Tag Archives: promotion

by | June 27, 2016 · 2:49 pm

Marketing Matters: that all-important last page of your ebook

UPDATE: I have decided to exclude picture “buttons”, as they did not embed in the text. Someone with better skills may be able to advise why, but for now, I have just included the hyperlinks. Also, I chose to include only two – a link to Amazon reviews, and one to my mailing list.

~

As I’d mentioned (read: whined about) before, I have just finished re-editing Shizzle, Inc for the fourth time, this time with an American editor. It is now nice and shiny, and free of “kerbs” and “sniggering.” All the dots are within the quotation marks, and new commas have sprung up here and there. All in all, it was worth it.

Along with the commas, the all-important last page was missing from the ebook. I’ve read countless blogs and testimonials beseeching me not to waste this valuable real estate and finally decided to beseech my readers to leave a review. This is what my last page now looks like:

Final page of Shizzle

I have not yet uploaded this new version, so would love to hear what you think. In case you’re interested in how I did the buttons, those are just images with hyperlinks. For additional safety, I’ve added hyperlinked text below the buttons (I’ve read that image hyperlinks don’t always work).

As the text suggests, I will include the first chapter of Indiot after this page, with a hyperlinked “Want to read more?” at the end.

What do you think? Have you seen something else savvy authors do at the end of their books? If so, please don’t be shy – share with everyone!

Thank you, all.

 

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by | June 22, 2016 · 2:00 am

Goodreads checklist for #ComedyBookWeek

Just over three weeks left till #ComedyBookWeek goes live on 16 July. I’ve made the following checklist for myself, but if you’re participating as an author, a blogger, or supporter, you may find it useful. This could also help you develop a greater presence on Goodreads by gathering followers and friends.

Things I’ve already done:

  1. Claimed author status and added my books to Goodreads (easy to do from the Author Dashboard). If you’re completely new to Goodreads, start with this how-to guide. If you’re a blogger or supporter, you can help by adding participating books to your library shelves.
  2. Connected my blog to my Goodreads author profile, so that every WordPress post is automatically posted there. Sometimes there’s a delay, but they do come through.
  3. Created Comedy Book Week event and invited my Goodreads and Facebook friends. If you’d like to add your own event go to Upcoming Events, and click on “add an event” on the upper right page.
  4. Held seven Shizzle, Inc giveways, which have helped me gather several hundred followers and friends, and have resulted in 1,800 adds to “read” shelves. I didn’t know why that would matter until I created an event and saw that I could invite my friends. Plus, every time I post an update or a blog post is published, they all get notifications.

Things I’m going to do:

  1. List a Goodreads giveaway for Shizzle, Inc, starting on 16 July and finishing on 23 July. The ad text will begin with “As part of #ComedyBookWeek, you can win…”. If you want to list a giveaway that’s longer than a week, make sure it either starts or ends during 16-23 July, as that’s when you get the most exposure. Don’t forget to mention #ComedyBo0kWeek.
  2. Update my “General status” daily with that day’s Calendar of Events. To post a general update, go to “Home” tab, it’s on the right-hand menu, under the “currently reading” book stats.
  3. Add #CBW event to the couple of humor book groups where I’m a member.
  4. Add Goodreads tab to Facebook. Directions are at the bottom of Goodreads author page.

If anyone has other ideas on how to get the most out of Goodreads during #ComedyBookWeek, please let me know and thank you!

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by | June 13, 2016 · 2:30 am

#ComedyBookWeek Calendar of Events

UPDATE: THIS PAGE HAS BEEN SUPERCEEDED by the official page. Please visit http://www.comedybookweek.com to view the up-to-date list of events.

 

 

 

 

So wonderful to see everyone excited about the big event! I have started the list of links to what will be happening each day – if you have a post/review/interview happening during 16-23 July, please let me know in the comments below, and I will add it to the Calendar.

Dear book bloggers – please make sure your review is posted on the scheduled date, or advise me if you want the date moved. Once you have a dedicated URL for the post, please advise, and I will update the link (the links are currently generic to your blog).

