Space Summary
The Twitter Space Monthly #BookMarketingChat Open Q&A on all things writing/marketing hosted by BadRedheadMedia. Join the monthly #BookMarketingChat for a wealth of insights on writing, marketing, and publishing strategies tailored for authors and book enthusiasts. Engage with industry experts, explore innovative book promotion techniques, and network with like-minded individuals in a supportive community. Discover the latest trends in publishing, learn about effective book launch strategies, and delve into the significance of author branding. Whether you're an aspiring writer or a seasoned author, this space provides valuable resources to elevate your book marketing efforts and navigate the dynamic landscape of digital publishing.
For more spaces, visit the Marketing Agency page.
Questions
Q: How can authors effectively promote their books?
A: By utilizing social media, book signings, virtual events, and engaging with readers.
Q: What role does community play in book marketing?
A: Communities provide support, networking opportunities, and potential collaborations.
Q: Why is author branding crucial in marketing?
A: Author branding helps establish credibility, recognition, and loyalty among readers.
Q: What are some key trends shaping the publishing industry?
A: Self-publishing, audiobooks, and digital marketing strategies are transforming the industry.
Q: How can writers engage in effective book launches?
A: Through pre-launch promotions, engaging cover designs, book trailers, and influencer collaborations.
Q: What are some innovative ways to reach a wider audience with books?
A: Utilizing social media influencers, book review blogs, podcasts, and virtual book tours.
Q: How can writers maximize their online presence for book marketing?
A: By maintaining an active author website, blog, email list, and engaging with online communities.
Q: What are the benefits of collaboration between writers and marketers?
A: Combined expertise can lead to creative book marketing campaigns, broader reach, and increased book sales.
Q: How has digitalization impacted traditional book marketing?
A: Digital tools offer new avenues for promotion, reaching global audiences, and data-driven marketing strategies.
Q: What are the best practices for book marketing on a tight budget?
A: Utilizing social media platforms, book promotion sites, and seeking organic engagement through meaningful content.
Highlights
Time: 00:07:45
Effective Book Marketing Strategies Discussing proven strategies to increase book visibility and boost sales.
Time: 00:21:10
Author Branding Insights Exploring the importance of personal branding for authors and its impact on marketing.
Time: 00:35:28
Digital Marketing Trends for Authors Understanding how digital tools can revolutionize book promotion in the modern publishing landscape.
Time: 00:47:15
Community Building for Writers Tips on building a supportive community and engaging with fellow writers for mutual growth.
Time: 01:02:40
Innovative Book Launch Strategies Exploring creative and effective ways to launch books successfully in the competitive market.
Time: 01:15:55
Utilizing Social Media for Book Promotion Insights on leveraging social platforms to connect with readers and expand the book's reach.
Time: 01:29:20
Collaborative Opportunities for Authors and Marketers Exploring how partnerships between writers and marketers can enhance book marketing efforts.
Time: 01:43:10
Navigating Self-Publishing Platforms Tips on utilizing self-publishing platforms and maximizing the benefits for authors.
Time: 01:55:30
Engagement-driven Marketing Strategies Understanding the significance of engaging content in book marketing for reader retention and loyalty.
Time: 02:10:05
Influencer Collaborations in Book Promotion Exploring the impact of collaborating with influencers for broader book visibility and reach.
Key Takeaways
- Discussing book marketing strategies and tips helpful for authors.
- Insights on effective writing techniques and publishing advice.
- Networking opportunities with fellow writers and marketing professionals.
- Exploring the latest trends in the publishing industry.
- Valuable resources for enhancing book promotion and audience engagement.
- Tips on leveraging social media for book marketing.
- Building a supportive community for writers and authors.
- Learning about successful book launch strategies.
- Understanding the importance of author branding in marketing.
- Insights on navigating the evolving landscape of digital publishing.
Behind the Mic
Welcome and Introduction
Hey, guys. Welcome to this week's Open Q and A for all things book marketing chat. Anything having to do with writing, book marketing, social media, newsletters, blogging, advertising. That's the stuff that I do in my business and that I cover during this chat. So doctor A has been collecting questions over the course of the last month or so. Oh, hey. Hi, Jennifer. I'm so glad you're here. Hi, John. Harvey, sweetheart, I just want to give you a hug. And TK, thank you for being here. If anybody would like to request the mic, you're welcome to do that. Sorry for the late start. I was just kind of vibing out to Billie Eilish and doing my work, and all of a sudden I got this message from Doctor A. Like, is there a space today, rach? Yes, there is. I'm just being a complete airhead, so thank you very much.
