Advanced Review Copies of Conspiracy (Emperor’s Edge 4)

Posted on March 28, 2012 by Lindsay

As many of you know, I’ve been running a Kickstarter campaign to help fund future Emperor’s Edge audiobooks. There are a few days left to pledge, but, thanks to some generous folks, we’ve already reached the funding goals. As a thank you, I’m throwing in an advanced review copy of Conspiracy to everyone who is donating (it’s not too late to throw $5 into the pot).

For those who join in, you get to read the raw manuscript on the same day as I send it off to my editor — ETA late April. This’ll be approximately two weeks before it’s formatted, e-published, and available to the public.

Thank you to everyone who has helped out!

Posted in News | Tagged , , , , | 8 Comments

7 Blogging Mistakes Authors Make

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Lindsay

Whether you’re traditionally published or self-published, if you’re an author, you’ve probably been told you need to blog. There’s a reason for that. A blog can be a great promotional tool if you know what you’re doing.

By tracking my sales via affiliate links, I know that an average of 3-4 ebook sales a day originate from my blog (I also make some extra change as an Amazon affiliate when I promote other people’s books). While that’s a small number compared to overall sales, I think it’s a nice reminder that blogging is worth it and can help an author increase the size of her audience.

When I talk about blogging, I try to keep the posts positive, but I know it can be useful to get a list of what-not-to-do suggestions as well. I’m offering up “7 Blogging Mistakes Authors Make” as a general guideline, coming from someone who blogged for a living for seven years before turning to writing stories full-time.

Common Blogging Mistakes Authors Make

1. The blog fails to offer something of value for the audience

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve checked out authors’ most recent blog posts via their Twitter links (often they’ve retweeted something of mine, and I want to return the favor), and I get to the post and think…hm, I can’t imagine many people finding this interesting or useful.

You can “make it” as a blogger by writing about any number of topics. The important thing is that you can answer the question, “What’s in it for visitors?” Every post should inform or entertain (maybe both).

If you’re a fiction scribe, it may make most sense to focus on your genre (you could do anything from reviews of movies, tv shows, and books in your field to interviews with popular authors to making up lists of books you love and that everyone should try), but there are lots of authors who have done well giving tips on writing, the publishing business, or how to get started with self-publishing. (If, as a fiction writer, you decide to blog about non-fiction, I recommend making it related to the biz — a cooking blog probably isn’t going to sell many copies of your space opera adventure for you.)

You may find that your blog evolves over time, and that’s fine. Just keep a pulse on who your readers are and what they want. I started out exclusively writing about self-publishing and what I was doing in terms of book promotion, but as I sold more books and more actual readers started visiting, I began mixing in news and teasers from my upcoming projects.

2. There’s no attempt to retain visitors or turn them into book buyers

Time to be honest. We authors are an arrogant bunch. We think that people will read one of our books and immediately put us into the stalk-this-person-relentlessly-so-I-can-buy-their-new-books-the-instant-they-come-out category. It’s wishful thinking. How many authors do you feel that way about? And, of those authors, how many only became die-hard favorites after you read five or ten books by them?

A blog is even less likely to make a lasting impression. Don’t assume people who surfed in from Twitter or another blog’s link will remember to come back of their own accord. Encourage people to sign up for your RSS feed, to “like” your Facebook page, to follow you on Twitter, and (perhaps most important) to sign up for your newsletter (you’ve read my Newsletters 101 post, right?). And, yes, I could do all of those things better myself!

3. There’s not enough author in the author blog

I’ve visited a lot of indie author blogs that are full of guest posts, interviews, and book promotion tidbits for other authors on book blog tours. There’s nothing wrong with networking with writing buddies and helping each other out, but those kinds of posts on your blog aren’t going to help you sell your book

I suggest keeping this type of content to a one-day-a-week (or less) type of thing and making sure most of the posts are filled with your voice and your words on a topic that matters to you. As I said, people want to be informed and/or entertained, but they also want to get to know you and come along on your journey. If they like your voice on your blog, they’re going to be more likely to try your books (I’ve had lots of nice folks tell me things along the lines of, “I don’t read fantasy, but I tried your books after reading your blog, and I ended up liking them.”

