Marketing a self-published novel?

[Nick B]

Marketing. The dirty word. Basically, I havn't got a clue and we've been stumbling around learning what we can, trying anything that we can do without financial outlay (except for a bookbarbarian promotion which worked great).
But, here's the question - if you had a budget of say £1000 or so, what could you do to get a novel in front of a lot of readers? Would a profesional marketing person be within that scope? Where would you find one? What else can you do?
I have zero skills or knowledge in this area. Without being egotistical, I think this is the single largest obstacle we have; getting the book in front of potential readers. The book is so well liked by 99% of readers, it is a bit depressing being unable to simply get it if front of a really large number of people.

Anyone have knowledge on how to really market an indie book, at reasonable cost? We will try bookbub but we all know how hard it is to get a gig with them.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Bookbub is increasingly going with published books over self published - its waning impact on indie authors was mentioned in the authors earning report last year. In fact, the key message from it was that debut authors on all platforms were selling a lot, lot less than in previous years.

If I had one thousand quid I'd -

Use it to put time into writing the next book. Or go on a holiday.

Nothing more, nothing less. I no longer massivly price promote (although I have some stuff coming up) but I build. I do interviews and AMA and blog and do events and ... Whatever comes my way. I know what I'm currently building and I accept the time this journey will take. And that journey includes more books - and the realisation that these early books are merely the markers on my trip and that them selling massively well isn't what matters - them being well regarded, getting talked about and recommended and my name getting out there, slowly but surely, means a lot, lot more.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I know it doesn't directly answer your question, and my apologies if it sounds like obfuscating - but from what I've read, the best recommendation has consistently been to keep putting out new books as reasonably fast as you can. That way you can build up sales and readership through increasing momentum.

Additionally, once you have multiple books out, any traction you get with one should have a knock-on effect with the others, helping to increase sales across the board.

Even before I SP'ed, I said I wasn't going to spend money on marketing just one book. The problem with doing so is the difficulty of getting a good return on investment. The more books in your stable, the more efficient any campaign should be because of the knock-on effect mentioned above as some of the readers you interest turn into fans who buy more of your books. Otherwise the danger is of spending more on getting readers then you actually get out from it - which is frighteningly easy to do with Pay Per Click advertising.

I know it doesn't sound like a quick fix, but most authors takes years to be successful. A key advantage of SP is that you can reduce the turnaround times and increase output to whatever works for you. However, more complicated stories with multiple character arcs are slower to write, so I'd recommend trying a simpler format - one POV character for a start - which is pretty much what most trad pubbed writers do anyway.

Am saying this because this is how I've modified my own strategy to this. I can't just focus on publishing a grand opus book every two years - so I'm instead drawing on ideas I've ruminated on for years and am mercilessly pushing on completing them while also working on the main books. It's a push, but have managed to stay on schedule for a couple of months by not being precious with the first draft.

2c.

 

[Nick B]

Yeah, I know its a slow slog and we are putting the work in. Book 2 is doing okay, hopefuly for year end and we also have a same universe anthology aiming for next year, plus book 3.
I just wondered because I simply know nothing about serious marketing. Liberator is still being read slowly but steadily as sales and KU reads, and good reviews are still trickling in. Some boosts would be welcome of course though.

I don't actualy have money, its a hypothetical question, as much to get ideas.

 

[thaddeus6th]

Wish I had a good answer to this. Self-promotion is not my forte.

I might try something different. Order a few copies of my own book, some Easter eggs, wrap them up (together) and leave book-egg pairs at local libraries with a note saying they're for the staff. Eggs are pretty cheap, but bribery worked really well during a presentation a group (of which I was a member) at university [it turns out giving the lecturer free chocolate is helpful].

 

[Brian G Turner]

It's also worth noting that I've seen a couple of places - Amazon Scout and Orbit - both define a novel as 50,000+ words. So you don't have to aim for a top limit of 120k per book.

In your example, @Nick B, that could mean a series of shorter background novels about your principle Liberator characters. As you already have the characters motivations and world-building done, the hard work's already done for you.

As there's two of you writing, rather than writing the same book together, it might be worth you both trying a shorted background novel each, completing those, then swapping them over for rewriting. That might help improve productivity?

 

[Dan Jones]

@FibonacciEddie is your man on this one. He made a decent profit on his debut book, which sold a few thousand, and so he was able to reinvest that into his new book. I'm sure he'd happily spill the beans on what works and what doesn't. He did use a lot of ebook promotions, I know that much.

The Amazon algorithms also seem to give you a "visibility escalator" (I just made that term up) once you hit 50 reviews or so, meaning once you hit 50 reviews a lot more people see your book in Amazon's "recommended" lists.

