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Marketing diary of a new self-published author day 7 of 1095

29/11/2013

Marketing diary of a new self-published author day 7 of 1095

I’m keeping this diary to monitor my progress and success from self-published author with not many sales to international publishing phenomenon. I am advised by the gurus who I have begun studying that this will take about 3 years (1095 days). This is day 7.

Where am I so far? I am immersing myself in the lessons and good practice of aficionados such as Joanna Penn (How To Market a Book); John Locke (How I sold 1 million e books in 5 months); and Michael Alvear (Make a Killing on Kindle).

I never imagined the community was so large or so well organised with its own etiquette and culture. I’ve learned that ‘you only get out what you put in’ and am busy learning how to tweet and have a presence on Good Reads.

My latest bed time reading is ‘How to Twitter’ by Stacey Myers. I’m beginning my first tentative steps into this rather daunting environment. I have 24 followers already. Apologies followers if you get some odd tweets from me. I may not have the etiquette quire right yet.

I’m excited by Michael Campbell – Scott’s book, ‘Goodreads for Authors’. I signed up for Goodreads almost a year ago but then did nothing. I’ve achieved 2 reviews and 3 ratings (4.33) but could obviously do better. I am now beginning to realise that like most marketing opportunities it needs time and commitment.

In this early stage of my global marketing strategy, I want to do some things that will hopefully make an immediate impact (although understandably small). So I’ve registered with KUF forum and signed up for ‘free book of the day’ on two days in December and two listing highlights in January. OK, so this won’t earn me money. In fact it’s cost me 28 quid (pounds to colleagues from North America). But it would be nice to see some action on those Amazon report pages rather than just ‘greyed out’ ‘no sales to report’ boxes. Any way – very excited about the promotions and will report back on the results.

Good news is that I still get great reviews on Wattpad (418132 downloads and 13,140 followers.) Great for the ego but rubbish for the bank balance.

The other great lesson is to plan my marketing well in advance. I’m launching my second novel at the beginning of April and with the help of all you kind people out there providing guidance and advice, I intend to hit the buffers running. (Perhaps that’s the wrong metaphor)

Best Regards , Roger Penfound

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The marketing campaign: Day 3.

25/11/2013

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I’m going to treat this marketing campaign as a logistics exercise – set targets – put an action plan into place – review results. From what I’ve read, this should only take me about three years to achieve. So by Christmas 2016, I (1095 days) I should be celebrating joining the ranks of high selling indie authors - or walking under a bus.

Goal 1. To read as much as I can about successful marketing of e books: to immerse myself in the culture and ethos of self-publishing and to make small incremental steps towards my goal.

So what have I done to achieve this?

Well I’ve downloaded three e books onto my Kindle, all of which promise me that their approach will open the flood gates. These are:

‘Make a killing on Kindle’ by Michael Alvear:

‘How I sold a million e books in 5 months’ by John Locke:

‘How to market a book’ by Joanna Penn.

Each of these books takes a different approach. John Locke’s ‘How I sold a million e books’ is really about social media marketing – on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin and others. It’s about building friendship groups on line and converting these to sales once you’ve got a following. It’s also about building e mail lists of people you can connect with and update as you publish new material.

Michael Alvear’s ‘Make a killing on Kindle’ takes an opposite approach. He argues that it’s impossible to build a sufficiently big following on social media unless you’re already a celebrity. His preferred route is to understand the way that search engine’s like Amazon operate and manipulate key words and categories so that your book gets pushed to the top of lists where it can be noticed and bought. This is an attractive option at first sight as it seems to involve far less work than the social media route. But having played with my own books key words and categories, I think that the approach is far better suited to non-fiction writing of the ‘how to ‘ genre where key words are much more obvious. My own key words include such overused favourites as passion, deceit, destiny and betrayal. Difficult to distinguish from a host of other fiction books.

The third book - How to market a book by Joanna Penn, falls somewhere between the other two. She takes a fairly comprehensive and no nonsense overview of the whole marketing operation. She makes no promises but what does come across is her incredible enthusiasm and commitment to self-publishing. Joanna not only writes and publishes both fiction and non-fiction, but she also hosts a very useful web site with video and audio podcasts, as well as having a blog, twitter feed etc. In addition to all of this she undertakes public speaking engagements on self-publishing.

What comes across from her material is the need to be involved across a wide range of activities which directly or indirectly bring your book to the attention of potential readers . Joanna has been at it for about five years now and has carved out a very successful niche. And you can’t help admiring her drive and determination. I think I’m going to become a disciple of her approach for a while and see where that takes me.

Look here for future updates.

I think my own feeling is that no single approach that appears to work for someone else is necgoing to work for me. I can usefully learn from these books but ultimately I’ve got to work out my own route.

Any other indie writers out there prepared to share your own thoughts with me on this topic?

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'The Guest Who Stayed'. My first year review - lessons and resolutions.

21/11/2013

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Amazingly it’s now been over a year since I published The Guest Who Stayed. So how has it done?

I think there are two reasons that a writer publishes a fiction book. The first is to communicate with readers and the second is to make some money.

On the first count I’ve succeeded. The novel is a featured story on wattpad .com and has had over 400,000 downloads. And I’ve had loads of feedback from readers – most of it very positive. I’ve also got over 13,000 followers on wattpad – a group of loyal people who I can communicate with, talk to about new novels, even ask their advice about plots etc. I think wattpad is great for new writers. It provides a very broad cross section of readers, both young and old from countries across the globe. It’s great to get feedback from someone in Singapore or Moscow telling me that they love the characters I created and they miss them now they’ve finished the story.

People often ask me if the story is based on my own experience. The answer is ‘no’ but it is based on people I knew. They are all dead now but the basic plot is real.

So what about making some money! A big no. This is where Amazon, Smashwords and the others come in – platforms for advertising and selling books. Having placed my book on these platforms, I sat back and waited for the money to begin rolling in. And of course it didn’t. I’ve sold to friends, neighbours, relatives, even a few unknown people I got talking to - but I haven’t broken into that elusive ‘global’ market place.

So can it be done? I’ve spent the last few months devouring e books by those people who claim to have made a great success of e book publishing. They broadly fall into two categories – the social media entrepreneurs and the search engine boffins. The first group spend their time communicating in any conceivable way across different social media to build a following . The technical term is an 'author platform’. The second group claim that the key to success is optimising the impact of search engines by choosing winning key words and phrases and choosing strategically good categories in which to place your novel.

I tend to think that what suits one author doesn’t necessarily suit another. I think it’s a lot easier to optimise search engines with a non-fiction book. If you’ve written about breeding long haired guinea pigs – it’s clear what you’re key words will be. If like me, your novel focuses on passion, deceit and ambition – the key phrases alone are not sufficient to drive people to my pages.

So my solution is to try a bit of both approaches. Hence the re inauguration of my blog (yes I know I said the same thing a few months ago but this time I mean it). I will keep you regularly posted as my quest to unlock the secrets of self- publishing begins in earnest. I would be really grateful for any feedback from other self-published authors or any of my amazing wattpad followers. I’ll be honest and open with you. I’d be grateful if you’d do the same for me.

Call by in a couple of days and I’ll have an update.

Very best wishes

Roger Penfound

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Marketing diary of a new self-published author day 7 of 1095

The marketing campaign: Day 3.

'The Guest Who Stayed'. My first year review - lessons and resolutions.

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