Self-Publishing Q&A.

[Amelia Faulkner]

Roll up, roll up, to the self-pub Q&A extravaganza! Ask me anything self-pub related and I will answer. From finding alpha and beta readers to a good set of editors and proofreaders, from sourcing and working with professional cover artists and designers, from AMS to Facebook ads, from starting to growing a mailing list, to plain old "Please look at my catalogue and tell me why I'm not selling any books," I'm here to help!

"But Amelia? Like, who the eff are you and why do I care about your answers?!"

Well, for a start, I don't have a day job. I write for a living. I self-publish for a living. And my entire network of friends and contacts write and self-publish for a living, all the way from people just starting out to people who have scored a $7M deal with a Big 5 publisher off the back of their self-publishing work.

"Srsly?! Who are these people?!"

Nuh-uh. I will not, throughout the course of this or any other conversation, out names, not will I state a particular author's earnings. That's their business, and if they shared it with me in confidence that is where it remains.

So, go ahead! Ask and ye shall receive

 

[Wruter]

Ameliaaaaaa! Halp!

I have a novel in the historical paranormal romance genre, my first and the first in a potential series. It's had alpha/beta readers, edits and proofs, gotten positive feedback all round and I have a professionally-designed cover. Earlier this year I ran it in a Kindle Scout campaign which was ultimately unsuccessful but has garnered me a small mailing list. I want to self-publish and have funds for ads or whatever is needed. I'm not trying to make a career as an author, I'd just like to feel that I'm not simply throwing the book down a well and hopefully make back what I invest. Where do I start re launch/pricing/promotion? What do I do? How can I have nice hair like famous people? Also, I don't have a blog or website and I'm not on Twitter or Facebook. I just don't enjoy any of those things and feel my lack of enjoyment would show if I tried. Am I doomed?

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

Okay! First of all:

I'm not trying to make a career as an author, I'd just like to feel that I'm not simply throwing the book down a well and hopefully make back what I invest.

I'd like to get into the Why? of this statement, if you're okay with that? Why, after going to all the pains of treating your work as professionally as you have done, do you only want to cover your own expenses?

Why don't you want to make a career of this?

Is it the one story you've always wanted to tell, or is it that you're worried that it might flop? If we can get to the root of this we can work out the best way to sell this book

historical paranormal romance

May I ask what time period? You're going to want to answer with either "Regency" or "Victorian" for this to sell well, unless you have a time-travel element going on.

Where do I start re launch/pricing/promotion? What do I do? How can I have nice hair like famous people? Also, I don't have a blog or website and I'm not on Twitter or Facebook. I just don't enjoy any of those things and feel my lack of enjoyment would show if I tried. Am I doomed?

Nice hair is easy. Shave yours, buy wig. Job done

Social media is not necessary. Some people do well with it, others ignore it completely. I would suggest that you set up a fan page for your book and / or for yourself as an author, because that way you can run ads if you choose to do so.

Where to start, though? I'd start by choosing a publication date. Decide when you're going to publish that sucker. Is it ready to go right now? Hold your horses, there are better ways to go than pulling the trigger right away. Paranormal romance, historical or otherwise, does best in October. Readers like to get a bit paranormal on the run-up to Halloween (but not after Halloween; then they like to move on to planning their family Christmas).

The place to start is by registering for accounts at KDP, iBooks, Kobo, Nook, Google Play if you can, and a distributor if you don't have an Apple device which allows you to use iTunes Producer (I recommend Pronoun. D2D are lovely people but Pronoun's listings seem to function better, and authors I know who have distributed via both D2D and Pronoun have seen a marked increase in revenue by listing through Pronoun. I do not recommend Smashwords, but that is out of personal preference and dislike for their 2004-era web technology).

You want to get all those registrations in the can because some can take up to two weeks (iBooks, notably).

Next up, you want to build that mailing list. Are you on MailChimp? I dislike them, but they integrate with InstaFreebie, and IF has much more organised cross-promotional giveaway opportunities than BookFunnel does at the moment. When MailerLite get their thumbs out of their backsides and integrate with InstaFreebie I will be a happy bunny.