4. The blog posts are infrequent

For a blog to grow, you need to publish new content on a regular basis. You’ll get more traffic from the search engines that way, you’ll have more to plug on the social media networks, and you’ll get people coming back (most people will stop checking a blog that rarely has new content).

A lot of authors get frustrated, trying to find time to blog and engage in social media and work on the next book. You may need to choose one or the other. That’s okay. It’s probably better not to do a blog than to do a half-ass blog full of content from/about other people.

There are authors who sell extremely well and who don’t blog at all.

5. The author isn’t doing enough (effective) blog promotion

Only in baseball movies from the 80s, do the words, “If you build it, they will come” ring true. You have to build a quality blog and then let people know it’s there.

Guest posting is one way to do this. Being active on social media sites such as Twitter is another way. Applying some basic search engine optimization principles will set up your blog in a way that it’s more likely to rank for various terms on Google and the other search sites.

6. Blog comments are turned off

Comments are a little like book reviews in that most people who read your post won’t leave them, but those who are inclined to voice their opinions like a chance to do so. Often, those opinions can add useful information to the conversation. They can even help bring more traffic to your site (the more content on your site, the more likely one of your pages will show up for someone’s Google search).

Comments can be useful when it comes to social proof as well. If I visit someone’s blog, and they’re getting 50 comments per post, I might assume that the person knows what they’re talking about and that I should seriously check them out. If I see comments off, it’s akin to seeing zero comments. For all I know, no one is paying attention to the blog, and maybe I’d be better off doing the same.

Beyond those aspects, having comments off can be seen as kind of an F-you by some folks, since blogs have, from their earliest days, offered commenting as a built-in feature. People are accustomed to being able to leave a note with a link back to their site as part of the deal (if they leave a useful comment, maybe someone will like what they have to say, and follow the link back to their site). Remember the “what’s in it for me?” question that your blog post should answer? For some people, “a chance to leave a comment with a link attached” is part of it.

7. The blog has barriers to commenting

Things like CAPTCHA annoy the tar out of me, and I’ve heard complaints from many others as well. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve just backed out without leaving a comment because I couldn’t get something I could read. People’s time is valuable so it’s not a good idea to put obstacles in their path, especially when they’re doing you a favor by leaving a comment (even if they don’t say anything earth-shattering, the fact that they’re there makes your blog look more popular, eh?)

If you’re worried about spam, you probably shouldn’t be. I get more than 10,000 visitors a month to this blog, and spam isn’t a problem because Akismet (a built-in plug-in you get when you install WordPress on your own hosting account) catches it. Spam is about as subtle as a sledgehammer, so it’s not hard for a program like that to detect. Questionable comments (those with links, typically) get held for manual approval, but that doesn’t take me more than a few seconds each week. If you find that spam is a problem when you remove CAPTCHA, then it’s probably time to invest in your own hosting account ($5 a month at the most) and a (free) WordPress blog that lives on your own server.

It’s good to remember that people are doing you a favor by taking time out of their days to read and comment on your blog, so it’s worth making things as easy as possible for them. Then they’ll be more likely to come back!

Okay, those are seven big blogging mistakes I see a lot of authors making. If you’d like to add to this list, feel free to do so below. If you’re looking for more blogging advice, please see my posts on How to Use Your Blog to Sell More Books and 5 Tips for Bringing More Readers to Your Blog.