Book Marketing Insights
Actually, I was researching. This is kind of interesting. I have a client with a short story and poetry collection, and he's having a hard time finding places that will. Will review short stories. So I finally found a place that's going to do. Hopefully we'll do it. Reader's favorite is pretty good. I've wondered. They also have awards, so they enter you into the award for the price. So it's pretty good. Their premium option is $200. Excuse me. Which is pretty. Not bad. You're not paying for five star reviews. You're paying for ethical reviews. So if they don't like the book, you're kind of stuck. But that's the part of the whole process of ethical reviews. Yeah.
Challenges in Literary Reviews
Hi, Doctor A. Go ahead. So why don't people want to review stories or poems? I think there's just not as much interest. Like, I'm looking at book blog tours, virtual book blog tours, and most of them will say, you know, we do not review whatever short story collections, poetry collections. Some don't do his is fiction, it's literary fiction. Some don't do literary fiction. They only do genres. So it's romance, romantic, which is the new one. It's the combination of romance and fantasy, erotica or other smexy kind of books. Those are pretty easy to find, to do blog tours on. But for literary fiction, it's. It's just not as popular, I guess. Especially if it's a short story or poetry collection. John, hello. Go ahead.
Submissions and Reviews
Yes, I was wondering, like the old days magazine where you edit, like, you send your story, do they still got stuff like that where you can actually do that? And does it really help your job or not? Job, but help your career in the future for submitting points or stories into magazines? Yes. Okay. So that's a little bit different, what we're talking about today, or in this particular instance. We can talk about that, though. So this is trying to get people to review your book and then share their review on Instagram, TikTok, you know, Twitter, Facebook, et cetera. What you're talking about is important, and it's something that a lot of aspiring writers do. They want to get a piece in Washington Post or Huffington Post or the New York Times.
Understanding Publication Avenues
Let's see. Business Insider is very popular. Slate is another one. And so you have to understand how to submit to those people and what they're looking for. There's usually what they call a vertical or a tent pole. There's all these terms involved in that. So I would study who you would want to submit to. I did that for a long time. I submitted a lot of poetry, a lot of my books. And, you know, some people will take it and some people won't. Some people have no interest if you're an author because they don't want to be promoting your work. Others are like, great, let's promote your work. Let's talk about it. So it's very different based on where you want your work to be seen.
Tailoring Submissions
So you almost have to tailor it to each individual place that you want to submit. So you might have a story, for example, about, you know, a family member in whatever way that, you know works out. You wouldn't want to submit that to a business site, right? So you really have to tailor the essays or articles or excerpts of in a way so that it fits whatever that particular public online publication is looking for. There are also contests. So Doctor a, remind me, do you know, what is it like, may is the time of year to submit for book contests. Is there like a particular time that you know of? I've lost total contact with all of that stuff.
Important Contest Information
I mean, I used to, obviously, I was in traditional publishing for 40 years before there were any ebooks or, you know, respectable self publishing. And once I started to put my own books back in print, I lost track of all that kind of stuff. So I'm not sure when the contests are. Yeah, and I know it depends on the award, too. So, for example, if you want big awards, like the National Book Awards open in mid March and close in mid May, but those are huge awards. There are also indie awards. So if you're self published or with a small publisher, you can submit to the best indie book award. Some awards consider self published books, others do not.
Navigating Award Opportunities
So you really have to be super specific about what you're hoping to get out of it. I've had some good luck with Reader's favorite, a couple indie author sites as well. Chanticleer is a good one. It's c h, like champ. C h a n t I. Claire. C L E E R. They're not cheap, but they're very specific by genre. So. And they have a wonderful meeting every year up. And I think it's somewhere around the state of Washington. I think Washington oregon. So, you know, you don't have to go. But I've won several awards I can share.
Recognition and Feedback
They send you a little blue ribbon with your name on it and the name of the book. So it's really cool they go out of their way. So I've won first place in a couple of those awards as well. So, you know, you could spend thousands of dollars just submitting your book for awards because there's no guarantee you'll win number one. And number two, there's no guarantee that the critique, you often get a critique with it. There's no guarantee that the critique will be good or helpful. And then a lot of times, the people who are reviewing for the awards will also place a review, maybe on Amazon or Goodreads or like, Midwest book review is very popular.
Leveraging Reviews
Kirkus is another one. And if you get a good review, you can use that to help sell your book. And a lot of places will send you stickers, too. I have stickers that I can, from Chanticleer that I can place on my books, but I don't do a lot of hand selling. 99% of my book sales come digitally, and that was a question someone actually just brought up. So let me. Let me address that right now. Where will the majority of authors sell the majority of their books? Obviously, that's going to be Amazon. Whether you like Amazon or not, whether you like their policies or not, they are still. They. They built the better mousetrap.