I digress. You want to create a single-chapter (or even the first thee chapters) preview for InstaFreebie. You package it nicely, with links to the full book in the back of the preview (because you're gonna create preorders on all those stores you've registered on). You pop that on InstaFreebie, give them their $20/month blood money to put those subscribers into your mailing list, tick the box that it's an IF exclusive, and then you set a schedule for communicating with your mailing list.

Let's say you only want to talk to them once a month. That's fine. Just make sure you pick a day (e.g. last Friday of the month) and a time (e.g. 5pm GMT) and then you schedule your newsletters to go out that day and time. Do not miss one. Do not skip one. You want to train your newsletter to expect you at that time and day, and to open the emails.

"But Amelia what will I say to these strangers?!"

First off, set up automation so that when they join your list after they've downloaded your preview, they get a welcome email. Then a day or two later they get another email - I'd suggest something like "I hope you enjoyed the free preview! As a special treat, here's chapter 4 for you!" (if the download was chapters 1-3).

You'l get unsubscribes at each step of the way: some people don't understand that they signed up to your newsletter just to get the freebie. Others will swear to high heaven they never even downloaded the sample even though InstaFreebie will show clearly that they did. Just ignore 'em. The world is full of freebie-hunters and you don't want those people.

Once your preview is up, you have it connected to your newsletter, and everything is a go, you can start looking for newsletter exchanges or IF giveaway opportunities. Facebook is a great place to find groups which organise these, especially for paranormal romance, historical or otherwise. If you need a leg-up here I can direct you to the right groups once you're ready to go.

Ideally you want to aim for about 5,000 subscribers pre-launch. Send them another chapter every month until release day, even if that means you've given 'em half your book. If they were interested enough to read to chapter 10 they're interested enough to buy the rest of it.

The advantage of getting pre-orders lined up is it also means you can start to book release-day promotions super early. Many promotions want your release to be $0.99 on the day the promo runs, so if you wanna go that route just bear in mind you'll be $0.99 throughout your pre-order period too, otherwise you'll get a lot of angry early-adopters. You can hoist to $2.99 - $4.99 (depending on your preference) the day after most releases, but if you aren't $0.99 on the day you will burn a lot of very expensive bridges. I thoroughly recommend Book Rank - Reach the Spotlight for promotion services: they'll book all the damn promos so you don't have to and they'll refund you any unspent money if they couldn't place your book on the date you requested. Filling out all the different submission forms for every promo outlet is time you will never get back, and well worth their fee. Don't be terrified that their top level service is $2,000 - some of the promo outlets they can submit your book to charge well over $300 to run a promotion in such a competitive genre as romance, and I would say it's not worth hitting those venues for paranormal.

No, you're not doomed. But you will need to do a little planning to pull it off and make your money back

 

[Jo Zebedee]

All righty then - I have one book self published and four published by indie presses (well one is on pre order).

I'm active in SM etc have a website and blog and have good local networks too so I think I'' good there.

My self published book has done okay - into four figures, audio rights deal. But! Based on the reviews it could be doing a lot better.

I think I have 2 problems

The title. Inish Carraig doesn't scream sf (but it does scream Ireland where it is set). Is it better to have a clear and generic title to the market or allow the unusual title to build up word of mouth stream (I am well in profit with this title and happy to allow it to now become a loss leader to bring people to me - is there anywhere within that I could be accelerating the world of mouth? I'm out of kdp in July and might look at Instafreebie which I'm trialling with the prologue)

The second problem is that it is a crossover book but most of my readers (of my other stuff) are adult. Having played with fb ads for Inish Carraig they seem to have the biggest hits in the 16-25 age group. Am I better going with the young adult market or the adult and using it as a gateway to my other work?

Oh, lastly - key words? It's about an alien invasion. Any little known keywords I should be hitting?

Ps - cheers!

 

[Wruter]

Gosh Amelia, I'm overwhelmed by all the information going into my brain.

Why don't you want to make a career of this?

Because the sheer quantity of output which seems to be necessary for a self-publishing career is beyond me. A book per year is very doable for me (this one took six months) but not one every few months.

May I ask what time period?

Regency.

does best in October.

October, eh? Noted!

registering for accounts at KDP, iBooks, Kobo, Nook, Google Play

I hadn't actually considered anything but KDP because from reading other threads on self-publishing I'd made the assumption that Amazon exclusivity with its Select program was the de facto optimal route.

InstaFreebie.

