How Do You Get Book Reviews? (and related questions)

Posted on April 7, 2011 by Lindsay

Book Reviews for Indie EbooksIt’s no secret that reviews play a big role in helping people decide whether or not they should buy a book. It’s a form of social proof–in the absence of other information, we’ll rely on the opinions and actions of others to help us figure things out.

Whether it’s true or not, a book with no reviews implies nobody is buying it. Even a luke-warm review may be better than no reviews, since it suggests people are at least buying the book! Good reviews, are, of course preferable.

A couple questions that come up frequently are “Should you pay for book reviews?” and “How do I get people to review my book?” I’ll chime in with my opinion on these questions, which you’re welcome to take with a grain of salt, since I’ve been e-publishing all of four months.

Should You Pay for Book Reviews?

Known book reviewers tend to be seen as authorities, and reviews from them can have more sway than reviews from one’s peers. They can also perform double duty, helping to get the word out about your book. I was tickled when Liviu Suciu over at the Fantasy Book Critic reviewed Encrypted on his popular blog.

That said, I’d be leery of paying for reviews. I’m not sure what reviewers offer paid services, but I’ve heard some of the big internet-based ones are starting to go this way.

While I can see where busy book reviewers with well-established reputations would feel justified charging for their time, there is a stigma associated with paid reviews. Potential buyers might think the reviewers only gave the book a thumb’s up because they were paid to do so, and my guess is it’s tough, as a reviewer, to be totally impartial when someone has given you payment.

That said, it’s your call. Most readers probably aren’t going to be up on which outfits are charging for reviews.

I don’t, however, think this is necessary. If you’re an indie author, you’re already spending money on cover art, editing, and the like. I don’t think this is a good investment. Besides, there are other ways to get reviews.

How Do You Get People to Review Your Book?

Okay, so you’re over the paid-review idea. But what are your other options when you’re a brand new author and nobody knows your books exist yet? Glad you asked. Here are a few:

Give away review copies

This is how I got my early reviews for Encrypted. You can go onto Facebook (there’s a Kindle and a Nook page) or to the Kindleboards or Nookboards and say you want to give away copies to anyone who’d be willing to review the ebook. For best results, do a nice writeup in the post, giving the blurb and showing the cover art.

Be prepared to give away at least 10 copies to get 1 review (it’s just the nature of things–people are busy and won’t necessarily get around to reading and reviewing your book).

For us ebook authors, the cheapest way to give away review copies is to send the epub or mobi files to people or to provide them with Smashwords coupon codes for 100% off.

Submit to review sites

It can be tough to find book review sites that are interested in ebooks and indie authors, but there are some. There are indie-specific review sites as well, though, unless your work has broad appeal, I suggest focusing on bloggers who review in your genre rather than bloggers who solely review indies.

First off, it’s more of an accolade to be talked about alongside established authors in your genre. Second, your target audience isn’t necessarily someone who prefers indie authors but someone who prefers the genre you’re writing in, regardless of the publication method.

For me, an example was the fantasy site I mentioned. Since they review a lot of traditionally published fantasy and have been “in the biz” for a while, it was great to be reviewed there. I sold quite a few extra copies of Encrypted that week, and I snagged a nice sentence I could stick into the ebook’s product description. (Thanks, Liviu!)

Ask your readers to leave reviews

This is the best way to get reviews on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, etc., and these are the perfect people to review your book. Unlike book review sites, or even folks on message boards, they’ve self-selected themselves as your target audience by buying your book. I’d argue that you might not even want reviews from people who aren’t in this demographic.

Of course, you may need to try the other tactics (i.e. giving away review copies) so you can get those first couple reviews to help convince these folks they want to grab your book!

As for getting your readers to review, you can put a note in the afterword, asking them to chime in if they enjoyed the book. Not everybody’s going to do it (heck, I don’t even do reviews any more–too busy!), but you’ll undoubtedly get more people if you ask than if you don’t.

Update: I blogged about this again on my self-publishing site at How to Get Book Reviews. My methods, of course, remain the same, but I mentioned BookRooster too, an outfit some folks have used as a shortcut.