The Role of Amazon
You know, they. It's easy to. To give your books away. It's easy to connect it now to Goodreads. That's one of the things that I really like since Amazon bought Goodreads, and they didn't really change it all that much, which is kind of nice. I mean, it's really a frustrating platform. But there are tons, millions of readers on Goodreads and bookbub. So if you don't have a lot of money for advertising, you can get involved in Goodreads and bookbub. Follow people back, share reviews of books that you enjoyed, that kind of thing. That kind of gives back to that community. So that can be really helpful, too.
Digital vs. Print Sales
John, go ahead. Yes. With the new age, we're doing different things. John, I can barely hear you and you're super staticky. Sorry. A little bit better? Do you have on your ear sad or earbuds or something? Yeah, better. Okay. With the new age, everything, because everything is more digital now. Is that the future of book digital? It will. Will that help us if we go marketing our books at our age, how people are doing it now that, will we sell more book doing digital or do we paperback? Will that still work?
Evolving Book Sales
Yeah, that's a great question. So thank you for asking that. So when I started selling books about 13 years ago, ebooks were new. People didn't know that they didn't have to purchase a Kindle to read an ebook, or a nook, which is Barnes and noble's device. They have free apps. So it was hard initially to get people to understand that they can get the book in seconds and they can read it on their phone, on their computer, on their tablet, you know, wherever they want.
Changing Perceptions
So I would say 13 years ago, there was a really this, if you were around in publishing then, you were hearing people saying digital works are going to ruin publishing. And obviously that's not the case. But as I look at it now, just, I've helped hundreds of authors over the last 13 years through my company. And so I see the back end, I see the sales, and I can pretty much say across the board, from just my experience, that 90% of the sales are going to come from Amazon. And there's kind of no way to sort of get around that.
Sales Format Preferences
But what percentage will be digital versus print versus hardcover versus audio, depending on how many formats you create? So it's really interesting. I just put out a book for my mom, if you want to follow her, she goes by kitchen with Linda, and her book was released a week ago and has been number one on a bunch of different lists. And what's interesting, this is what I'm finding so interesting. If I look at the digital rankings, which are different, you'll see the rankings by format.
Digital Rankings Overview
Okay. The digital rankings have her number one, number five, number ten for the Kindle. If you go over to print or hardcover, she's ranking, but not as high. But we're selling probably 80% of the books that have been sold in the last week have been hardcover because it's a cookbook. And so I think it depends. John, is the answer to long winded answer to your question. It depends on the book itself. If you're writing 99 cent erotica that's, you know, 50 pages long, then yeah, most people are probably going to get that in ebook only. And a lot of times what these erotica authors are doing, or romance or romantic, see any of that is they're releasing like a book a month, a book a week. It's only in digital. And there are options within Kindle.
Kindle Options and Marketing
Kindle Vella is one example where you write one chapter and then if people want to read more or the next chapter, they have to sign up for your newsletter or whatever. So there's some marketing involved in that. So I hope that answered the question. John, go ahead. Yeah, that your mom booked everything. Is is that easier to sell than record novel? Because I lived through your book, the books already. I like it. It's an interesting recipe, as I wondered. Thank you. How do you, would that help you sell more with being cookbook or do you? You know, it's tough. I don't know.
Cookbooks and Their Appeal
I mean, cookbooks, people who are avid foodies or cooks or chefs. I know Doctor A is one as well. I'm not. But I think for books like that lend itself to a hardcover or print version because you want to prop it open while you're reading. But see, this is different. Like, I would pop open. My daughter opens up her iPad and uses that for recipes. So I think it depends on who you are and what your natural preferences are. I have learned just for business purposes, I read all of my books on my Kindle app and then I highlight and make annotations and then I can print that out as a file to create, you know, quote cards and visuals and things like that.
The Importance of Newsletters
So I like the fact that we have that option. But I can't tell you that a certain genre will sell better in hardcover than in soft cover. Unless it's something specific to, for example, textbooks. Right. Maybe there only exists a hardcover version and then that's what you have to get. So it depends on the genre. I think more than anything else, I just wanna do a quick room reset. Welcome. You're here for my monthly book marketing chat with doctor Alexandria Saman, who's a New York Times bestselling author and PhD as well. And her writing is just gorgeous. And thank you for being here. This is just an open q and a if you have something specific you want to talk about with regards to book marketing, writing, publishing, newsletters, blogging advertising, any of that stuff.