Thanks for the explanation. I'd glanced at IF but hadn't fully appreciated how it worked so I will take the recommendation, along with your very welcome advice on pricing and promotion, and investigate further.

5,000 subscribers

5,000?!? Holy Toledo!

Many thanks for the reply!

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

Because the sheer quantity of output which seems to be necessary for a self-publishing career is beyond me. A book per year is very doable for me (this one took six months) but not one every few months.

Aha! FEAR NOT!

Okay, this is good. I know a great many self-publishing authors who release a book every 6-12 months and do just fine. If you're going to produce that slowly, though, it makes your mailing list all the more important.

I would also strongly suggest that you consider finishing book two before you publish book one. That way you could have three releases in reasonably short order to build your fanbase from, and then slow down to one a year. Send them a chapter a month via the newsletter, and then when the book's live send them the link to buy the rest. Easy peasy!

I hadn't actually considered anything but KDP because from reading other threads on self-publishing I'd made the assumption that Amazon exclusivity with its Select program was the de facto optimal route.

It's certainly not optimal, but it's a choice available to you. KDP Select can offer staggeringly high payouts if you happen to take off, but can also train your readers to view your books as cheap. That's only a decision you can make, but I would veer on publishing wide from the get-go because yo'll be releasing infrequently. Fish for the higher-value customers rather than the mass-consumption aficionados. In other words, don't sell yourself as a McDonald's, sell yourself as a Nobu, and you'll attract the Nobu customers, not the fast-food junkies You do have to make sure that you're serving Nobu-quality books for this strategy to work.

@Jo Zebedee you're up next post!

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

I'm active in SM etc have a website and blog and have good local networks too so I think I'' good there.

One thing worth remembering about social media is that every single post you make is part of your brand.

My self published book has done okay - into four figures, audio rights deal. But! Based on the reviews it could be doing a lot better.

By that you mean it's getting "FIVE STARS BEST I EVER READ?!"

The title. Inish Carraig doesn't scream sf (but it does scream Ireland where it is set). Is it better to have a clear and generic title to the market or allow the unusual title to build up word of mouth stream (I am well in profit with this title and happy to allow it to now become a loss leader to bring people to me - is there anywhere within that I could be accelerating the world of mouth? I'm out of kdp in July and might look at Instafreebie which I'm trialling with the prologue)

I actually think the SFF market isn't too leery of "unusual" titles, but they do need to be comprehensible. Readers gloss over charts and search results in a matter of seconds before they make a purchasing decision, and your job is in many ways to avoid giving them any reason to nope away from selecting you. Inish Carraig may speak on an intuitive level to Americans who consider themselves to have Oirish heritage (AKA they like to puke green-tinted Guinness once a year) but it's also excluding a far wider market segment.

So I wouldn't say ditch it 100%, but I also wouldn't say go with a generic title. Those which sell best tend to have quite clever or punny titles (For example, KJ Charles has an upcoming one called Spectred Isle, which is so clever I'm pained that I never thought of it). A clever title implies clever writing, and readers looking for substance are drawn to clever titles.

Your book is, I assume, listed on Goodreads, and you have a paperback available. One way to get good word of mouth is to run a Goodreads giveaway for your paperback (just one copy, giving 'em away like confetti makes them look low-value). Run one for a couple of weeks and send the paperback to the winner, but during the giveaway lots of people will add it to their TBR, which automatically increases exposure without you having to flash your bum and scream "COME GET IT IT'S LOVELY!"

Finally, in this regard, I must say that the cover isn't exactly on point. If nothing else, blue and green are the colours of sci-fi, and yours is a gorgeous sickly orange-yellow which likely reflects the world of the book very well, but conveys the genre terribly. Check the current Alien Invasion Top 100 here: Amazon Best Sellers: Best Alien Invasion Science Fiction

You'll see blues and greens aplenty, as well as bold, modern fonts without stroke or drop shadows. Lens flares (thanks, JJ Abrams) are reasonably common. Spaceships are a must (once we disregard all the manchest of SF Romance). I particularly like this cover, which I think fits more with your story of teens trying to make their way through a ruined Earth: Amazon.com: Guardians (Caretaker Chronicles Book 2) eBook: Josi Russell: Kindle Store

The second problem is that it is a crossover book but most of my readers (of my other stuff) are adult. Having played with fb ads for Inish Carraig they seem to have the biggest hits in the 16-25 age group. Am I better going with the young adult market or the adult and using it as a gateway to my other work?