Posted in E-publishing | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

How to Make Money as a Book Blogger Part 5: Affiliate Links

Posted on April 5, 2011 by Lindsay

Amazon affiliate earnings

It’s time for a new post in the “How to Make Money as a Book Blogger” series, and today we’re getting to the good stuff, the actual making of the money! In previous installments, we set up our blog, and we worked on building traffic to it. Today we’re going to talk about signing up for affiliate programs and adding affiliate links to our posts.

Overview of Affiliate Marketing

We’ve touched upon this in earlier posts, so just a quick blurb here:

Affiliate marketing is the internet version of getting paid on commission. You sign up with Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, or other online sellers, then promote books on your blog by including special affiliate links (on the surface, these links don’t appear any different from regular links, and they can go to specific book pages, to searches, or to category pages in the bookstore).

If one of your readers clicks on the link and goes on to purchase the book or ebook, you’ll receive a percentage of the sales price (it varies from retailer to retailer, but 5-7% is about average for books). You’ll also get a cut of other purchases the buyer may make during that shopping trip (with booksellers, there’s usually a 24-48 hour window during which you’ll get credit).

Signing up for an Online Bookstore’s Affiliate Program

It’s not hard to sign up to be an affiliate, and it doesn’t cost anything. As long as you have a website, especially one that’s book-related, you shouldn’t have trouble being accepted into affiliate programs for the online bookstores.

Here are the sign-up links for the major ones:

You can also sign-up at Commission Junction if you want to browse around and see what other outfits have affiliate programs. CJ acts as a middleman, categorizing and listing hundreds (probably thousands) of online stores.

Adding Affiliate Links to Posts

When it comes to making sales, text links inserted directly into a post work best. Amazon, in particular, has a lot options (product previews, banners, kindle chicklets, etc.), but I recommend sticking to old-fashioned text links.

After fifteen years of staring at banner ads on the web, we’ve all gotten good at ignoring them, and funky widgets tend to clutter up a site, but links directly in the content of the post are a different story. Since we’re presumably reading the words on the page, we’re more likely to notice and click on a link in our eyes’ path.

Most affiliates have wizards of varying degrees of sophistication that will guide you through creating the links you want. Smashwords keeps things the simplest. Scroll down to the bottom of any of their book pages, and, if you’ve signed up for their affiliate program, you’ll see a link you can simply copy and paste (it’ll already have your affiliate ID embedded).

Tips for Selling More Books Through Your Affiliate Links

In the third part of this series, I suggested some “what to write about” ideas, such as book reviews, new releases, and lists of books by category (i.e. 99-cent ebooks, mystery bestsellers, medical thrillers).

One of the great things about book blogs is you’re naturally going to attract people who love to buy books. They’ll already have accounts set up at Amazon or other popular stores, so there aren’t a lot of barriers between them and making a purchase.

Reviews traditionally do a great job of converting (turning clicks on links into sales on the other end) for you. If you’re going to do a review, you’ll want to include at least one affiliate link to the book in the post. Unless you’re participating in an author’s blog tour or some such, you may want to avoid linking to the author’s various sites and social media pages. It’s up to you, but the fewer things in the post there are to click, the more likely people will click your affiliate links (you can always link to favorite authors in a blogroll list over on your menu).

You don’t need to create a link every time you mention the book, but once near the beginning and then at the end improves the odds of someone checking it out.

Can You Still Make Money if You Tell People to Avoid the Book?

You may wonder if it’s worth adding affiliate links when your book review isn’t going to be flattering. My response is: sure, why not? Sometimes people’s tastes will be different than yours, and they may want to check out the book anyway. Or, they may click on the link to see if the reviews at Amazon agree with yours, at which point they may wander off and buy something else at the store. You’ll still get credit and make a percentage of the sale.

Also, if you post a review suggesting folks steer clear of a book, you could always end with a couple of recommendations (with affiliate links, of course) to similar reads you did enjoy.