Posted in Blogging | Tagged , , | 22 Comments

Dark Currents Audiobook Update

Posted on March 26, 2012 by Lindsay

I posted last week that the Dark Currents audiobook was up over at Podiobooks, but mentioned that it had been posted in its entirety. At the time I thought that was a mistake that would be fixed (the MO for Book 1 was for new chapters to go up once a week), but it looks like they’ve changed the way they do things over at Podiobooks, and they’re posting the entire audiobook in one day for everyone. If I wanted to do things that way, I’d remove all the intros and outros and simply post the entire audiobook file in one mp3 on my site.

I want to continue running the books as a weekly podcast, sort of like the old radio dramas. I think I have more opportunity to snag new listeners/readers that way. So, I’ve purchased a hosting account over at Libsyn.com, and I’ll be running the feed from my site. It shouldn’t change much on your end. The podcast/audiobook will still show up in iTunes, and you’ll be able to subscribe to the feed if you aren’t an Apple person.

This will take a few days to get up and rolling, so I thank you for your patience.

Posted in News | Tagged , , , | 9 Comments

Choosing a Genre for Your Self-Published Book with M.H. Mead

Posted on March 23, 2012 by Lindsay

For some authors, genre is obvious. Their book is a cozy mystery, or a historical romance, or a space opera. Not everyone writes in tidy categories, though, which brings in the problem of selecting a spot for it in the bookstore (even digital stores have categories for organizing ebooks) and writing a blurb that lets people know what they’ll be getting. Nobody’s out there searching for “cross-genre” stories. So, as independent authors who must wear the hats of publishers and marketers as well, what do we do?

Today we have a guest poster, actually a writing team, Harry Campion and Margaret Yang, to mull on this topic for us:

Will the real genre please stand up?

Like most writers, we read a lot. Like most readers, we read some of everything, from mystery to fantasy to YA. But the books that really get our hearts thumping and our brains twirling are books about the near future. We love picturing life in the decades to come. We love imagining how current technology will change, and how society will change because of it. We love thinking about the kinds of characters who will live in that world.

So, naturally, our first novel, FATE’S MIRROR, is about a super hacker in the year 2043. THE CALINE CONSPIRACY, set in the same time period, is about a private investigator trying to save a genetically engineered dog accused of killing its owner. Our books look forward to the future. In a way they also look backward, to classics by Neal Stephenson, William Gibson, and Bruce Sterling. But they’re very contemporary books, with the pacing of a modern-day thriller.

So what genre are they? What are we supposed to call them? We once had a famous New York agent. He spent a couple of  fruitless years submitting our manuscripts to traditional publishers. We saw the rejection letters—all of them from top-notch editors. The science fiction editors said our books “weren’t science fiction enough” and the mystery/thriller editors said “we don’t publish science fiction.”

But here’s the funny thing. Readers don’t care. They want a good story, well told. They understand that genre is a marketing label that helps publishers and bookstores, but has very little to do with what interests the reader. We don’t know anyone who exclusively reads a single genre and we bet you don’t either. And when genres blend, we like it even more.

Once we became independent authors, the most unlikely demographic found our books. Our novels cross age and gender lines, but do especially well with college-educated women in generation X. Nobody knew how to market a thriller/science fiction mashup to them, but it didn’t matter. Thanks to the way indie books are sold directly to readers, the people who like our kind of books could now find them. Our readers decide for themselves what to call our books when recommending them to friends—some say sci-fi, some say cyberpunk, and some even call them technological mythology.

So, what do we call FATE’S MIRROR and THE CALINE CONSPIRACY? Sometimes we say they are “Science fiction for people who read thrillers.” Sometimes we say, “They are near-future adventures.” Mostly, we say, “It’s a book we wrote about a hacker who saves the world” or “It’s a book about a genetically engineered pet who may or may not have killed its owner.” The reader doesn’t really want to know what kind of book it is. He wants to know if it sounds like a book he’ll enjoy reading.

If you have to slap a label on it, this is the book I would like is the very best genre label of all.