16 JULY

C (the happy meerkat) review of Shizzle, Inc by Ana Spoke.

Matthew Drzymala’s interview with Ana Spoke.

FB group ‘Books and Everything’ interview with Russ Colchamiro.

Kirsty McManus review of Mind if I Come In? by  K.L. Phelps and interview with the author.

17 JULY
Barb Taub’s review of Must Love Ghosts by Ani Gonzalez.

Jam (Leaves et Livres) review of Do Not Wash Hands in Plates by Barb Taub.

FB group ‘Books and Everything’ interview with J.J. Green

Matthew Drzymala’s interview with Abby Vegas.

18 JULY

Rosa Temple’s interview with Ana Spoke, author of Shizzle, Inc.

C (the happy meerkat) review of Space Adventurer #1 by Carrie Hatchett.

FB group ‘Books and Everything’ interview with M.T. McGuire.

Matt Drzymala’s interview with MTM McGuire.

19 JULY

Rosa Temple’s review of How To Cook Up A Disaster by Rachel Elizabeth Cole.

FB group ‘Books and Everything’ interview with Frankie Bow.

Matt Drzymala’s interview with Portia Porter.

20 JULY

C (the happy meerkat) review of Do Not Wash Hands in Plates by Barb Taub.

Rosa Temple’s blog – guest post by Bernadette Maycock, author of It Started with a Snub.

FB group ‘Books and Everything’ interview with Scott Burtness.

Kirsty McManus review of Shizzle, Inc by  Ana Spoke and interview with the author.

21 JULY

Jam (Leaves et Livres) review of Can You stiff Your Divorce Lawyer by Portia Porter.

Guest Post by Susan Daffron on Rosa Temple’s blog.

FB group ‘Books and Everything’ interview with Jackson Lear.

22 JULY

C (the happy meerkat) review of Kingston Raine and the Grim Reaper.

FB group ‘Books and Everything’ interview with Isa-Lee Wolf.

23 JULY

BRMaycock’s Book Blog review of Maid for Love by Victoria Van Tiem

PLANNED BUT NOT YET SCHEDULED:

Ani Gonzalez will be reviewing KL Phelps(Mind if I come in), Leigh Selfman (Haunt Flashes),  Barb Taub (Null City #1), and Shizzle, Inc.

Ingenious Cat will review Kelpie Dreams.

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by | May 29, 2016 · 2:23 am

#ComedyBookWeek is coming – do you want to participate or help?

Marketing funny is hard. If you are a humor writer, you will know exactly what I’m talking about. If you are a humor consumer – it may come as a surprise.

Before I started trying to market my books, I naively assumed that funny should almost sell itself – after all, the biggest blockbusters are usually comedies, and isn’t it a natural for the word of mouth? When it comes to books, however, humor is a tiny category, dominated by autobiographies of famous comedians. In fact, most ebook marketing sites don’t even have a mailing list for it, so I’ve had to slot Shizzle, In into Action&Adventure or YA with mixed results.

I was reminded once again of how few comedy writers are out there when I joined KBoards and saw the invitations for author cross-promotion. They were all either for fantasy, paranormal, or romance. Or the combination of the three. That makes sense, of course – those are the largest categories of ebooks on Amazon. I was sad for all of three minutes, and then I did what I tend to – take some initiative.

I decided to start a humor/chicklit cross-promo. I was a little nervous at first – after all, I’ve been a member for all of five minutes, but the response has been overwhelming – so far a total of 24 authors have signed up! Not only that, one of them made a banner for the event, so we are all legit now:

humor_book

So what is planned? At the moment, the main emphasis is on gathering numbers, and starting to promote #ComedyBookWeek as an event designed to help readers discover new Indie humor authors. All funny books are welcome, by the way – chick lit, satire, whatever, as long as it makes people laugh.

The rough plan at the moment is that during the event week, participants will post blogs with links to participating books, post interviews, guest blogs, tweets, and whatever else they usually do with their social media platforms. The aim will be to generate buzz with the hashtag #ComedyBookWeek, to help people connect and find new funny reads. We also plan to approach book reviewers and maybe some outrageous ideas as well – suggestions are welcome!

