking myself this but haven't had much of a chance to research the question. One of my Google Alters sent me a link to Laurel Marshfield's article, What's an Author Brand?

She writes:

Brands are those vague but persuasive associations we conjure up whenever we think of any well-known product. Mac computers. TIDE laundry detergent. Nike running shoes.

Brands are also the far more complex associations that come to mind whenever we think of well-known authors. Often, they’re a flash of images mixed with a dominant feeling, or a scene from a particular book montaged with memory fragments.

Here’s a small demonstration. Does the name Stephen King conjure something different for you than the name J.K. Rowling? What about Dan Brown, Elizabeth Gilbert, Jodi Picoult? Or Malcolm Gladwell, Joan Didion, Seth Godin? What association appears for a second or so when you first see each name?

People Aren’t Products

Whatever that instant of recognition is composed of, it’s there because that author’s brand put it there. Each association is complex and meaningful — unlike the association you’d experience for a brand of laundry detergent.

In fact, it’s that much-ado-about-nothingness which characterizes many product brands that makes it easy to imagine authors rejecting the B word as too schlocky, too commercial, too huckster-esque. So let’s substitute the word “story,” instead.

Your Brand Is Your Author Story

The author story (aka brand) refers to the complex messages authors put out into the world about themselves and their books — which we then absorb and retain in a highly individual way.

Suppose that you, like author Michael Cunningham, were interviewed by Terry Gross on NPR’s “Fresh Air.” You talked about your struggles with writing, as well as your then-recent book, The Hours (later made into a movie starring Meryl Streep). You were articulate, charming, fascinating — someone any listener would want to know more about, because what you had to say was vivid and substantive.

So, you think, is that Cunningham’s brand?

Read the rest of What's an Author Brand?

How to help make your book an Amazon bestseller: the Importance of Tags

Amazon uses tags to determine which books to recommend, as well as their placement in bestseller lists. As such, tags can help a book climb to bestseller status or condemn it to languish in obscurity.

Nick Daws, in his article How to Use Tags to Help Sell Books or E-Books on Amazon, gives the following advise on which tags to use:

1. Use your own name. This will make it easier for fans to find all your books.
2. Be specific. If you wrote about birds don't just use the tag "Birds," also use what type of birds, "Bluebird" and "Crow", for example.
3. Use the town/city where the novel took place as a tag.
4. "Use tags that have been applied to popular titles similar to yours." Looking at other books, especially popular ones similar to yours, is a good way to get ideas for tags.

I encourage anyone who wants to learn more about tagging on Amazon and its importance to sales to read Nick Daws's article.