Bio:

M. H. Mead is the shared pen name of Margaret Yang and Harry R. Campion.

Margaret Yang is a writer and parent who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan. She loves living in the modern age, and can’t wait for the day when she has her own flying car. Although parenting, writing and reading fill her days, her true mission in life is to find the perfect slice of key lime pie.

Harry R. Campion is a writer, teacher, and parent who lives in Harper Woods, Michigan. He and his librarian wife are doing their part to bring up the next generation of readers. In addition to reading and writing, Harry’s favorite activity is camping in remote areas, especially when he has a canoe and a river to explore.

Margaret and Harry have been friends and co-authors for many years. To learn more about them, or to read more of their stories, visit www.yangandcampion.com.

Check out the books at Smashwords, Amazon, or Barnes & Noble.

Posted in Guest Posts | Tagged , , , , | 13 Comments

Dark Currents Audiobook Released at Podiobooks

Posted on March 22, 2012 by Lindsay

At long last, the Dark Currents audiobook is up and running over at Podiobooks (you should be able to find it soon on iTunes too). Due to a misunderstanding on my part, and something to do with getting independent books into Audible, the entire novel is up for your listening pleasure. I’d meant to do a chapter each week, as we did with Emperor’s Edge, and that might yet get changed, so if you want to grab the whole thing in one swoop, now would be the time.

If you’re enjoying the audiobooks and would like to chip in a little to help fund the creation of future ones, my Kickstarter campaign still has a few days to go. You can donate as little as a dollar. Of course, if you kick in more, you can get signed paperbacks, copies of the completed audiobooks, extra scenes, and other goodies.

Thanks for the support!

Posted in Fantasy / Science Fiction, Videos & Podcasts | Tagged , , , , , | 1 Comment

How to Improve Your Ebook Sales at Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, and iTunes

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Lindsay

I hear a lot of independent authors say that their ebook sales at Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, iTunes, etc. are practically non-existent when compared to their Amazon sales. A lot of folks seem to have enrolled in KDP Select (which requires 90 days of exclusivity with Amazon), because it might give them a boost at Amazon, and, hey, they hardly sell any ebooks elsewhere anyway, right?

If you’re happy in KDP Select and don’t care that Amazon is your only source of revenue, then that’s fine, but this post is for authors who get nervous at the idea of having all of their eggs in one basket and/or would like to expand their reach and have fans from all over.

Before I get further into this post, I do want to remind you that Amazon is the biggest online bookstore out there, and you’ll probably always sell more ebooks there (though I’ve come across exceptions who sell extremely well in iTunes, for example, and aren’t that hot at Amazon). For myself, I earn $X,XXX a month at Amazon and $XXX at iTunes, Smashwords, and Barnes & Noble, with B&N being my second best earner overall.

So, how do you get on the radar in those places? I’m glad you asked…

The Free Ebook

I know not everyone is keen to give an entire novel away for free (and, honestly, there’s not much point, insofar as marketing goes, unless you have more out in the series, so the reader can go on to purchase those after enjoying the first), so before I jump into this, let me point out that you can make a short story into a free ebook. I’m a fan of using characters from your novel(s), so that the story works as a teaser to get folks into your world.

But I digress. Let’s talk about why this works.

Right now, thanks to KDP Select, there are a gazillion free ebooks at Amazon at any given time. It used to be easy to stand out over there if you had a freebie, because there weren’t that many of them, but it’s harder now. This isn’t as much the case in these other stores.

The main (perhaps only?) way to get a free ebook into these stores is to upload it to Smashwords, make it free there, and distribute it to the partner stores (iTunes and B&N being the most prominent). Because of the lag time (it can be hard to make an ebook free for a short time, for a “sale”), some authors just aren’t willing to go the free route.

Once I made my first novel free a few months ago, my iTunes sales and B&N sales grew a lot more pronounced. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, by giving Book 1 away for free, I’m making more overall, because of the increased sales of the second and third novels in the series.