Pimp that book to the Young Adult audience like it's going out of fashion! YA love hard, gritty stories, and don't ever let an adult reader tell you that it's unsuitable for kids. Lord of the Flies is a YA book! Divergent is YA! Hunger Games? YA! Kids kill each other in these books!

Children.
Love.
Horror.

They love stories with kids their own age as the protagonist. OMG, rebrand this book! Put it in the YA charts! (wait I just checked and you are also categorised as YA, so yes!). Then check the YA Dystopian Sci-Fi chart:

Amazon Best Sellers: Best Teen & Young Adult Dystopian eBooks

Disregard Bella Forrest, she could sell ice to eskimos, and her covers are therefore not indicative of the market.

This is a little more varied in colour palette, but where we veer away from blue/green we get a lot of fire instead

I think for you something more like this book could be in order: Amazon.com: The Norm (The Glitches Series Book 3) eBook: Ramona Finn: Kindle Store

You can keep the gorgeous sky and your abandoned cranes, the flock of birds, and just plop a youthful silhouette in front so it provides more context. Kids want to know a book's about a kid, and the cover of The Norm very much says "One young woman against a ruined world".

Oh, lastly - key words? It's about an alien invasion. Any little known keywords I should be hitting?

Doot de doo...

Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing: Get help with self-publishing your book to Amazon's Kindle Store

At the very least you want to use the right keywords from the list to get you into the correct and relevant subcategories on Amazon so that people can actually find the book

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Okay - apart from the cover I think I'm doing all that. I'll see what the designer thinks about getting a figure on it. Neat - cheers

 

[Gareth Lewis]

Hi, Amelia. Do you know any secrets to getting reviews?

While I'm probably doing plenty of other things wrong, and I'm bad at marketing, I feel the lack of reviews on my work is an impediment (and I'm reluctant to spend anything on advertising until I have reviews).

For my latest book, in January, I spent a couple of days (after it was published) searching for appropriate reviewers and submitting to around 30. 6 responded, 4 declining because they had too many on their lists, the other 2 interested. Still no reviews yet, other than 1 from an advance reader. Quite a few reviewers require you to already have good reviews before they'll bother with it, which, while understandable, makes it harder to get anywhere.

I have 53 self-published titles on Amazon (only around 14 novel-length), and 33 reviews among them (mainly on the shorter works, and not counting anthologies with other authors). The rankings aren't too bad, but I'm sure the small number, pooled mainly on the older, shorter, stuff gives a poor impression to casual browsers.

Side-question: 27 of my titles are short stories/novelettes which are also available in 2 collected editions (where they form larger stories). Would I be better served unpublishing the individual titles, just keeping them available as collected editions? I'm wondering whether that number without reviews (apart from one series starter which has 6 reviews, having at times been free - when the price-matching gods allowed) adds to the negative impression.

Thanks for any advice you can offer.

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

For my latest book, in January, I spent a couple of days (after it was published) searching for appropriate reviewers and submitting to around 30. 6 responded, 4 declining because they had too many on their lists, the other 2 interested. Still no reviews yet, other than 1 from an advance reader. Quite a few reviewers require you to already have good reviews before they'll bother with it, which, while understandable, makes it harder to get anywhere.

You can roughly anticipate around a 10% review rate from any review copies you send out. That means that, if you're aiming for ten reviews, you're gonna be giving away 100 copies of that bad boy.

There's a lot of freebie-seekers out there.

The best way is to cultivate your own review team. This takes time and energy and I haven't especially bothered with it myself, but it means regularly reaching out to readers to ask for fair and honest reviews in exchange for a copy of your book, and then once they review, ask if they'd like you to include them in all future ARC deliveries. There are services out there which will do the gruntwork of finding potential reviewers on your behalf for a reasonable fee (i.e. they do all the work of finding readers in your book's genre, collecting email addresses, and some even send out the first contact email to those readers for you), and that can often be worth the pennies just to save you tedious hours upon hours of searching and collating.

There are also ARC groups on Facebook which you can post your blurb and cover to, and anyone who's interested in reviewing can put their hands up.