Engaging in Q&A
Amazon, bring it up. There's no question that. There's probably lots of questions I can't answer, but there's no such thing as a stupid question. Doctor a. Go ahead. All right. I was just laughing when you said there's no such thing as a stupid question. Okay. I'm not going to ask any from me, but I have some from. Somebody sent me a question for you. Awesome. I want to know, are newsletters important and how do you get people to sign up? Okay. So this is something that is almost like a two step process, I think, for most people, because when we become authors or business people, kind of the last thing on our mind is a newsletter. And then somebody says to us, oh, but newsletters are the best way to sell.
Newsletter Setup and Strategies
The conversion rate is like 40 to one, whereas, I'm sorry, is it four to one? Whereas if it's on Twitter or Facebook or any of the others, it's much higher. You have to do a lot more work just to get that one click, is the point of that. So I do feel it's important to have a newsletter. However, you have to start with getting subscribers. I mean, who are you going to send it to if you don't have any subscribers? Right. So the first thing you have to do is actually set up your newsletter. You can use something like Substack, which is, I've switched over from Mailchimp to Mailerlite and now onto Substack. And I love it. And it's free. It doesn't cost you any money.
Monetizing Newsletters and Growing Audiences
So the more subscribers you get, if you're using a traditional newsletter company, it's going to cost you a lot more money the more you grow, which is almost a deterrent, really, to encourage us to grow. So I'd rather go somewhere like substack. I offer free the free subscription, but if people want to pay to support my work, then great. That's an option there, too. But I would never expect that. So I think you have to look at how to, number one, set it up, share it, create content for it, and then send it out. But again, you have to work on getting subscribers first. So I wrote an article. You can go to my substack at bad redhead Media. I talk about specifically what the advantages are using a newsletter and how to grow your subscribers because that's the key that most people don't understand.
Legal Considerations and Best Practices
You don't just open it and everybody shows up. Right? They have to do what's called opt in, which is part of the FCC guidelines. And the GDPR guidelines and all that stuff. You can't just mass email 300 people, hey, go buy my book because that is actually considered spam according to the can Spam act. And you can be fined, I think like $23,000 for each infraction. Like, don't do that. Right. It's crazy. Most people don't know that they can't just spam out a bunch of stuff. So you want to make sure that you're within the guidelines of whatever newsletter program you're using, federal guidelines, et cetera, and substat qualifies for that.
Growing Your Newsletter
So it depends on what you want to do with your newsletter. But the best way that I've found to grow subscribers is through a company called Booksweep. I have no financial attachment to them whatsoever. If you use them, great. If you don't, fine. I get no money. It's $50 for a genre specific promotion. And they give you a couple options. Maybe you can share that doctor a if you go to booksweeps.com and you can share that in the nest so they give you a few options. You can either grow your email list, which is how I've grown to over 4000 people in the last year, probably, which is pretty amazing.
Additional Promotion Options
You can also grow your Amazon following and in order to enter, people have to click on your Amazon profile and click follow. And that can potentially help you in the Amazon algorithm. And then the other option is to grow your bookbub following. So sometimes they offer all three. So you can grow your newsletter list, you can grow your bookbub and you can grow your, what was the other one? I just said I lost it. Sorry. Amazon Bookbub or newsletter list, you can do all three and it costs like three times, but you're getting all three benefits. So I've done several of those for clients as well. And that is honestly I think the most reasonably priced way to grow.
Success Stories and Authentic Communication
I mean, the last list I got for one of my clients had 1600, I think, new email subscribers. And this is all completely legitimate. So that is the thing is you can have a newsletter, but you got to do something with it to help it grow. And you can do things like, hey, here's my newsletter, sign up. It's completely free. If you don't like what I have to say, sign up anyway. And you can throw darts at me. I mean, just kind of make it fun, I guess, more than anything. So I hope that answered your question. Welcome, angel. Good to see you. What's going on with you, Mandez?
Audience Engagement through Blogs
Angel. Hey there. Yeah, I was going to say about the mailing lists. This is hand in hand with a blog, right? It depends. So some people only have the option to sign up to read their blog. It's a blog reader, basically. It's like feedspot or one of those places. So they collect the RSS feeds and then as soon as the people write, you know, as soon as you write a new blog, they'll receive it in their email, it'll be sent directly to them. That's different than getting someone to sign up for your newsletter. You can have a blog and a newsletter.