The Prominently Displayed Links

I’ve done lots of posts talking about how to use your blog to sell more books. Once you start getting visitors to your site, you’ll want to make sure it’s easy for them to find your books and give them a try. You’ll notice the cover art for my Book 1s (along with links to excerpts and bookstore sales pages) are prominently displayed on the side bar of every page of my site. I don’t want people to have to hunt around to give my stories a try. The whole reason this blog is here is to sell my books!

I’ve noticed that a lot of authors only include links to Amazon on their sites, and similarly they focus their social media efforts on directing people to Amazon. You can’t do that and then wonder why you don’t sell anywhere else!

I try to include links to Amazon, B&N, and Smashwords at the least (and I’m starting to work in the iTunes links as well). Even though Smashwords isn’t a big store, it’s a great option for your international readers (no hidden taxes), and the fact that it offers every single file format out there is another plus. I’ve had people send me fan mail and mention that they read the pdfs of my books on their computer screens. Yes, one can do that with the free Kindle app, too, but not everyone is aware of it or would use it if they knew about it. I know it’s hard to imagine, but some people just aren’t interested in shopping at Amazon!

You might also try some campaigns to target these smaller stores specifically. It’s a great time to do so because a lot of indies have pulled their books out of Smashwords, B&N, etc. due to the exclusivity clause in KDP Select, meaning you have that many fewer competitors in those markets.

As an example, I first started selling books at Barnes & Noble last year when I tinkered with a Goodreads advertising campaign. I made some ads that specifically targeted Nook owners and sent them to my book’s sales page at B&N.

Taking Advantage of Smashwords Sales and Specials

A couple of times a year, Smashwords does big weekly sales to encourage people to try new authors. You can easily participate simply by checking a couple of boxes. I gave away over 200 copies of Encrypted last week, and sales of my non-free ebooks have been up ever since. I did a couple of tweets about the freebie, but most of those downloads came from folks Smashwords was pulling in via their marketing efforts (they were plugging their sale all over the ‘net).

In other words, I didn’t do anything except enroll my ebook, and I got new readers (and sales) out of the deal.

It pays to be aware of these types of opportunities. At Smashwords, you can also use their coupon generator to give away free or discount copies (for those who don’t want to simply make a book free indefinitely). This can be a good way to monitor where book sales come from, since you can see when coupons are redeemed.

Those are three methods I’ve used to increase my sales at other stores. If you want to recommend any others, or share your experiences with smaller venues, let us know in the comments.

Posted in Book Marketing | Tagged , , , , , , | 38 Comments

Indie Writing and Traditional Storytelling with Alan Dean

Posted on March 16, 2012 by Lindsay

We have a Friday morning guest post for you today, one where indie author Alan Dean discusses the rise of self-publishing. Thank you for reading!

Indie Writing and Traditional Storytelling

When writers think about the book they’ve just finished their mind at some very early point turns in the direction of publishing, after all, writers are storytellers and a story needs an audience. Most new writers, however, do not have a clue how to go about getting published so they ask friends, email famous writers, Google or do some other kind of research, and soon discover that mythical creatures known as editors are gate-keepers of the printing press and that the most influential nestle inside large corporations with baffling arcane submission procedures that boil down to excluding anyone who has not already been published successfully, or doesn’t have an agent they have already worked with, or met at school, university or their children’s play group. Following this news, there begins a drive for “representation” that, for example, puts reproductive urges so far in the shade it’s surprising that unpublished authors ever get around to procreating.

From the outside an alien visitor would be forgiven for believing that writing a novel must impart such great and ever-lasting rewards and social status that the drive to “become published” must be encoded so deeply in the substance of human life that that the risks involved in the naked pursuit of a book signing are nothing in comparison to the rewards that follow. They might even regard us as perhaps the only species in the known universe to consider our own cultural artifacts to be on par with biological offspring, and somewhat above physical and mental health.