From my perspective, Snowbooks' business model is heavily retail-based, so they push the discoverability angle both online and, more so, in bookshops, as they have good relationships with the major booksellers in the UK. @HareBrain could also give his opinion on this as his book's already on the shelves. But where Snowbooks are retail savvy, they are marketing/media poor, so I'm taking it upon myself to plug this gap by going to events, talking to PR people and publicists to try and generate some word-of-mouth interest before we get to launch day. I'm trying to keep the spend to a minimum, as the evidence for the ROI on PR spend is erratic to say the least. My preferred technique is to make influential contacts and spread word of mouth by getting out of the house and meeting people face-to-face wherever possible. It's time heavy but cash-light. As someone who's out and about for work and has a high degree of flexibility and autonomy with my work, this suits me but wouldn't work for others.

The whole thing is Catch-22 wrapped in a enigma and glued together by luck and perseverance. I don't think there's a magic formula. You just have to do what works for you; if the work is good enough (and that really is the most important thing), then one of the techniques listed on the thread by me or others will catch the eye of someone in the know.

 

[Nick B]

In your example, @Nick B, that could mean a series of shorter background novels about your principle Liberator characters. As you already have the characters motivations and world-building done, the hard work's already done for you.

As there's two of you writing, rather than writing the same book together, it might be worth you both trying a shorted background novel each, completing those, then swapping them over for rewriting. That might help improve productivity?

We are sort of doing that with the short stories and novelettes, which will alternate between cheap and free, with the shorts put together in an anthology.

We don't want too much about the Liberators going on outside the main series, but we have huge amounts of material for the universe in general.

Time is the hardest issue, as it is for so many of us. I already get way too little sleep.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Success is a double-edged words.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Success is a double-edged words.

This. Exactly this. What is it you want? Sales? Or kudos? Or something manageable within your life. Each is achieved differently - and the first two are very much subject to external factors.

 

[tinkerdan]

The best time to market is the first month then maybe continue the next two and then tapper off. Do this with each new release and push the older books behind that as you go.

The best time for positioning seems to be the first six to eight weeks. So if you have a thousand dollars then you should consider using it then. You could try purchasing an ad spot with some relevant magazines (those can run 250 per issue to over 1000 depending on the size.) A mid size might allow for two issues at a fair price. Or some equivalent such as purchasing ads on blogs that are popular.

The bottom line--which is the same whether you do it or you hire someone and pay many times more--is that there are no guarantees.

I paid my POD publisher for some advertisement; but nothing ever came of it even though my book was placed in a catalog for two shows one in Canada and one in New Orleans and supposedly passed under the eyes of some sort of movie scouts. Fortunately it was not a major financial hit because I had a comprehensive package deal. There is one special package that was close to 10K and both have the same disclaimer about effectiveness. No guarantees.

 

[FibonacciEddie]

Having been called out by @Dan Jones as "an expert", I now feel under pressure...

Apologies for rush reply... I will try to keep it as coherent as I can...

a1) there is no magic formula
a2) write more books
b) as Jo says... be clear why you are writing (money, fame, satisfaction)... if "money" then probably you need to write pulp romance / thriller books ... this does NOT guarantee success/money but it gives you a better chance than space opera (or other scifi)... but if you have to write SciFi then do 'popular' ... Roswell type conspiracy thrillers (see Craig Falconer 'Not Alone' / Andrew Morgan 'Vessel' / 'New York Deep')... I cannot comment on pure Fantasy genre
c) For Emergence (www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00OAGX4L2), my book ... as Dan said... I hit a rich vein for a few months (and only a few months)... almost all sales were Amazon Kindle USA ... I think the combination was (i) it had been out for 12 months and so had been building in the subconscious (ii) it had ~30 reviews built from 12 months of me sending a few begging emails out each week to indie reviewers, (iii) I did a string (one every 3 days) of paid for email shots "One Hundred Free Books, Book Sends, Robin Reads, Kindle Daily Nation" ... each of those grabbed 20/30 sales in Amazon USA Kindle ... and then the sales Ranking 'took off' and I was in the top 10 of my Sub-genres (Hard SciFi / Metaphysical) ... I was priced at 99c

I would not use PR firms ... paid adverts may work... but for me, the best thing is getting a launch on Amazon sales rankings through email spam ... I have tried this 5 or 6 times with Emergence over a 2yr period.... and got one 'lift off' ... each launch attempt cost ~$200 ... the one that worked probably got me 2,000 sales and 2,000 reads ...

