Update on Getting Books into Bookshops

I thought I’d update you on the getting books into bookshops and libraries blog that I wrote last week.

Unfortunately our local bookshop at Diss, Norfolk, said no to displaying my fiction books on their shelves.  The manager told me that it wasn’t anything to do with the content or the fact that they weren’t traditionally published, it was to do with how well known the books are by the public.  She tried to be helpful and advised me that the Internet has changed book selling beyond all recognition.  Twenty years ago she would have taken my books, but now because my books hadn’t been featured in any local newspapers or had any larger newspaper press coverage, then she could guarantee that they would not sell.  She told me with great emphasis that readers need to ‘know’ an author before they will buy their books.

I fell short of asking her how she would know they wouldn’t sell if she hadn’t put even one on the shelf, but apparently authors have to build up a fan base before approaching any bookstore.  It’s like a Catch-22 situation, isn’t it?  If the public cannot see my books on bookstore shelves, then how will they get to learn about them?  Well, dear readers, the manager told me it’s through the media…

We have to go and pester newspaper editors to publish details of our books.  Then we have to pester them again with details of book signings we are going to do.  Then when queues of readers are beating a path to buy our books, only then will bookstores be interested in featuring them.  However, if anybody has written books on local history or the local area, then these books apparently sell like hot cakes.

I took my books away from the book shop and went straight to Diss Library around the corner.  It wasn’t a do-it-yourself day today, and the library assistant welcomed me and took my books and my contact details without a quibble.  A small victory for the self-published author!

I also took some books to WH Smith in Diss to see if they would be interested, but the manager informed me I would have to write to Head Office as they did not as a rule take self-published books.   She gave me a piece of headed notepaper with the address of Head Office on, and that was that.  I don’t hold out much hope, but will write to them anyway.  Nothing ventured, nothing gained.

 

Top Tips for Marketing Your Book for the Holiday Season

Thanks to Nicholas C. Rossis’ guest blogger Ronita Mohan for these tips on marketing books at Christmas.

Nicholas C. Rossis

Ronita Mohan is becoming one of this blog’s favorite guest bloggers—and with good reason! Her posts always have great book marketing tips and ideas. Today, she explains the best ways to market your book this holiday season.

Ronita is a content marketer at Venngage, the online infographic and design platform. She is an avid reader with an interest in mystery fiction, history, graphic novels, marketing, and diversity. Twitter: @Venngage

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

The holiday season isn’t just about snow and families and giving gifts—it’s also a great time for marketing your book.

We have some top tips for holiday book marketing—including what to post on social media and include in newsletters—so you can improve book sales and reach customers well into 2020.

Season’s Greetings

How are your fans and audience going to know that you are…

View original post 1,078 more words

Amazon Advertising

I ran an Amazon advertising campaign for ‘A House Without Windows’ for just one week from 1st – 8th February.  It’s the first time I’ve done something like this, and I wanted to see what happened.  I used the ‘Sponsored Products’ version, and had a daily budget of $5.  I found this type suited my budget rather than the ‘Lockscreen Ads’, because for this one you need a minimum budget of $100.

I’d already had 975 free downloads of the book in January, 2 paid sales and over 1000 pages read on KU, and so wanted to carry on the interest.  Over the duration of my campaign I had 1 sale and 3400 pages read for the princely sum of 15 cents!  The advert was displayed 20 times, and during that time I also had another 3 sales which weren’t anything to do with the advert,  and also 2x 5 star reviews!  These 3 sales and the reviews of course may have been the result of the free download campaign the previous month.  However, the combination of the usual sales after free downloads, Amazon marketing, and pages read pushed up the rankings at one time to 8,350.

Overall I was quite pleased with the result.  So much so that I’ve started up another campaign for ‘A Marriage of Convenience’.  Let’s see how this one pans out over a month.  Will let you know around the middle of March.

I’m off to visit the previous ironer of his shirts today, and so will answer any comments tomorrow. x

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Book promotions worth your time and trouble, and some which are not (IMHO).

Let’s start with the good news.  In my opinion here are a few marketing ideas / promotions which might help your book to sell better:

1.  BookBub promotions:

Yes they are expensive, but most authors who get accepted do notice a rise in their book’s ranking.  The trick is to get accepted in the first place – I’m still trying!

2.  Guest posting on more popular blogs:

Check out the more popular blogs that accept guest posts and write some good content.  Your own blog’s site will feature all your books somewhere on the side bars I expect, so there’s no need to keep mentioning them.

3.  Winning a reputable writing competition:

You can gain some kudos by doing this, and thereby win followers who will check out your books because they are interested.

4.  Give one book away free on Draft2Digital:

If one book is free on Draft2Digital it then becomes free on many popular digital sales channels.  People will download your work because it’s free, and they may then be interested enough to check out your other books.

5.  Gaining good reviews on Netgalley:

These are honest reviews not given by family, friends or by any other authors you’ve agreed to swap reviews with.  They will stand you in good stead in the long run.