Audience Capture Strategy
They can be completely different. They could be exactly the same. The whole point is that some people will never check out social media. My parents have no idea what Twitter is. Right. But they do know how to click on an email that they got about a book they might be interested in. So that's really the main reason is you want to capture the audience wherever they may be. And it may be your newsletter, it may be social media, it may be your blog. You don't really know until you start and do some testing and see what works for you.
Importance of Niche in Writing
Yeah, because I. Nearly three weeks ago now, I took my blog on a self hosted plan with Bluehost. Right. I know in previous spaces we've talked about branding the author and not the book. And in my case, I'm an aspiring write out. I hope to be published one day. But in the meantime, between trying to get there, I thought it would be interesting to write about what I'm doing in between and share creative process and other things. But then I read all these other blogs, watch videos on various tips, and they tell you've got to niche down to a particular thing.
Navigating Interests and Newsletters
And I'm really struggling with this because as writers, we're not just writers. We've got a lot of other interests that you may want to do and when we're not writing, we may pursue other hobbies and that's reflected in our timelines. So when we talk about newsletters and having to, are we expected to write something specific to the people on our mailing list or are we trusting that they buy into the person and the other things they might be into? And not everything will resonate, but they're still interested in hearing from you. I'm really struggling with this.
Branding and Audience Reception
Well, let me address this and thank you that question. Angel, would you just do me a favor and mute your mic because I'm hearing a little background noise. Thank you. And Michael will bring you up as well. So this is really a branding question. More than anything, as the way that I see it. And I do a lot of work with clients on their branding. So a lot of times we think, okay, I'm writing a book, for example.
Discussion on Overvalued Beliefs
Here's an example. I'm working with a neuropsychiatrist who specifically works with law enforcement, prosecutors, you know, all of the whole judicial system to talk about what are called eobs, which are extreme overvalued beliefs. Now, not to get into that whole conversation, but the whole point is that things like the shooting that happened today, and we're not going to go into that discussion either. I'm just bringing it up. Everyone says, oh, it's the guns, oh, it's mental illness. He says, it's not either. It's actually these extreme overvalued beliefs. It's a very interesting read, but that's one thing, right, that he talks about. But he also, you know, has dogs and he also spends a lot of time in, he's a professor, so he spends a lot of time teaching.
Branding and Interests
So I think when it comes to branding, you don't have to just talk about one thing because we're three dimensional people with interests beyond just that one thing, right? So what I suggest you do, and this is a little bit of homework for anybody who might want to do this, write down a list of all the things that you have an interest in. It can be two things, it can be 50 things. And then prioritize that list and only give yourself five. You are only allowed to talk about the five main things that you're interested in. And I'll give you an example for bad redhead media. I talk about what I do for a living, but there's so many aspects to it, right? So it's book marketing, social media, Twitter spaces, newsletters, Amazon pricing. I'm going to be talking about that next with TK. So there's so many different topics that I can discuss that are under the umbrella or adjacent to my main topics that I'm not talking about the same thing all the time, every day because that gets really old.
Understanding Different Topics
And then I would suggest when you pick those five things, especially if you're talking about something very serious, like on my personal account, I talk about being a childhood sexual abuse survivor. I talk about things that affect survivors. So mental health, but I also talk about writing and poetry and that kind of thing. So, you know, relationships, love and loss. So it's very different. The branding is very different. So when I decided I'm going to start my business, which was 2011, I knew I wasn't going to start it under Rachel and the OC because that branding is sacred to me. I've built that. I've connected with beautiful, wonderful people over there. And to me, that's what's most important. So I knew I needed to start bad redhead media, and that's how I ended up with this and then building this over time.
Author Branding and Future Works
So I think it's okay to have different interests as an author. Again, we brand the author, not only the book, because you will write more books and you may write in different genres as well. And so if you try to create a Twitter account, let's just say a whole suite, you create the Twitter, the Facebook, the LinkedIn, the Instagram, the TikTok, the Pinterest, whatever else I forgot to for blue hydrangeas, which is your book number one, then what are you going to do when purple Violets comes out? Book number two, you're going to create purple Violet, a whole suite of accounts? No, you use you the author. So I hope that's clear. And I'm trying to save people so much time and effort when it comes to that, because I see a lot of people create the title of their book, which is not a bad idea for intellectual property reasons. But I wouldn't use that only to promote your book.
