Over the past month I’ve been writing about my plans for revamping my self-publishing approach in several ways, including rebranding and creating an author website more suited for serious self publishing. What you see above and around this post is a big part of the result, although there’s a lot more going on as well. So what do you think?
For starters, you’ll notice that this blog isn’t on the home page any more. That’s because my old platform was primarily a readers’ and writers’ blog site focusing on the realities and challenges of self-publishing, based on my experience in creating, self-publishing and promoting my first book, The Alexandria Project. Since this site is intended to be a promotional platform for my existing and in-process books, I’ve moved the blog off of the home page.
As you can see, the new site does a number of other things differently as well:
- It attempts to establish a more serious publishing image by departing from standard WP themes (although the site is still hosted by WP)
- It makes use of the home page primarily to feature my books rather than to serve multiple competing purposes
- More generally, all elements of the site (except this author blog) are now dedicated to the single purpose of promoting my books and building a base of readers with an ongoing interest in my books
- It provides multiple means of engagement for readers: two blogs, links to Twitter and Facebook (coming), ability to get email notice of new posts, an opt-in newsletter list, and the ability to become a “Friend of Frank”
- It allows me to establish a direct communication route beyond the site itself to those readers that opt in to a newsletter
- It launches the opt-in, passworded Friends of Frank program with multiple benefits, which I hope to use to build a community interested in buying future books and spreading the word about my books
- It moves the author blog to a separate tab, labeled “For Authors,” so that it doesn’t distract from the major purpose of the site
I’m still working the bugs out and making minor changes and additions and refining the content, but I’d be grateful to receive any and all comments and suggestions that anyone might have.
At the same time, I’ve also done the following:
- Reclaimed my first book from the original publisher so that I have more freedom to update the files and run promotions
- Added a new cover to my first book for consistency with the second
- Added new promotional back matter to both books (principally sample chapters of the other book and “buy” iinks)
- Taken the second book out of the KDP Select program so that I can “go wide” with it
- Signed both books up to Draft2Digital so that I can have fewer sales dashboards to bother with (CreateSpace for print sales through Amazon; Kindle for eBook sales through Amazon; D2D for all other eBook sales; and IngramLightningSource for print order sales from bookstores and libraries)
Once everything is finalized, I’ll begin a new promotional campaign that I’ll describe in a future blog post. As part of kicking off that effort, I’ve hired a freelance publicist to design and carry out a brief presidential-election burst of promotion to reporters, political podcasters, and book reviewers and several other categories of contacts in connection with my second book, the plot of which centers on a hacked presidential campaign.
None of which, of course, will automatically result in increased sales of my books. But you never know until you try.
Wow, I’m really impressed! I love the clarity of your message and setup. Can’t wait to see you flesh out your plan and see how it works.
For now, only I felt off was the header being too dark, almost thought I’d mid linked to a horror lit sight, just a lighter tone would work for me.
Oh and really like the single mindedness of the sight.
What a great political PR plan too, geez, sounds great Andy
Thanks, Adan. I’m glad you think it’s finding its target. Let me take a look at the header on various devices, and thanks for pointing that out.
Very nice!
Mmm … The blog is just “For Authors”? Not for readers who are interested in more than in character story, but other aspects of the story and author?
Good question, and I’ll try to tweak the intro to provide a better answer. The thought was to make it easy and clear for visitors to understand the difference between the two different blogs here – one focused on readers, and one focused on writers.
A tab bar doesn’t give you a lot of room for subtle distinctions, and the intro here is already a little long, but fair point, and I’ll see if I can do better. Thanks for pointing this out.
I like the new look – very clean, and all the colors work for me. I do have a question, though. You refer to two blogs, one for readers, and one for writers. I’ve found the one for writers, but which is the one for readers?
Clearly I needed to do a better job on making that clear. I’ve now revised the intro to this page to incorporate everyone’s valuable feedback.
Elena, the reader focused blog is under the “Friend of Frank” tab. If you click there, you’ll be able to see what Friends get, as well as a feel for why I’ve gone this route. My hope is that it will provide a week to build a fan base that stays in touch and also helps spread the word.
I like it Andrew, nice clear and easy to use ..
Thanks, Patrick.