Even if you liked a book, don’t feel you need to make it sound ultra scintillating to encourage people to buy it. Readers will appreciate it if your reviews are balanced, raising good and bad points. We tend to trust reviews like that more, and it’ll be clear you’re genuinely interested in helping people find enjoyable books, not just sell things.

Don’t Forget…

I want to emphasize again that no matter how brilliantly you place your affiliate links or how great of reviews you write, you won’t make any money if you don’t have anybody visiting your site. Lots of great content built up over time plus lots of visitors every day is the secret to making money from a blog.

I’ll talk about adding advertising to your book blog in the next post in this series (hey, there’s no reason to limit yourself to one source of income!), but, in the meantime, you may want to check out How You Can Make Money Promoting My Ebooks (and other people’s too), a post I did a couple of months ago. It talks more about Smashwords, in particular, and how to find authors offering high affiliate percentages over there.

Until next time!

Posted in Tips and Tricks | Tagged , , , , , , | 13 Comments

New Promotion Opportunity for Children’s Ebook Authors

Posted on April 3, 2011 by Lindsay

Promoting children's ebooksSince my first ebook was a collection of short stories for middle grade readers, I like to keep up with the children’s ebook market. While you’re still a lot more likely to find e-readers in the hands of adults than in children, more and more kids are gaining access to iPads, Nooks, and Kindles. That means a growing market for electronically available children’s books.

If you’re penning ebooks for kids, you just have to help those young readers find your work. I know that’s easier said than done, but there’s at least one new spot where you can submit your stories for promotion:

Daily Cheap Reads Junior is an offshoot of the popular Daily Cheap Reads blog, and it is dedicated to showcasing stories for children, tweens, and teens.

“Junior Edition books are in three age categories: children, tweens and teens. We rely on the publisher to identify the best age group for each book. We take seriously the responsibility of making sure you have good reading material, so we will try to filter everything that goes on the site so that it is appropriate. If you find objectionable material, please let us know.

We post book reports on books that we have read, so you can check out what we think and see if you might be interested in reading that book too. In the Old School section, we feature classic books that have stood the test of time, as well as books that our site readers enjoyed in their childhood.

While the blog predominantly features traditionally published ebooks, they are open to sharing finds from indie authors. A review of my “Goblin Brothers” stories will appear there later this week.

All ebooks must be $5 or less to be considered.

You can reach Paula, the blogger, at jrdailycheapreads AT gmail.com. She says, “I will respond, but sometimes it takes a while as I get about 25 e-mails a day.  And with a full-time job and the sites, I don’t have much excess time!”

 

Posted in Book Marketing | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Flash Gold ($0.99 Steampunk Novella) out and Amazon Gift Certificate Winner

Posted on April 1, 2011 by Lindsay

Just a quick news post for today.

First off, thank you to the folks who signed up for my newsletter over the last couple weeks. Thanks to a highly sophisticated random drawing technique (AKA closing my eyes and pointing at the screen), we have a winner for the $100 Amazon gift certificate:

Christy Knight

Congratulations!

In other news, my steampunk novella, Flash Gold, is up on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords (it’ll be a few weeks before it gets into the Apple and Sony stores). I’ll post an excerpt over the weekend, but it’s only $0.99 if you want to give it a try.

Thanks, everyone!

 

Posted in Ebook News | 3 Comments

Benefits of Publishing Multiple Ebooks

Posted on March 30, 2011 by Lindsay

Once you publish your first ebook, you’ve got to promote it, right?

Naturally! But…sometimes we get caught up in marketing and blogging and checking sales stats obsessively (I never had this problem, of course… *cough*) that we get distracted from writing the next book.

Most authors doing well with e-publishing, however, have multiple titles available. When we looked at the most popular genres out there, we also learned that most of the indie authors selling 1,000+ ebooks a month had three or more titles out.

While book promotion is important, it seems planting one’s butt in one’s chair and spewing words onto the screen is the best thing you can do for your e-publishing career.