If you want to participate by submitting your book or by offering to host an interview or review, please let me know, or join us on KBoards!

 

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by | May 13, 2016 · 12:03 am

Live podcast on Shizzle, Inc launch in just one hour!

Hi, everyone,

Just a quick note to let you know that I will be doing a live Blab podcast with Drae on the launch of Shizzle, Inc in one hour – whatever that may be in your time zone. Join us at this link – you can even ask questions live!

You don’t need to sign up for Blab, but I don’t know much more than this – the interview will be unscripted, so wish me luck!

If you don’t get to see it live, I will update this page soon with the link to the YouTube video.

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by | May 10, 2016 · 1:20 am

How to make your book permafree in less than a day

Woo-hoo! Shizzle, Inc is finally perma-free!

In case you’re wondering what that means – basically, it will be free from now on, or until I change my mind, which has been known to happen. If you’re wondering why I’m so excited, well, let me tell ya…

First of all, I had no idea it will take so long. My understanding of the process was that you make the book available for free on Smashwords, then go to your Kindle edition, click on the “tell us about a lower price” link, provide a link to Kobo or Nook where it is free, and voila! When voila did not happen right away, I’ve asked peeps on the blog and Twitter to help me out by doing the same. Don’t know how many actually bothered to notify Amazon, but there was no voila in sight after two weeks of waiting. Finally, because I have no patience, and a pair the size of Texas, I did the unthinkable.

I emailed KDP and asked them to match the price.

I hear you, and your sharp intake of breath. After all, the Internet is full of advice on “loopholes” and how to stick it to the man/Amazon, who would surely suspend my book or do something equally nasty if they ever find out that I’m trying to loophole them out of their cut. But no – I don’t know if the fact that Indiot, the second book in Isabella Maxwell’s Escapades series is already available for pre-order, but KDP were cool with it. I got a courteous reply saying that they’ve confirmed that my book is available elsewhere for free, and that in 2-3 business days it will be free on Kindle as well.

It took two hours.

Yay for KDP Support! The second reason for why I’m bouncing in my chair is that after two weeks of waiting, searching the Internet for stupid advice (apparently putting the price up and dropping it down repeatedly has worked for some), and watching my dull, lifeless sales charts, I have liftoff. And boy, what a liftoff it’s been:

Screenshot (48)

What is really surprising, is that 427 copies were downloaded without any paid promotions whatsoever. I didn’t know when this was going to happen, so I’ve been waiting to schedule them after I knew for sure that KDP will match the price to zero. On the chart above, the left-side surge in free downloads of 600-1000/day had cost me $139. I don’t know if this current trend will continue, but so far I’m very happy with the result, which landed me in the top of all category charts:

First day of permafree

With the paid promos, I got as far as 111 Free in Kindle store, but basically in the same positions in all categories, so what does it matter? I would prefer for people to find me through a category, anyway – hopefully resulting in fewer random negative reviews.

So the new era has begun – moreover, I have now managed to formulate my promo plan in one simple sentence:

I will give away 100,000 free copies of Shizzle, Inc by the end of 2016.

I hope that will generate 2% of sale-through of Indiot, or about $4,000 in royalties. This goal will require some paid advertising, of course, but it no longer seems ridiculous, like it did after the first promo (at the same spending rate, 100,000 downloads would cost me $3,500). It will also depend on whether I manage to secure a BookBub run, and guess what – I have applied for it. Again.

Exciting times and exciting sales charts coming up!

(P.S. Thank you, my British colleagues, for pointing out that the price was not free on the UK site – apparently this is why I was told to wait for 2-3 business days. I’ll wait, but in the meantime, I’ve fired up another email to KDP.)

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by | April 8, 2016 · 12:01 am

New marketing plans, a magic hashtag, and a free giveaway

I’ve been  trying diligently to get the first draft of Indiot finished, which has been at the expense of blogging. I won’t lie, there have been long morning walks on the beach with the dog, a few massages, and more than few renovation shows in the mix. Maybe even an occasional Real Housewives of Whatever, but I consider that research – in the third instalment, which is currently under plotment, Isa gets into more filthy rich drama than she could ever imagine.