Pricing Strategies for Books
So I hope that answered that question. John, give me 1 second. TK and I have been talking back and forth in DM, so I'm going to go to him next and then Michael, and then we'll go to you, John. TK, go ahead. You have a really good question. Rachel. Thank you. Yeah, you're great. Go ahead. Oh, good. Oh, wonderful, great. I've been in other spaces for the past week or ten days or so, and my mic was not working at all. So I'm really glad to hear this. Thank you. Okay, great. Wonderful. So, yeah, I have a question about pricing. And yes, I am trying to set up a pre order page on Amazon and possibly on Barnes and Noble as well, but preorder page. And I'm just wondering like what the pricing should be for my book. And I want to have it available in, yeah, in ebook and in paperback, possibly hardcover as well. But yeah, I was wondering, I was curious to hear your thoughts on this. And, yeah, any input would be. Any input would be appreciated. Yes, thank you.
Advice on Pricing Structures
Yeah, absolutely. We had to just go through this. I've just gone through this exercise with my mom because we had the ebook, the print, and the hardcover. So we thought hardcover. Oh, my gosh, nobody's going to pay for. Amazon will give you a range based on the size of the file, the fact that there were color photos, etcetera. So the book, the retail price for her hardcover is $39.99. And that was the lowest we could go for her to be able to make like three or $4 a book. It's ridiculous. But what I suggest doing is if you go to Ingramspark or just Google, how do I price my book? The best advice that we looked at for my mom, and I've done this for so many other authors as well, is look in the genre that you're writing in and look at what we call comps or comparative titles. So let's say your book is. I always use this silly example, like blue bunnies in space.
Research and Competitor Analysis
Okay, so it's Sci-Fi fantasy. Great. Look at other Sci-Fi fantasy books. If you go to Amazon, they're going to show you the top 100 paid and the top 100 free. You want to look at the paid and you want to see what do their covers look like, what is their pricing, how many reviews do they have? What do you like about what they're doing versus what you might want to do? So I would definitely say, excuse me, to start looking at comps. The other thing you have to look at is the different formats, the different trim sizes. They even have a calculator where you can go in and say, here's what I'd like to charge my book, will this work? And the other thing you can do is maybe you make the, sorry, just had to stop a call.
Dynamic Pricing and Market Strategies
Maybe you make the ebook a lower price, say 399 or $2.99 just to get it started. But the print and hardcover and audio are more expensive. But that gets people to your Amazon page or wherever it is that you want to send them. The other thing I recommend doing is when you create that preorder link, set up a free account with Booklinker. They're a wonderful free service. It's completely underwritten by a very large tech company. So it's what they do is they track clicks. So you can use one click or, sorry, one link, and it will track where did that come from and where did it go? So that's like such useful information. So if you find, for example, that you get this, you create this link and you get 100 pre orders, and you look at your link data and it says, okay, 30% came from Twitter, 50% came from Facebook, and whatever's left, 20%.
Utilizing Data for Marketing Success
Don't make me math the other 20% comes from, you know, books.com or some Apple books, wherever, but then you know where to spend your advertising dollars. So I always tell people you're not going to get everything done right away. It's a process. And the more data and information and analytics you have, the better you'll do going forward and you'll learn. TK, maybe you'll price it at 599 and it doesn't move. Maybe then you do a Kindle countdown deal. Or if you decide to go exclusive to Amazon just for your ebooks, you can do three, I think, wait five free days every 90, or you can do a Kindle countdown, which you can keep your royalties the same. You don't make any royalties for free downloads, but you do get good rankings with the countdown option.
Setting Pricing Structures Effectively
You could take your book, let's say it's $5.99 and for two days it's ninety nine cents, and then for two more days it's $1.99 and then like the fifth or 6th day it's, you know, 299. You still, as the author, make the exact same royalties. So that's a really nice option for people who are just completely against going free whatsoever. But to price your book, I would definitely decided to go crazy. I will share this link when I'm not talking and then you can go in and put your information and find that out. So I hope that helps. Thank you, TK. That was a great question.
Insights on Launch Strategy
Okay. Yes, I'd like to quickly respond to that if I'm allowed. Yeah, but. Okay, great. Thank you. So, yeah, I read different websites on this and I had one website saying maybe you should do like a 99 cent sale for the first month or for the first two weeks or so. Because, you know, on Amazon, the algorithm, the way the algorithm works, you know, the sales for the first 1st month are kind of important. I don't know if that's, you know, really true or not, but you know, how the sales go for the first month is very important. And, you know, your rankings are going to be based on how the sales go for the first month. So, you know, just to kind of boost your sales for the first month, maybe you should do a 99 cent sale or 199 sale or something, and then you could bump it up to, you know, your regular pricing, you know, I don't know, like a 499 or 599 or whatever.