I published my first ebook in December, obsessed over promoting it, and got depressed if it failed to sell at least a copy a day. Then I released Encrypted and a free short-story ebook, and my sales picked up across the board, and they have remained steady since then. Of course, I’d preferred they’d be steady at a higher level, but that will (I hope!) come in the future.

Let’s take a look at a few benefits of having multiple ebooks out there:

  • There are more doorways into your worlds — If you only have one ebook, there’s a limited number of ways people will stumble across it. With different ebooks, perhaps in different genres or sub-genres, there are more search paths that can lead people to your work.
  • Fans can go on to buy more from you — If one only have one ebook, you can only make one sale per person. With more work out, there’s the potential that someone will want to read everything.
  • You can see which of your books becomes most popular — One of the things I’m loving about e-publishing is how quickly you get feedback. Three months into this adventure, I’ve already had reviews, sales, and quite a few folks writing to ask about sequels. Compare that to a traditionally published book where an author will be waiting for a couple years from the time she finishes to when the first reviews come in (and even longer to get sales figures). In the meantime, she’ll start working on subsequent books without any idea of whether the first will be a winner or not. As an e-publisher with multiple titles, you can quickly see which ones take off and may be deserving of sequels instead of just guessing.

Okay, you say, those benefits sound good, but…

What if you’re not a prolific writer?

This is how it is for most of us. Even on days where I have free time, I don’t always get a lot written. I’m one of those folks who needs to enjoy spending time with the characters and “feel” the next scene in order to write. I think I might be able to publish two full-length novels a year, but I won’t know for sure for a while.

Some folks don’t have the time to write more than one novel a year. Most of us, traditionally published print authors included, do this part-time, if that, so that’s just the nature of the beast. One option you do have with e-publishing is to release shorter works in the interim.

I have two short-story collections out at $0.99. They don’t sell as well as my novels, but they do sell. As we’ve talked about before, some people are making money simply selling short stories for $0.99.

Though $0.99 isn’t much, it does seem steep to me for a short story, but I decided to try an 18,000-word short novella at that price point. I have no idea how it’ll do, since people seem to prefer novels, but it was a nice break from the 100,000-word book I’m working on, and the length means it wasn’t a big investment insofar as editing and such goes.

I’ll talk more about it when the novella is out on Amazon and Barnes & Noble, but I published Flash Gold, a steampunk fantasy, on Smashwords late last night.

So, if you’re not prolific, but you want to get more work out there, you might give shorter fiction a try. There are no rules to length when it comes to ebooks.

Should you write a series or publish stand-alone ebooks?

I may do a whole post on this eventually, since there’s a lot coming to mind as I write this section, but for now let’s just say that a series has its pros and cons.

On the positive side, having a series means that, for folks who like the first book, it’s a no-brainer as to whether they should pick up the second (and third and fourth, etc.). It also means you can use the first book as a loss leader (AKA sell it cheaply, such as at $0.99 cents) to draw people into your realm and encourage them to go on to buy other books.

On the negative side, it’s hit or miss with a series. If people aren’t crazy about the first book, they’re not going to go on to buy others. Also, new people aren’t going to start with a middle book, so essentially you’ve only got that first ebook as an option for folks. You could have ten ebooks out, but if it’s a series, it’s almost as if you only have one, because nobody is going to try the other nine if they don’t love the first one.

Either way, there are a lot of arguments for planting ye olde rump in ye olde chair, and getting the typing fingers moving.

What do you think? Do you have multiple ebooks out and has it made a difference for you?

Posted in E-publishing | Tagged , , , , , | 13 Comments

How to Attract Guest Bloggers (and why you’d want to)

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Lindsay

welcome guest bloggersI’ve written about guest blogging before, and how you, the author, can use it to help spread the word about your work. You, the blogger, may want to consider inviting guest posters to your site as well.

There are lots of reasons this can be beneficial. Let’s take a look at a few.