Finally there's always NetGalley, and some services offer you a spot on their NetGalley account so that you don't have to lay down the full whack for a single title yourself.

I have 53 self-published titles on Amazon (only around 14 novel-length), and 33 reviews among them (mainly on the shorter works, and not counting anthologies with other authors). The rankings aren't too bad, but I'm sure the small number, pooled mainly on the older, shorter, stuff gives a poor impression to casual browsers.

It's always worth getting reviews on Amazon.com rather than .co.uk, as .co.uk will display .com reviews in addition to .co.uk ones, but the reverse does not happen.

Side-question: 27 of my titles are short stories/novelettes which are also available in 2 collected editions (where they form larger stories). Would I be better served unpublishing the individual titles, just keeping them available as collected editions? I'm wondering whether that number without reviews (apart from one series starter which has 6 reviews, having at times been free - when the price-matching gods allowed) adds to the negative impression.

By and large people who purchase individual titles are not the same readers as those who purchase collections. There is such a thing as social proof, whereby a book with zero reviews can look a bit like the last chicken on the shelf, but without looking at your actual catalogue I couldn't really give you more advice there.

 

[tinkerdan]

I Agree with this::However::

You can roughly anticipate around a 10% review rate from any review copies you send out. That means that, if you're aiming for ten reviews, you're gonna be giving away 100 copies of that bad boy.

::There are degrees of ways to give things away.
And:
Since I've given over 1000 copies away and gotten 3 unsolicited reviews and two solicited. I'd have to say that even the giveaway can end in a crap shoot. Anyway I think that's half a percent for me if we are being generous.

Most of my giveaways were through SmashWords, which I was happy with for the fact that I could keep track of every one given out.

However because the way the POD publisher and Amazon worked, giving free or even discounted books (e-books) has been difficult.

Finding a service that has a list of readers actually sounds like a better option as far as trying to garner reviews. (However I can't say because that's one thing I didn't try.)

 

[Amelia Faulkner]

My apologies, I was referring specifically to giving away copies specifically in exchange for a review.

When it comes to just throwing copies into the wind, yes, the review rate is considerably lower. There are, for example, well over 30,000 free copies of Jack of Thorns in the wild. There are not 300 reviews on it

 

[HareBrain]

It's always worth getting reviews on Amazon.com rather than .co.uk, as .co.uk will display .com reviews in addition to .co.uk ones, but the reverse does not happen.

Hmm, are you sure? Why in that case would you get books with hundreds of .com reviews and only tens of .co.uk ones? (And I've not seen .com reviews on .co.uk for mine.)

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Hmm, are you sure? Why in that case would you get books with hundreds of .com reviews and only tens of .co.uk ones? (And I've not seen .com reviews on .co.uk for mine.)

.co.uk has an option to link to .com reviews which .com doesn't offer (I just had a look)

 

[HareBrain]

.co.uk has an option to link to .com reviews which .com doesn't offer (I just had a look)

Ooh, exciting! Is this in Author Central, or something the publisher has to set up? (Why it isn't default, I've no idea.)

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Ooh, exciting! Is this in Author Central, or something the publisher has to set up? (Why it isn't default, I've no idea.)

On your book's Amazon page after the review section

 

[HareBrain]

On your book's Amazon page after the review section

Ah, you mean this:

Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
› Go to Amazon.com to see all 7 reviews

I thought you and Amelia meant a way to merge in the .com reviews to the .co.uk ones, which I think would be a sensible thing for them to do.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Ah, you mean this:

Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
› Go to Amazon.com to see all 7 reviews

I thought you and Amelia meant a way to merge in the .com reviews to the .co.uk ones, which I think would be a sensible thing for them to do.

Yes - it seems bizzare to me that they don't

 

[tinkerdan]

It shouldn't be all that hard to do::

Ah, you mean this:

Would you like to see more reviews about this item?
› Go to Amazon.com to see all 7 reviews

I thought you and Amelia meant a way to merge in the .com reviews to the .co.uk ones, which I think would be a sensible thing for them to do.

::
I just noticed that goodreads has links to my notes made on my kindle, which is handy since I use those notes when I do a review. So it should be just as easy to link the various amazon.country page reviews so they blend together.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

There is a way to merge them. But I think the publisher has to ask Amazon to do it.