Pre-Order Timing and Strategies
You know, your, you want your pricing to be. That's, that's what that website was saying. So, you know, I was wondering if that was a good idea and I was wondering, you know, what you would think about that. And, and also how far in advance should you do your pre order? Like, you know, Amazon allows you to do a pre order as far as, I think three months out. I think beforehand, yeah. Before youre a release date. But you know, I mean I, you know, I was curious to see what other authors do typically, you know, when they do a pre order. So I was wondering about that too. Yeah. Yeah.
Personal Experience with Pre-Orders
Yeah, I've done pre orders for my own books as well as for author books. I don't think it's a bad idea to set it at like ninety nine cents and then you can't just set it $0.99, though. There is some internal marketing that happens automatically with Amazon. I see your thumbs up, Michael, but you want to be able to do, for example, I write about this on my substax, something like written word media does, has something called bargain bookse. It's around $50. It'll go to like a couple hundred thousand readers of your genre. Again, very worth the money because you want it to be announced that your book is now available. Your book is only $0.99, you know, etcetera.
Long-Term Book Strategies
So that's one way you can look at it. The other way you can look at it is I don't truly believe that you only have that first month or three months and then it's dead in the, you know, dead in the water. I have a client I've worked with who has written over 70 books and some of mostly women's fiction. And her most successful books aren't necessarily the most recent titles. So, and then the other thing you can do, I don't know if you're planning a series, but if you put the first book out once book two comes or book three comes, you can make book one, you know, the cheapest to get them kind of in the door, but you could sell it and upload it to Amazon as a series and that is kind of a nice thing as well.
Conclusion on Marketing Approaches
Or you can create what they call an omnibus edition. So whatever, you know, terminology works for you. But I don't, I would argue against thinking that you have to get everything done that first month because the holidays are coming up. That's a wonderful time for people to sell books, do some giveaways. I love doing giveaways. You tell people, you jump through these 25 hoops and you get 25 entries and people are like, wow, that's great. And when I say hoops, I mean follow me on Twitter, go. And you know, visit my blog, sign up for my newsletter, go visit. Go follow me on Amazon and Bookbub and Goodreads. And people will do that in order to get more entries.
Effective Promotion Techniques
So those are the types of things that I would do. It's kind of what we call book bundling or sales bundling or promo stacking is another way where, you know, you have the written word media coming out. It's $0.99 on Amazon. Then you want to make sure you send out your newsletter and you do a little advertising and that creates the buzz. So it's a coordinated effort, if that makes sense. So I hope that answers your question, TK. Let's go to Michael. I'm going to kind of just jump on a bit of what you were talking about because I don't have a question or anything. I guess I'll toss up a link to something because I've got my newest release out, so that can't hurt.
Final Thoughts on Pricing and Releases
But I think, like for you, TK, I don't know if you have your manuscript completed or have gotten your cover design, you know, in process or whatever. I don't even know if you have signed up for KDP.
Understanding Pricing and Production
And I would say, before you worry about pricing, go poke around that platform and see how it works and really understand what all you are up against in terms of data metadata for the listing. But particularly the pricing aspect really comes down to your page count, your quality of paper, the print quality in terms of like color, black and white. If you're doing just text, you really kind of like enable yourself to make a lot more choices with some of the photographic stuff that I do. Like, I can't print that on bad paper or bad quality because then the images look bad. So that raises the price of like the books of that I do in terms of the print cost. So I have to be cognizant of that at pricing. And all of that comes out of knowing how the platform works and how it is going to influence pricing of your release. And so ebooks are based on data rates and then audiobooks are of, if you use ACX directly, they price that for you based on time. So like your runtime of your audiobook. So there's a lot of different factors that are kind of influencing the pricing of the book and going and researching, well, what do these other people price their books at?
Distribution Across Platforms
Or like, I read this on a blog that's very carte before the horse. And I would say like, you know, be worried about like what the platform is telling you, as opposed to, like, having your heart set on what is going on, like, even here, you know, inside of, like, this conversation, I would say, like, go make sure that you're signed up for those platforms and be actually exploring and understanding, like, your content as it relates to their distribution platforms. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you for all that information, Michael. And the other thing I was going to recommend as well is you want to, you don't want to only be on Amazon for your print or hardcover or audio version, even if you do decide to go KDP select. So you can make your print and hardcover and audio version available on all the other platforms. Kobo, lulu, bookshop.org, you know, all those barnes and noble, all those places, Apple, ibooks, whatever you call it now, Apple books, I think they finally decided on. Those are all great options to continue to sell your print work as well.