I’ve also done a presentation on self-publishing basics to my writer’s group – it was so successful, I’ve been asked to do it again in a couple of weeks. I was incredibly nervous, so much so that I forgot to tape it! Such a bummer, too, because I was on fire, with the show turning into a bit of stand up. People were laughing AND taking notes, what more could I ask for? I will be more composed and better prepared next time and hope to post a decent video on YouTube.

As a result of all this sidetracking, sales are down. Boo! I mean, boo-hoo, poor me:

Sales on 7 april

Of course, I’ve learned something from this experience, the most important lesson being is that you can’t go into a house flip without a proper plan and budget, or expecting to do all the work yourself when you don’t even know how to hold a hammer. Secondly, you can never stop marketing your book, because the snowball effect doesn’t happen unless you keep pushing it along. Thirdly, you can get a massage for cheap at you local massage school, and yes, two massages a week are okay – after all, you’re helping students learn. Good on you.

There’s another small but pretty amazing discovery I’ve made last week, which I’m happy to share with you. Have a look at the above graph – do you notice anything? Specifically in the blue “Normalised Pages Read” part? Over the last four weeks both graphs were pretty much dead, with just a few sales and pages read thanks to my regular tweets of quotes with links. It was especially slow over the last two weeks, when I became so destructed, I forgot to top my Buffer account on most days. Then, a few days ago, I made one small change which resulted in a big spike on the blue graph.

Hands up – who wants to know what it is?

Believe it or not, I just changed a Twitter hashtag. Instead of a useless #humor and #kindle and fairly useless #amwriting and #IndieBooksBeSeen, I now make sure each tweet is accompanied by this little beauty:

#KindleUnlimited

That’s it. Honestly, I have no idea why I have not targeted subscribers to Kindle Unlimited before – Shizzle, Inc (Isa Maxwell escapades Book 1) is as good as free to them, but I get about $2 each time someone reads the whole thing, as compared to the $0.35 royalty I get with each $0.99 sale. I’m so excited about this discovery! I’d love to figure out how to target and find more Kindle Unlimited customers – if anyone has experience or ideas, I’d love to hear them.

So back to the lack of marketing action. Not only did it result in lack of sales, but the old enemy doubt has started creeping in and whispering various ugly thoughts. I know they are not true and that Isa will one day hit the big screen, but it’s demotivating. So it’s time I kill them dead with the next big marketing effort.

For this new experiment, I chose to do a solid 5-day free giveaway of Shizzle on Kindle. It will be on 11-15 April, inclusive and I have the following promos planned, some with companies I have not tested before. I will update the list below as confirmations come in, and, as usual, I will update the Super Duper List with the actual numbers, once the promos are completed.

11 April: Reading Deals – $15.

12 April: Kindle Nation Daily – $99.

13 April: eBookasaurus – free; Manybooks – $25; AskDavid – free.

14 April: AskDavid – free (they tweet multiple times).

15 April: none.

Submitted, awaiting confirmation:

  • AskDavid
  • eBooks Habit
  • eReader News – sold out.
  • Free Kindle Books and Tips
  • Ignite your book – not sure if my submission was successful
  • Readcheaply
  • Zwoodle books

Fingers crossed – I hope to get to #1 in Free Bestseller List in one of the categories. Will let you know what happens!

 

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by | March 26, 2016 · 1:34 am

Welcome to the game of self-publishing – my draft Prezi for Melbourne Writers’ Group

Next Tuesday, 29 March is a new milestone in my budding author career – I will be presenting to Melbourne Writer’s Group on the basics of self-publishing. If you happen to be in Melbourne, please feel free to come to Cafe Republic at 160 Toorak Rd, South Yarra at 6pm.

If you can’t make it due to the late notice and prohibitive costs of international travel, I’d love for you to have a look at my draft Prezi.

game of self publishing

I would also love to get your comments and suggestions – it was really hard to come up with just the right amount of “how to self-publish” content for 30 minutes. The Prezi is meant to be a prompt, rather than a comprehensive guide, as I will be talking and showing live applications as people ask questions. I have plugged my blog several times, which I hope is ok, since I am speaking strictly from my experience. If you know of any other online “self-publishing in 30 minutes” guide, please let me know!