I would avoid doing any paid adverts until you have at least 10/20 reviews --- AND/BUT --- I have also heard many times on Kindle chat boards that Amazon give you a Sales Ranking 'bonus multiplier' in your first 3 months ... so as TinkerDan says... try to get things going in the first few months... as you can imagine getting 10/20 reviews within the first month in order to take advantage of the Amazon 'bonus' means you have to plan early and get review copies set out before publication --- confession... I totally failed to do that for my second book "Disconnected" and I am suffering as a result with very low review rates (i.e., I only have 2 reviews after almost 3 weeks)...

so....

write books
ensure the books are "great" quality (use an editor / copy editor) ... you may spend your money here if needed
get reviews
email spams via various services

n

 

[apocalypsegal]

For a single book, it's not worth spending a lot of time or money promoting it, since readers have nothing to go on to if they like the book. Paying a promotion company is pointless, as is putting any money into services that guarantee you a certain number of downloads (Amazon doesn't like those sorts of things, and might take away your account for using them).

I had a couple of links to share, but since I don't have enough posts, do a search on Nicholas Erik, and also for a blog by Patty Jansen. He has some good information on marketing, and Patty has a promotion list for SFF books that's free to use. There are lots of other places that are free or low cost, and though Bookbub is becoming more focused on traditional pub books, it's still very effective for many indies.

Hope this little bit of info is helpful.

 

[Nick B]

Sorry for late reply!


Yeah, this all reinforces what I already thought. We do all the things people are suggesting, most vitaly - writing more. I just wanted to know if there was really much worth paying for. Darren and I were just talking one day and I said I'd ask the community here. But, its basicaly as I suspected.

Thank you all

 

[apocalypsegal]

There are some worth paying for, Nick. The trick is to find which ones work for you! It's going to be a little different for everybody, and often different for each book. It can make for crazy times, trying to figure out all of this stuff, and just about when you think you've got it down, something else comes along and you start over again.

Here's a list I got from someone on another forum I'm on, about winnowing down sites until they found which ones worked best for them (if I remember, the genre for this writer was UF):

Booksends
ENT
ManyBooks
GenrePulse (okay)
Fussy Librarian (okay)
Robin Reads
BookBassett (okay)
Free Kindle Book and Tips
Betty Book Freak
Book Barbarian (Fantasy and Sci-Fi only)


KCD = Kindle Count Down

You can read up on Kindle Count Down stuff around the web, but I think you have to be in Select/KU to do it. Not sure, I haven't tried this yet.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Hope this little bit of info is helpful.

I'm sure it will be, and welcome to the chronicles forums @apocalypsegal !

 

[apocalypsegal]

Thanks, Brian, glad to be here.

 

[Nick B]

Yeah, thanks apoc. We use kcd's, which do boost sales without paid promotion but not hugely. Still worth it. Book Barbarian worked great with Liberator, and going to apply to run it again, also hoping to run Barbarian at launch for book 2, but we need 50 reviews on book 1 to do it, which is why I'm always trying to get new reviewers on board (any takers?). Review quality isn't a proble as we get 5 and 4 stars almost 100% of the time. We just need numbers.

We've tried quite a bit of free promotion, but with limited success. Readers of Liberator do love it, but with no marketing oomph or knowhow, we were just wondering about how to get it in front of a larger audience. We can't complain, with well over a 1000 total sales and probably 300 or so ku readthroughs in the 8 months its been out. It would just be nice to build a nice big readership for future books.

We pretty much missed the boat with the launch of book 1, due to having no clue how to do a big launch. We've learned much, but need to learn so much more. (or get a publisher to help with that part!)

 

[allmywires]

As I think I've said before, if you have a decent budget (and £1000 would be, for a couple of weeks) you could dip your toe into paid social media advertising. Works well if you have a strong idea of who your ideal audience would be, and authors your work is similar to - on Facebook, audience targeting is second to none. I would not recommend it necessarily however for driving clicks to an Amazon download as you have no way of really tracking the effectiveness of the ad and it makes Facebook less savvy at optimising. Also, you need to make sure your copy (image) for the ad is the best quality it can be so it looks like it belongs on someone's timeline.

But truthfully you'd be unlikely to hit positive ROI on that and it may well be worth investing instead in building a fanbase instead (if you have a FB presence, update the page regularly, etc). You can also drive people to sign up for a mailing list through FB as well so something to bear in mind if you're building a list for future releases.

I don't have experience directly working on ebook advertising but I do work in social media ads so can answer general questions on that.

 

[apocalypsegal]

but with no marketing oomph or knowhow, we were just wondering about how to get it in front of a larger audience

Yeah, it's the issue every self-pubbed writer has (and most trad pubbed ones, to be honest). Everyone struggles to get in front of more readers, and there are only so many things to do. If you can put together any money at all -- and you can do stuff for less than 1K whatever, but you have to be savvy -- and start trying some sites. You don't have to aim for a Bookbub, there are other places that can work quite well, as I listed above.