Reasons to Consider Inviting Guest Posters to Your Blog

  • Day Off! — Unless you’re a prolific blogger who has lots to say and can whip out posts quickly, you may have weeks where you’re struggling to post regularly. Whether you’re trying to promote your books or looking to make a few bucks as a book blogger, consistent posting is going to help attract and retain readers. Other than a couple of minutes for proof-reading, guest posts shouldn’t take much of your time. In return, you get free content for your blog.
  • New Ideas/Information — We all have our areas of expertise, and we have other areas that we’re less knowledgeable on and less passionate about. Bringing in a new point of view can give your regular readers access to information and ideas they might find useful but which you weren’t interested in covering.
  • Help with Promotion — If people want to guest blog, it’s a forgone conclusion they’re passionate about promoting themselves and their work. If a lady has a post appear on your blog, she’s probably going to promote it to her blog and her social media followers. This can introduce your site to a whole new crowd of readers, some of whom might just stick around.

That all sounds good, you say (well, I hope you say!), but how does one get these lovely folks to come around, offering to submit free blog posts to you?

Let’s talk about that next….

How to Attract Guest Bloggers to Your Site

Once your blog is popular, you’ll probably get contacted by folks interested in guest posting, even if you don’t do any of the things listed below; when your site is newer, you’ll have to convince people they’ll get something out of writing up an entry for you. Here are a few ways to do that:

  • Let people know it’s a possibility — I have a “guest posting policy” in my About section, which is on the header of every page of my site. If I really wanted to attract folks (I’m just posting a couple guest entries a month right now), I’d have an easy-to-find link that said “How to Guest Post” or some such on the blog menu.
  • Make it easy for visitors to contact you — One of my pet peeves is not being able to find a contact form or the owner’s email address. Whether you’re looking to attract guest bloggers or not, it’s a good idea to make it easy for a visitor to find a way to get in touch.
  • Have an established site that gets traffic — While people often appreciate the value of a link, even on a new blogs, they’ll want to make sure the time and effort they put into constructing a post won’t go unnoticed. The reason they want to guest post in the first place is to get the word out, so you’ll probably want to wait until you’re getting 100+ visitors a day before trying to solicit guest posts.
  • Ensure the “what’s in it for me” information is clear — Since people want to guest blog for publicity, you may want to make it clear they can include bios with links to personal blogs, author pages, book pages, etc. Or, if you don’t mind them working links into the content of the post itself, let them know if that’s okay.
  • Show willingness to promote guest posts and encourage folks to comment — Remember, your guest posters are hoping to gain recognition, and they’ll know their mission has been accomplished if a) they get hits to their site through the links in their post and b) they get comments and questions from your audience. Part of the onus lies on their shoulders to create an interesting post, but you can also help promote their post. One thing I appreciated, too, when I did an interview at Alexander M Zoltai’s Notes from an Alien blog was that he emailed me to let me know when people had posted comments. That made it easy for me to know when to pop in and respond.

There we go, reasons you’d want to invite guest posters to your blog (and how to interest them to start with!).

If you’re looking to finagle guest posters to your site, leave a comment below, and maybe some will find their way to you.

Posted in Blogging | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

eBook FAQ: Common E-Publishing Questions Answered

Posted on March 24, 2011 by Lindsay

epublishingThere are a few e-publishing questions that lead folks to my blog over and over, so I thought I’d do a post today trying to answer some of the most common ones.

Do people make money e-publishing? How much can ebook authors make?

Yes, lots of people are making money. As to how much, it’s like being an entrepreneur in any sort of business. Some folks make nothing while others make a living at this.

There’s at least one Kindle millionaire out there, and others are making six figures annually e-publishing. Some traditionally published authors are turning away from publishing houses, because they’ve found they can make more money by keeping the rights to everything and e-publishing.

Naturally, these are rare cases, but there are lots of up-and-comers selling 100 to 1,000 ebooks a month, and if those ebooks are priced at $2.99 or above, the authors will keep roughly 70% of the earnings.

I printed my first two novels in December and January, I don’t write in a popular genre (high fantasy, what?), and I’ve yet to make a bestseller list anywhere, but folks are buying about 300 of my ebooks a month right now, mostly the novels, which are priced at $2.99, and I think that’s a respectable start. Of course, I hope to sell more in the future, as I release more books and continue to work on promotion!