The workshop is aimed at people who have never published, but it would be great to hear from both not yet published and self-published writers. If you’ve self-published already – what were your main lessons learned? If you’ve never published – what scares you the most?

Wish me luck!

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by | February 21, 2016 · 3:38 am

Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Ted Cruz have endorsed my book!

That, of course, is an outrageous lie. What’s true, is that I have come up with the craziest marketing idea to-date. See for yourself:



What do you think? So far these videos are responsible for exactly one confirmed sale – funny enough, from someone who was initially upset over my Twitter post of Donald Trump, but then got the joke, and the book!

I did it with a phone app called Face Swap Live. Youngsters at work were having a blast one day swapping faces, and once I saw it, I had to have it. I was on the couch that night, making myself look like Beyonce (that hair!), when it occurred to me that I could use it for business as well as for procrastination. Long story short, I made the videos above. I’ve played with lighting and makeup, so while it may look “slapped together”, each one took quite a bit of work. More will be coming, since you can literally import any photo you like. If you want to see what I come up with next, subscribe to my brand new YouTube channel.

Speaking of “any photo you like”, how about animating your book cover?

The possibilities are truly endless!

Have fun!

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by | February 12, 2016 · 2:19 am

Guys! Guys! I MADE A BOOK TRAILER!!

UPDATE: I revised it as best as I could, given my still too-limited skills:

Ok, just look at it! I’ll tell you all about how I did it and how much it cost (in terms of time and lost hair) right after, I promise!

What do you think? I really wanted to make BDSM appear first and the explanation later, but to tell you the truth, this was so difficult that I will need a week to recuperate before I’m ready to try again…

So, how did I do that? How much did it cost? Did it make any impact on sales?

I made the clip myself, at a total cost of $0 and about 10-12 hours of customising, watching tutorials and searching self-help forums. The clip was created with Adobe After Effects CC, and I started the process with a free template from After Effects Templates and added  “Playing to Win” soundtrack from Free Stock Music.

Easy-peasy, right? If you don’t mind, I’m just gonna whine a bit now. If you’d rather focus on the positive stuff, just skip the following paragraph.

(Oh, my God, it hurt! I’m all for “you can do it!”, but in this particular case I have to warn you – it was hard! If you are pretty good with Photoshop, then definitely go ahead and try – just please don’t brag about how easy it is (like the kids in tutorials, seriously!). If, however, you don’t understand Photoshop layers, then save yourself from this stress. Not only the software is hard to understand, it was a nightmare to try and upload the clip directly to Twitter. After hours of trying, it turned out that while Twitter technically allows MP4 and MOV files, you can’t upload MOV from the desktop, only from mobile. What? And  for whatever reason, my After Effects does not have the option of saving the file as MP4 (perhaps because it’s a trial version). Then if you think you’re so clever, and you email the MOV file to yourself with the intention of saving it to your phone and uploading to the app, the phone refuses to save the file, as it is apparently unsupported. What? I’ve managed to start a YouTube channel and posted a YouTube link to Twitter, but it just looks like a boring link on the phone, and no matter how hard I’ve tried to figure out how to embed a YouTube link, I couldn’t. If anyone knows, really knows how – please help!)

Ok, back to the positive. I HAVE A BOOK TRAILER!! Yay! I have uploaded it to my Goodreads author page (easy YouTube link and instant upload) and Amazon author page (direct upload and up to 24 hours of processing). I don’t know if I could ever tell if this makes an impact on sales, but it sure gives Shizzle, Inc an aura of a professionally published book…

Once my nerves settle, I may try it again – in fact, I was thinking of perhaps running one of the free giveaways with the option of either a book cover or a book trailer. Again, if this interests you, make sure to sign up for the Don’t Miss It! email list (see the floating banner on the right).

Gotta go look at the trailer one more time…nope, it does not get old!

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