Pricing Options and Library Distribution
And Ingramspark may have different pricing options. Typically, they'll match what Amazon's doing. But what's nice is if their price is lower, you can go to Amazon and say, hey, I need to lower my price. So it's, you know, instead of 599, it's 399, because that's what it's available for over on Barnes and Noble. And they have to do that. So anyway, it's worth keeping in mind distribution. The other thing, somebody just asked me this question, and I wish I had an easy answer. How do we get our books into libraries? That's a really good question, and honestly, could take an entire hour. But here's been my experience. There is a site called two sites. One's called library thing, and the other one is called shelf awareness, which I think is really cute. They've both been around for a long time, and so you can go through them to try get your book into libraries.
In-Person Engagements and Author Readings
The other thing you can do is just walk into your local library. My mom's friend walked into a local library and said, hey, my friend is now a published authorization. Can we do a reading? And they were like, yes, absolutely. Because she's actually published by a publisher, Munn Avenue Press. If she had gone in and it said published by her name, they would have said, no, we're not interested. So that's one of the things that I found very interesting is there the libraries were more open if you are published by a publisher. So I just wanted to add that. John, you've been so patient. Thank you. Go ahead. Yeah, I wouldn't worry, like, if I. If people get, like, a bookmark of their, like their book or thing and put out. Yeah, get in trouble.
Guerrilla Marketing Strategies
Like, like me leaning out the long way, get, like, get charged for like littering or store owner get upset. You put bookmark in books. Is there a way you do that? It will not upset people or we get in trouble for doing it if. You get caught, I, you know, that's really interesting. So that's kind of what the people refer to as a guerrilla marketing tactic. So you know, one of my friends bought 100 copies of her book. She had bookmarks. Sorry, my brain is tired. She had bookmarks made and then she took them and just put them places. Like, she left some on some park benches. She went into her local coffee place and said, hey, can I put a couple books up? And they were like, sure. So you can do all those types of things.
Creative Book Promotions
One of the things we're doing for my mom is we're having a book launch at Friend's house and we're ordering. We were going to order bookmarks, but one of her friends, who's very crafty, started making bookmarks for her already and she's thrilled. But you can order bookmarks. We were looking at printful and I found them to be not as accommodating as Vistaprint. So that's something to think about as well. TK, for example, when your book comes out, you can create little, like goodie bags. And if you do a giveaway, you could have in the bag a free copy, signed copy of your book. For example, some bookmarks. We're looking at postcards as well as magnets, refrigerator magnets and stickers. People love stickers. So none of that is super expensive, but it can be used for these types of guerrilla tactics, like what you're talking about here, John.
Engagement Opportunities in Local Spaces
And I would say, like my experience, I've actually had my books in some Starbucks because I walked in and said, hey, I'm a local author, can I put my book up? And, you know, if you guys sell it, let me know. And they said, sure. And I think I sold three copies over like four years. But I wouldn't ever just put my book on a shelf somewhere because everything is coded as it comes into and goes out of the store. And so you won't even get credit for that if somebody does pick it up, if that makes sense. I would rather see you do, like, giveaways where people who have opted in to get what you're talking about, you know, whatever it is, I think that might be a better way than just randomly putting books in places, unless it's someplace that you're very familiar with.
Cautions for Distribution Tactics
I have one client who lives in Massachusetts, and every, I guess Labor Day, they do a parade and there's like all these people there watching shows and soccer matches and all kinds of stuff. And it's portuguese type of thing. And so he put some of his books in the clubhouse there and they were like, they were fine, but he had to, of course, ask them first. So that would be my caution to you, is you don't want to, you know, you don't want to piss anybody off to the point where they're like, you put books in here. You didn't ask. Get the hell out. We don't want you back. Hopefully, that would never happen, but I would just be careful of something like that.
Seeking Permission for Marketing
John, go ahead. I mean, bookmark, not books. Yeah, yeah, bookmark. Yeah, leave it out. And I'm afraid that somebody might like, oh, you're literally, you get a ticket for leaving stuff out. Yeah, I don't, I think if you're careful. And again, I would just always ask permission. I'm not the one of those people who says, ask forgiveness later or ask permission. And then you could, it's better to ask forgiveness or whatever that thing is. I just always ask, if somebody really doesn't want my book in their place, then cool, fine. I'll go somewhere else.
Closing Thoughts and Future Discussions
Doctor A, did you have any more questions for me? I was hitting the heart and the scissors instead of the microphone. No, I don't have any more questions. I think it's a very quiet day today. It is. And that's okay. I woke up with a migraine, so we're going to wrap this space up. But it's so great to see everybody here. And I'm so glad you all contributed. John, I didn't expect you to be here. Thank you for being here. Go ahead. We'll take your question and then we'll see if there's any final words from everybody.
