One of things that is something you don't necessarily think about when you're embarking on the journey of becoming an indie writer is how visible you or your books are. Unless you're a very well researched person, a professional marketer or have some experience of such things, I think many indie writers just don't realise just how invisible you can be in the book market.
Self -publishing is now easier than ever, which is an amazing thing, but because of that fact it means that loads of other people are also finding it easier to publish their books too. Upside, loads of cool books to discover, downside how the hee-bee geebies do you stand out?
I wish that I could give you an easy answer to this but I'm not sure that there is one.
To give a little a bit of context, when my first book, "The Vanishing Office" came out, it stood at 2,000,000th in the US charts. Don't get me wrong, I wrote a book, almost out of the blue so if had been at 10,000,000,000th in the US charts or any chart anywhere, I would've been doing a little dance!
But it brings it home to you just how many books are out there and like most people I'd like to sell a few or at least have some people download it. There's nothing like knowing that someone has downloaded and is reading a book that you wrote. Even if they don't like it ultimately it means they've given you a chance and that's pretty cool.
Thing is though, for you to sell or have people download your book, people need to be able to find it and how do they do that? One way is to put your book on a countdown promotion or a free promo like I have done with all three books. The Ghost Society is on one at the moment, so here's the link if you want one:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B091RZMSJG?notRedirectToSDP=1&ref_=dbs_mng_calw_1&storeType=ebooks
I won't earn any royalties from the freebies but it doesn't matter. It helps to make the book more visible to people. The more people who download the more visible it becomes. For a person who can't afford much in terms of marketing, these promos are extremely valuable as people get to see your book that may not get the opportunity to otherwise. So far it's going ok and I'm really grateful for those people who have downloaded it so far. You're mint.
The thing about these promos though as well is they can help your books to be more visible the rest of the time too. "The Vanishing Office" isn't 2,000,000th any more and before you get excited, it isn't number one either...
but it is slowly becoming a bit more visible due to reviews, promos and word of mouth locally. I'm really grateful for that. So have I ditched my cloak of invisibility? Nah, not yet but I'm not wearing it quite so often. Tatty b!
Commentaires