By the way, if your primary goal is to make money, non-fiction is easier to sell than fiction. The examples I linked to above are about authors doing well writing stories, but if facts tickle your fancy, check out this interview with Kate Harper, who writes reports or “booklets” for the Kindle and does well.

How much does it cost to publish an ebook?

Technically, you can put together an ebook and e-publish it for free. If you can afford it, you’ll probably want to pay for a freelance editor to look over it (for something novel-length, expect to pay a few hundred dollars for this) and for someone to design cover art ($200-$400) though. You can also hire someone to do the formatting ($50-$90) if you don’t have the patience to learn that.

That said, there are lots of folks who are making good money now who started out doing the best they could on their own and just getting those puppies online! With ebooks, you can always go back and upload new cover art or a new version of the text later on.

Where can I publish my ebook?

Everybody knows about the Kindle and the Amazon marketplace, but you’re short-changing yourself if that’s the only place you have your ebooks listed. The more places your work is available, the more chances there are for folks to stumble across it and buy it. About half of my sales come from Amazon. The rest are from Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, iTunes, Borders, and the Sony Reader Store. (Through Smashwords, you can get free ISBNs and get into iTunes, Borders, etc.)

Here are the links for the various places (none charge anything to upload ebooks):

How do you format your manuscript for the Kindle or other ebook readers?

Please read my post, Help with Ebook Formatting, for links to web guides and ebooks that can walk you through this.

Can you explain the Amazon Sales Ranking System? If a book is ranked X, how many copies a day is it selling?

Please refer to this excellent guest post for tons of information on How Amazon Sales Rank Works.

Which genres sell the best for the Kindle and other e-readers?

A fellow indie, Derek J. Canyon pulled a lot of data from successful authors (those selling more than 1,000 copies a month) over at the Kindleboards and put together a nice graph answering this question.

The top four genres were romance, paranormal, thriller, and mystery. Here’s more information and a post that links to his research.

How can I sell more ebooks?

This is the question we all want an answer to! Here are a few posts that explain what’s worked for me and for some of the folks I’ve interviewed who are doing well:

  1. Giving away a free ebook to entice folks to try your others
  2. Guest blogging your way out of obscurity
  3. Going on an ebook blog tour
  4. Spreading the word by giving away your work as a free podiobook
  5. Advertising at Kindle Nation and Goodreads
  6. Starting a blog designed to attract your target readership

Those are the top questions I get. Are there any others you’d like to see answered here?

Posted in E-publishing | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Affordable Ebook Cover Art Designers

Posted on March 23, 2011 by Lindsay

It may seem odd that you need cover art for an electronic book, but all the online retailers display images in their stores, just as they do with the paper varieties. Professional cover art can do a lot to sell your book, but, alas, most of us self-published types can’t afford artists who design covers for their day jobs. Many of us can’t even afford those who moonlight as designers!

From what I’ve found, the average price for ebook cover art runs $300-$400, but that’s a lot to cough up, especially if you’re not making money from sales yet. Fortunately, there are some up-and-coming artists out there willing to work with indie authors on a tight budget. Today I want to let you know about two great guys doing cover designs for less than $100.

Glendon Haddix

I found Glendon through the KindleBoards, and he just finished a cover for a novella I’m e-publishing in the next couple weeks. The story is part steampunk, part Western, and I think he did a nice job with it. He went back and forth with me several times, and gave me lots of options to pick from.

 

Affordable ebook cover art: Flash Gold

Update: August, 2015

Several people complained that they paid and did not receive their work from one of the designers listed here, so I’ve removed his name and link from the page.

Glendon is still in the biz as Streetlight Graphics, but just to warn you, his business has grown and his prices have gone up over the years. You’ll have to check his site for current rates.

You may also want to check out Deranged Doctor Design. I found them through a contest on 99 Designs last year, and they’ve done all of the covers on my Dragon Blood series, as well as a few side projects. As I write this in 2015, they’re still in the $100 range for a cover.

 

 

Posted in E-publishing | Tagged , , , | 105 Comments