6.  Write good content for your blog that people will want to read:

This includes making sure the spelling and grammar are correct.  Nothing puts me off sooner than a blog full of mistakes and bad English.

7.  Add a couple of chapters on Goodreads.

I’ve had lots of interest in my work this way.

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Okay, so here’s a few more that are not worth getting out of bed for:

1.  Cover reveals:

Who cares?  Readers want to be enthralled by words, not the cover.  Nothing puts me off more than an invite to yet another cover reveal.

2.  Continually spamming social media with ‘Buy my book’ messages:

Again, who cares?  Twittering and Facebooking ad nauseam makes a huge spam sandwich that nobody wants to eat.

3.  Blog tours:

You might gain more interest in your book from a tired sloth with a full belly.

4.  Launch parties:

Don’t bother, because everyone suddenly finds an excuse not to be at the party.  You’re the only one there and you spend all night talking to yourself.

5.  Constantly sending out messages for people to subscribe to your website:

Just make the form available.  They’ll subscribe if they’re interested.  If they do this voluntarily, then they’re less likely to unsubscribe.

6.  Signing with a small publisher who asks for ‘set-up fees’:

They’re trying to make a profit, and a part of your royalties, dear author, is the answer to their dreams!

Can you think of any more?  If so, please let me know!

 

 

 

 

Galvanised

This writing books malarkey is okay, but then you have to market the buggers.

That said, I’m going to give Phil Huston a shout-out, because he has galvanised me into action regarding taking my books off KDP Select.  When I recently advertised a KDP Select book for free,  I didn’t realise (until Phil told me) that only KDP Select members could receive free copies.  Also, in these money-saving times, it has caused me to wonder how many people might have cancelled their KDP Select subscription.

Sales of my books are half of what they were a couple of years’ ago before I joined KDP Select.  It’s not working for me, and so I’ve decided it’s time to add them to more outlets and not just the ‘Zon.

I’ve been getting my books professionally formatted by Caleb’s Book Formatting Service  Caleb is doing a sterling job, and suggested Draft2Digital as a way of selling my books on several other channels.  D2D is incredibly easy to use, even for a technophobe like myself.

Thanks to Phil and Caleb there are 8 other sales channels that my books will soon be on: Tolino, Kobo, 24 Symbols, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Overdrive, Playster, and Scribd.

Is KDP Select working for you?  I’d be interested to hear your viewpoints.  Here’s a couple of links for my books to their new digital sites.  Many more to follow!

https://www.books2read.com/u/4XKgML  (No Sex Please, I’m Menopausal!)

https://www.books2read.com/u/4jDKjk   (For the Sake of a Child)

 

Do you like to read about family relationship dramas?

If you do, then my novel The Donor is currently reduced in price to just $0.99 / £0.99 until 3rd December:

http://bookShow.me/B01G3KFZ64

Description:

When you meet the love of your life, the last thing you expect is your sister luring him away.

Clare Ronson faces this scenario when her sister, Isabel, marries singer and guitarist Ross Tyler. To make things even worse, Ross hits the big time, makes a fortune, and moves to France with his family.

But when tragedy strikes, Ross and Clare are forced to revisit their common past, one which they must try to put behind them for Isabel’s sake.

Reviews:

5.0 out of 5 stars“THE DONOR” GRABS YOU FROM THE OPENING LINE By Michael Phelps on January 15, 2016

Format: Kindle Edition

AUTHOR STEVIE TURNER is a novelist from “across the Pond”, Great Britain. “THE DONOR” is my first read of her lengthy list of novels. Now,I am excited to read every novel she has written.

In “THE DONOR”, Ms. Turner has crafted a novel with characters so well developed, you instantly visualize their physical appearances and through her real descriptions of their personalities, through “their” thoughts and words, you feel you KNOW them as living human beings. I found her writing style to be very unique. I have been a voracious reader for over sixty years and must confess I have never read any book that is outside the traditional “first persone” or “third person” point of view. I was immediately quite impressed that Ms. Turner has written “THE DONOR” with each character’s individual point of view. I am amzaed at how Ms. Turner deftly switched between her characters to pen a very touching novel. “THE DONOR” opens in 1970 with the end of a three day Band Festival, sort of a British version of America’s infamous “Woodstock” of 1969. The reader is introduced to “Claire Ronson”, who at almost 19 had secreted away three days earlier with her best friend Ruth to attend the festival, unbeknownst to her father Donald and mother Marian. Her father, a doctor and her mother, a nurse are upper-middle class and devoted to Claire and her older sister, Isabel (“Izzy”), At the end of the festival, having been awake for three days and nights, she has her food stolen, and she is penniless.