This, of course, would be a preposterous assumption, or would it really be so far from the mark? Evolutionary psychologists, well, at least some of them, tell us that just like any other primate, human beings have an innate need to groom and be groomed. As we all know, the other great apes do this all the time through various gestures, including combing through hair and picking off ticks. It’s their way of forging alliances, making friends and seducing each other. Until recently we’ve tended to think we are above this kind if thing, but now we know that we are just the same, except we use our voices instead of our fingers. We talk, and talk and talk and talk. And when the printing press was invented in 1450 we starting printing, and after some short delay while control was wrested from the hands various central authorities, we started publishing stories. And how could that have been otherwise, because even from the beginning we have been storytellers, something that was bound to arise as soon as talking became the way we groomed each other. The best groomers are the most popular; they get to mate more often. So naturally the best talkers get to be the most desired and have far more babies than anyone else; it’s called sexual selection, which is arguably way more important than natural selection (except when the climate suddenly changes, but that’s another story).

So, we’re a species of talkers and we love stories. After all, isn’t that why texting, facebook and twitter are so successful? Through these media we get to groom so many extra people at such little cost in time. But, hang on a minute, why isn’t everyone an author? Wouldn’t such a species be housed within a vast library surrounded by endless stories being chatted out in a vast, collective buzz of interaction? Well, yes, this is how it is, but it’s controlled by a few key sources. Our newspapers, novels, television programs, films aren’t things we’ve produced and shared, they are created for us to watch and read passively. You see, as well as being creators of stories we are also citizens of a highly structured, hierarchical society that controls everything, even life and death, from the top down. We have governments and, more importantly, corporations that control what we see, talk about, watch and even think. Don’t be shocked by this, it’s simply another primate characteristic.

That doesn’t mean, though, that we have to accept it, and back in 2007 a major event happened that is slowly redressing the way we express ourselves. In 2007 the Amazon Kindle was introduced and a revolution began that led in 2010 to Amazon ebook sales surpassing paperback sales. Almost in one tick of the human clock the means to bring the world of stories back to the pre-printing age of oral tradition became available for published work. We were given the means to publish our own books, to share our stories untouched by corporate interests and investment priorities. As with the internet before, speech was given back to the collective us. We can groom and be groomed by whomever we choose, and ignore any suggestions or hints that independent writing lacks status, that a conventional publisher will impart more prestige. There’s a revolution taking place and it’s giving us back our voice, returning us to our real home, the fireside company of a story well told by the self-determined voice of our distant ancestors. With the internet and independent ebook publishing we are finding our way back to one of the very deepest parts of who we are and what we really believe is valuable to share. This is organic democracy coming into being, and there will be no stopping it.

Alan Dean has authored three eBooks:

Spaceship over Vancouver. A humorous but dark portrayal of politics & politicians in a crisis.

Sangian: Returning. An urban fantasy and mystery involving an ancient sect finding its destiny in a 21st century world.

Magical Thinking. A collection of poems influenced by magic realism and surrealism.

He can also be found at: https://www.facebook.com/raincoastfiction

Posted in Guest Posts | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Does Advertising Work for Authors? (AKA We Wanna Sell More Books, Dagnabit)

Posted on March 14, 2012 by Lindsay

advertising ebooksI never thought I’d get a chance to work “dagnabit” into the title of a blog post (or, you know, anywhere), but it seemed to be an appropriate euphemism for the occasion. I asked what folks wanted to hear about on Twitter today, and a resounding number of people (okay, it was just the one) requested a post on online advertising for authors. Does it work?

Depending on who you ask, the answer could be, “No, it’s a waste of money,” “Yes, it made me a bestseller,” “I sold some books but didn’t break even,” or “Huh? Authors can advertise?”

In other words, your results will vary. Personally, I’ve found a couple of places where advertising has worked for me (it never made me a bestseller, but there have been times where I spent less on ads than I earned back on book sales). More often I’ve lost money.

