I’ll say it right up front: I was nervous for this particularly personal post about marketing for self published authors. 365 days ago, I made it my public mission to complete one actionable book marketing initiative per day, all year long. I will say this: I worked my butt off. I did more marketing than I’ve ever done before. I wrote more blog posts than I’ve ever written before. I got more twitter and FB followers, grew my mailing list to over 1K, rebranded all my books, and learned how to use incredible platforms like Mailchimp, Instafreebie, and Bookfunnel. I sold more books. I took courses, found new information sources and made new contacts. And now I’m set to turn 365 Days of Actionable Book Marketing into a book and a podcast for 2017. But I did NOT achieve my original mission.
Writer
Action One New Marketing Initiative Per Day for 30 Days Part 4; The Finale
Thursday 21 January 2016
I cannot believe I am typing these words: MY BOOKBUB PROMO WAS ACCEPTED! Absolute insanity. Wow; I’m going to try not to get ahead of myself here. This is big. I need to calm down and make the most of it. So—need to update back matter for The Patrons so it’s link to my other books and to my signup list, get my iBooks page up for On Fire (which means I need to get my ISBN going), and try to finish transcribing On Fire as quickly as humanly possible. Trying to get the rights back to my most obvious next read after THE PATRONS, which is VIVIAN RISING, so I can link it in the back matter. I’ve been putting this off for ages, so I feel sense of accomplishment at getting this request in. Daughter accidentally smashed phone last night; hour on the line with apple, but managed to save over $100 to get a replacement. After that, washing machine flood. Two steps forward . . .
Action One New Marketing Initiative Per Day for 30 Days Part 2
Here’s the newest installment (interesting blog about this word) of my mission to execute one marketing strategy per day for 30 days. To see the earlier post, click here.
Thurs 7:30pm
Exhausted. Daughter talking to me nonstop about Fireman Sam while I try to do my one action. It’s a small one, took forever, but it’s done: I added a few more tags to a few more posts about my recent blog to get extra visibility.
Action One New Marketing Initiative Per Day for 30 Days
It’s 2016; I’ve talked enough about how I’m going to boost my book sales income this year and the time has come to see if I can make this a reality. If I don’t, I’m going to get a proper full-timer in 2017. So, a lot riding on this; need to jump right in. Thought I would start off with a bang. So, I set myself on a mission to execute one marketing strategy per day for 30 days. Sure, I dabble, research, listen to insightful podcasts, but how much action do I actually take in my marketing efforts? It’s a new year, I’ve moved house, and it’s time to start some new routines that finally shift my self-publishing efforts into the next gear. I know I’m not alone here in wishing I could do more and feeling like all my busyness should be accomplishing something. But it’s time to face facts: what am I actually accomplishing? Completing? Putting out there? Not as much as I could with a quota plan built on sheer numbers. I made it simple: Action One New Marketing Strategy Per Day for 30 Days. In writing it down and sharing it with my peers I hope to both make myself accountable and inspire you to get moving, and share some concrete results on my efforts. Along the way, maybe we’ll all see what it takes to really get this self-publishing thing into income-generating territory. So, I’ll be blogging here throughout the month to report on my daily marketing actionables. Here’s to starting the year off growing my publishing income . . .
Complete KDP Select Free Days Book Launch Strategy for Self-Publishers
If you’re going to launch your self-published book with Kindle KDP Select, make the most of it by running a promo with the kindle KDP Select free days you’re given each enrolment cycle. The self-pub community (including yours truly), is starting to think you might be better off not giving amazon exclusive digital publishing for a 90 day period (the requirement to use these promotion tools by entering into KDP Select—if not right now, then certainly in the near future—going “wide” with your release, across Barnes and Noble, iTunes, and Google Play (more on this in future post). But if you’re going exclusive to Kindle, which let’s face it, many of us still are, your initial release is your chance to get extra visibility by hitting the “Hot New Releases,” which you’ll get to stay in for 30 days, until those launch sales numbers cycle out of your ranking. This means more views, which means the opportunity for more sales.
Diary of a Book Launch Party: 9 Necessary Steps to Success
With the launch of my first self-published novel, THE PATRONS, I knew I wanted to do something pretty special for a kickoff. It began online (more on this component to come); but locally, I wanted to get everyone excited and give them a chance to enjoy the moment in an insider-y way. I know how you writers are, because I’m the same, you think, oh, I don’t want to make a fuss about myself, but you’d be thinking about it all wrong. People want to take part in a book launch party. It isn’t something that happens everyday, though us authors feel like it is because we are so inundated with market and peer research. Friends, readers, and the general public want to share your big day with you . . . and everyone they know (!); I worked this out when I saw the amazing social media sharing of the book and bash; I never would have assumed. Here are some pictures to prove it:
Should You Take a Break From Fiction Writing?
It has been my practice for the last 15 years to write every day—even if I only had a few minutes to spare. I was of the opinion that things get rusty if you don’t. I teach this to my students and I practiced what I preached. But in the lead-up to giving birth to my daughter late last year, I decided I would take a break. It was a conversation with a fellow creative type about some frustration on the business end of my career that steered me toward the trial and I thought, well, it’s a great time to see how I go without writing. Maybe I won’t want to do it anymore. Maybe I’ll be cured and I can move on.
Hybrid Author Success: COVERS
Hybrid Author Success: COVERS
As a traditionally published author, one of the days I most dreaded was the one on which my agent would call and say something to the effect of, “Okay, don’t freak out. Your cover arrived and you might not like it,” or “Your cover arrived and you should think about it before you hate it,” or “This is the worst cover I ever saw but we can’t change it.”
On…Ummm…Articulation
Many of us have a word that often escapes our memories. Funny enough, the word I used to forget the most was “articulate.” People would laugh when I told them that, but it was so difficult to yank that word out of my brain that I wrote it down on the inside flap of a little notebook I used to carry around all the time. When I think back to that now, it seems symbolic of a larger issue.