We then meet “Ross Tyler”, a blond Adonis, her “Knight in Shining Armor”. He provides her with an apple. He wraps a protective arm around her and offers to take her to the Ferry Station and assure her safe passage home. They spend several hours together, hitching a ride with a farmer to the Ferry boat station. Claire instantly falls in love with Ross and is positive he will be her “soul mate”. Ross invites her to a local Pub, where he and his band will be performing the following Saturday night. She agrees. She knows, however that her father will never approve of Ross, an art student and guitar player /singer in a rock band..

Once home, she finds her sister Izzy is home from the University, where she is a medical student. She tells Izzy all about the festival and her meeting Ross. She learns from Izzy that she has broken off her relationship with her long-time boyfriend, Jeff. She invites Izzy to the pub to meet Ross and watch the band’s performance. Izzy accepts and they tell their parents they are going to visit her friend Ruth. Events unfold from there, taking the reader through the next three decades with many twists and turns, incidents unfold which tears the family apart. The reader is gripped as each character describes the incidents through their individual point of view. The ending will blow your mind! “THE DONOR” is a love story that has all of the characters intertwined. Reading how each character views the evolving events in “real time” through the years is unique and makes “THE DONOR” one of the very BEST novels I have read in the last eighteen months. I LOVED it!

I give “THE DONOR” FIVE STARS, would give more if allowed. I highly recommend it. Ms. Turner is a true professional. Now, I will purchase every novel this extremely talented Author has written. A list of her novels appears in the front of “THE DONOR”. Oh, did I mention that Ms. Turner has used a lot of true English slang, and I loved it.

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The final heartbreaking chapters moved me from disbelief to tears some of joy some of sadness By julz gall on September 6, 2016

Format: Paperback

From the word go this book grabbed my attention and kept it to the very end.

This was a book I could not put down and I read it in 3 hours.

The characters were profoundly flawed and that only added to the realism of the story, the relationships between them all are bittersweet yet heartwarming.

It’s a story of one family who suffer because of one betrayal then as the story progresses you find that there was more betrayal that has happened in the past, it was so well written that I could see myself being one or another of the characters and put myself In their shoes at time I found myself rooting for one character then in the next chapter I was rooting for another and wishing I could grab the and shake them and tell them not to be so prideful and explain to them all they would loose out on.

In the second half of the story the main two characters find themselves reunited in the darkest of circumstance and they have to find a way to get through it all together and that leaves them both reeling! The final heartbreaking chapters moved me from disbelief to tears some of joy some of sadness, and it’s a credit to the author that she was able to convey these emotions with the telling of this fabulous story

 

Anybody Interested?

I’m thinking of starting up a Facebook beta readers group for women’s fiction/family relationship dramas.  Authors who have books in this category and who would like more reviews can join up and receive free books to read and review, and hopefully other members will pick their book for reading and reviewing too.

If I can get about 20 – 30 members I think it would be worth setting one up.  Please leave a comment if you write in this genre and would like more reviews for your books.  It would be give and take; you would add your own book, but you would also need to read and review another one.  If all members are active, then it would not be a ‘review swap’ group, as members would pick a book that interests them.  No money need change hands, as members would provide a copy for free.

Have you had experience of one of these beta reading groups?  Do you think it’s a good idea?  If you joined one in the past, did you find that authors tended to drop out or not participate?

Let me know if you’re interested.  Thanks and best wishes from Stevie.

 

 

A Good Marketing Strategy?

 

Over the last few years I have been writing several novels, novellas and short stories, and have been learning different ways of marketing them.  I am not unhappy with the results of my efforts, but realise that one of the strategies which might work quite well is very hard to accomplish.  It  is a reciprocal arrangement where reviews that we already have for books are tweeted by other authors to get them out there in Cyberworld and hopefully then into the sight of many more readers than we could accomplish by trying to do this by ourselves.

I envision a Facebook group where everyone who joins adds a permalink to one of their reviews on  Amazon, so that other members of the group can share the details by adding the link to a tweet, since Twitter is definitely one of the main social marketing tools.  If the author’s Twitter handle is added too, then each author taking part will be able to see that their review is being shared, and therefore there will be less work for the administration section (me!) to do.

It all sounds good in theory, doesn’t it?  If I get enough authors interested then I could set up a Facebook group with a daily thread in which reviews can be added, and whoever decides to add their review on a particular day then has to tweet about whichever reviews are already there. Authors who fail to share others’ reviews on the day will be removed from the group, but it will be up to each author to check that their own review has been shared by the others, which is easy to do by looking at their own Twitter notifications (they can then notify me if their reviews are not being shared).

I’m of the opinion it’s the reviews that readers take note of more than book covers, so this will be a new venture altogether, leaving out flashy covers and just concentrating on four or five star reviews which previous verified purchasers have already left on Amazon.  How many authors are interested in joining such a group?   I’m going to let this blog run while I am away at the Isle of Wight festival and see how many responses I get by the time I come back on Thursday 16th June.

If we work together we will accomplish what we are all seeking – to get our books reaching more readers.  You never know…it may work and it might also be a chance to meet new authors!