Here’s more of a breakdown:

Types of Online Advertising Available for Authors

Pay Per Click Ads

Facebook, Google Adwords, and Goodreads are all pay-per-click options. You throw a certain amount of money into a campaign (or give them your credit card number so they can charge you whatever you spend each month), and you get to make a text-based ad that will be displayed on their pages. On some sites, you can include a little picture (i.e. the cover of your book), but usually it’s about the text. You get a few words for a header and a few more for the body of the ad. If you have a copy-writing background, it could come in handy here, because there’s not a lot of space to entice someone to click.

Did they work for me?

I’ve tried pay-per-click ads on Facebook and Goodreads. The latter handed me some of my early sales, and I wrote a long post on how to set up a Goodreads Advertising Campaign last year. My own daily book sales have increased a lot since then, so I can’t guess any more how effective the site might be (when you’re not selling a lot, it’s easier to see if one particular thing you do has an impact on sales), and I’ve stopped putting money into my campaigns over there. I think it can help out in the beginning though.

With Facebook, I tried some ads to direct people to the free-ebook tab on my Facebook Author Page. It didn’t cost me much (a couple of dollars most weeks), and it did get some people to click the links on the free-ebook page (since I give away those stories to everyone, I don’t use Smashwords coupons — coupons would have been a good way to see if people were actually downloading the books, though at the same time they make a potential reader go through more steps to get to your work).

I used to use Google Adwords when I was selling affiliate products for my day job, so I have experience with them, but I never considered trying them as an author. One of the problems with pay-per-click ads is that one click can only translate into one sale (and it’s probably going to be more like eight or ten clicks to get one sale), and, as an independent ebook author you’re only making a couple of bucks per book sale (assuming a $2.99+ ebook), so there’s not a lot of room for error. (The numbers are, of course, more abysmal for traditionally published authors who make far less per sale.)

With Adwords, you can’t target as specifically as you can with Facebook and Goodreads (i.e. age, sex, reading preferences), at least not the last time I looked (it’s been a couple of years, but I don’t think Google has implemented stats on what people are fans of the way other two sites have).

As you can see from the things I’ve talked about that did work (a little), pay-per-click is a dribble-drabble sort of system where, unless you’re spending a lot of money (and that can be hard if you’re targeting a specific demographic, such as your ideal science-fiction-romance-loving audience), you won’t sell a lot of books. The good thing is that you only spend money if someone clicks your ad. The bad thing is that you’re reaching a finite number of people, and it’s almost like hand-selling to one person at a time. Goodreads does have some viral potential, since people can add your books to their reading lists (lists other people can see), but it’s hard to gauge how helpful that is.

What to be careful with when it comes to PCC ads

Make sure to target your audience carefully, so you don’t waste money (i.e. when I was setting up my Goodreads campaign, I only had ebooks available, so I put ebook in the ad copy to ensure paperback-only people wouldn’t click). With Facebook and Goodreads, you can target, for example, science fiction lovers only and even advertise to those who are fans of authors who write in a similar style as you do. Make use of that.

Banner Advertising

With banner advertising, you pay for a graphic ad to be displayed on a site for a certain amount of time (you usually pay a flat monthly fee or for a certain number of impressions). They’ll usually appear in a site’s header or side bar. You pay whether they’re clicked on or not, but they tend to be less expensive than the other types of ads I’m talking about here.

Did they work for me?

I haven’t done a lot with banner advertising, because there are a lot of studies that suggest people have had “banner blindness” for a long time and text-based ads work better. That said, their cost-effectiveness can make them appealing.

I tried a banner ad for Encrypted and also for Ice Cracker II (a free short story) last year on the Nookboards, because I was trying to figure out how to target those Barnes & Noble Nook folks. My banners were part of a rotation of ads for about three months. The campaign didn’t cost a lot, but I’m also not sure if I can attribute more than a handful of purchases/downloads to the experience.

I’m about to try a banner-advertising campaign with someone who emailed me when I started my Kickstarter campaign. His ads run on a number of gaming sites, and since there’s a lot of crossover between people who game and people who read fantasy, I thought, “Why not?” Also, I’ll be advertising the first Emperor’s Edge novel, which is free (on sites such as these, I’d think it would be a lot easier to get people to check out something that’s free than something that’s $5, and, of course, people who try the first book might want to go on to try the rest of the series).

In the end, though, I don’t expect much. For me, no form of advertising has been a knock-it-out-of-the-park success (and there haven’t been many base hits either). The main reason I’m still tinkering with it at all is that I’m making enough now that tax-write-offs are nice. Also, I like to experiment with things so I can post about them on this blog.

Sponsored Posts or Daily Blog Spots

Sites such as Pixel of Ink, Kindle Nation Daily, and Ereader News Today are blogs (sometimes with newsletters) that offer a variety of daily sponsorships where your book can be featured in a post and/or email.

These blogs have large audiences, but they’re general readership audiences. As someone who writes steampunk/high fantasy, I haven’t found these types of sites to be particularly effective, but I’ve heard of people who write in genres with a broader appeal (i.e. thrillers, mysteries) having good results. (Note: I tried KND when their rates were cheaper and I broke even with a $2.99 high fantasy ebook — I tried again recently, and I paid more and didn’t come anywhere near breaking even. I believe the proliferation of free ebooks — many of which these blogs promote — is making it harder to sell an ebook through these sites.)

I’m ambivalent about these types of sites for other reasons, too, in particular that they charge a fortune (KND especially has hiked its prices way up in the last year), and I think there’s a lot of authors paying against their better judgement, hoping against hope that it’ll somehow be worth it. I used to work in online advertising and affiliate marketing, and I’m floored by the going rates for daily sponsorships in the ebook-sphere ($200+ in some cases). Even sites with little to no traffic are charging $40-$50 for daily sponsorships. But I guess as long as authors are willing to pay such rates, the high prices will continue (these sites are all booked far in advance).

Personally, if you want to try advertising, I’d recommend thinking outside of the box and getting away from the sponsored-posts sites. If you’re a science fiction author, for example, it might be better to hunt around and find a popular SF blog that isn’t necessarily in the ebook sphere but is a place where your fans hang out. You might be able to get a text or banner ad for $50 a month.

What Really Works in the Modern Era

So, as you can see, I’m not against advertising, per se, but I’m not a huge fan of it either. There have been times where it’s helped me out (especially in the beginning with Goodreads) and more times where it’s been a waste of money. I will say something I’ve pointed out before, though:

I’ve found that once you sell your first 1,000 books or so, Amazon’s algorithms start kicking in, and your book will show up in people’s recommendations and in the also-boughts for a lot of other authors. Because of that, it might be worth losing a little money early on (if you have it to spare) if it’ll help you get to that point.

That said, the 100% most effective thing I’ve done to increase my sales is giving ebooks away for free. Long-time readers have seen me say that a lot, and it’s because it’s true. For me, it’s blown everything else out of the water.

First, I gave away that Ice Cracker II story (something that was effective in helping me sell my first book because it stared the same characters and I included an excerpt to the novel). Then, at the end of November, I decided to go ahead and make my first full-length novel free (since, by then, I had two other novels out in the series). It’s no coincidence that that’s the month this author thing went from being a part-time gig to my primary source of income.

Free works best with serial stories, though, so it’s not necessarily going to be as effective for everyone. Advertising can be worth trying if you have the money to spare. Some folks will argue, though, that the best “advertising” you can do is to buckle down and get more books out there (I don’t disagree with this sentiment).

All right, I’m done talking for the day. Do you have any thoughts on advertising? Is there anything you’ve tried that I haven’t covered? Let us know below!

 

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