I like it too Andy. Very easy to navigate. Looks very professional but not intimidating. Thanks for including the review of Primed by the Past on it. Much appreciated. Like the idea of the friends of Frank. Will be interested to hear how that develops. Lot of hard work has obviously gone into this. Congratulations on the efforts thus far. I’m signed up to your email list already…
Thanks very much, Barbara. I’m not sure whether my old list of followers has carried over. Did you get an email notice of this blog post? It would be good news if so, but if not, I need to find a work around.
You probably know you have linking problems on the Alexandria Project (only one I checked). No link for Kobo, Amazon not offering for sale, and Google not offering ebook. Please feel free to delete this comment – it is only intended for your eyes, Andy.
Thanks very much, Elena. Yes, I know, and am scrambling to sort this out. It’s a combo of new site and files in transition in the distribution channels.
It seems to be fixed now. You’ve got a new publisher, I guess? Your book no longer has a sales rank it seems. Do you know whether the algorithms have forgotten you? But your reviews went with the new version. What do you know about how that all worked?
Yes, I pulled the files back from the original POD full-service outfit to being my own publisher (I self-published the second one from the beginning on my own).
Managing this transition is easier than you’d expect, and perhaps easier than it should be, since there’s a lot of book piracy right in the formal distribution channels. By that I mean that some people have found that their books have been uploaded for sale on Amazon, and that all the sales are now going to the pirated version.
All I had to do was upload the book myself, and the existing reviews very soon migrated over, while also continuing to appear at the old versions. I also checked in with Amazon Help in advance to be sure what to do.
The final step is that I asked my old publisher to withdraw the old files, which it’s done, and the old versions should disappear in a day or so. Unfortunately, I need to start my sales rank numbers from 0, since I’m a different publisher, ISBN, etc.
I haven’t checked yet to see if reviews have carried over in Canada, UK, Australia, Germany, etc., and I may not have been so lucky there. I also haven’t checked to see whether it’s possible to keep any at iTunes, etc.
Happy to answer any other questions you might have.
The sales rank seems to be based on very short-term sales, though – a few sales and as far as I can tell you rank as high as a book that’s been selling at that same rate for months or years.
It’s a bit complicated trying to track this from the outside. For example, here’s a link to the Kindle version of my first book – the one I just self-published: http://amzn.to/1J5XHVY As you can see, it’s not ranked at all, because there hasn’t been a first sale yet.
Now here’s a link to the original publisher version of the same book, which hasn’t been pulled by Amazon yet: http://amzn.to/1HweprS That reflects the effect of a couple of sales over the last week two ten days.
I haven’t promoted this book at all for quite awhile, except through the back matter of my second book. Once the old editions clear out, however, I’ll start a concerted campaign. The objective will be to get BookBub to take it, which shouldn’t be a problem, because first, I’ve “gone wide” (which BookBub prefers), and it’s available at all the main outlets.
I’ll start by doing a $0.99 promo through BooksButterfly and Fussy Librarian on the same day, or close to it. That should result in at least 100 sales, which will raise it to a rank high enough to submit it to eReaderNewsToday and BookBub. eReadersNewsToday should certainly take it (they’ve taken my books before), and BookBub may to. If BookBub doesn’t, they should after the ENT promo runs.
A BookBub add should move over 800 copies, and then I’ll keep my fingers crossed. We’ll see.
You say a BookBub add should move over 800 copies. Where do you get that number? Experience? And I hear that they charge more if the book price is higher. Are you planning to do your sale at $.99? or will you bump it back to the usual price? Do you know your break even point? And when you do this promo, are you looking to exceed that point? or is there some other reason you have for doing it? I’d be interested in your doing a study on your experience (again). I’d love to hear you find a way to make a lot of money!
Elena, my goal isn’t actually to make a lot of money, but to hope to get my books noticed. Breakeven on costs would be more than enough. The problem I’m dealing with is discovery, not profit. The numbers I mentioned for BooksButterfly and ERNT are based on experience (about 100 for the latter), while the BB ones are based on the numbers at their site, which claims (by my recollection) that $0.99 sales numbers range from something like 600 – 4,000.
Whether that’s still accurate is a risk I’m willing to take; certainly the promo book market is incredibly dynamic and is changing all the time.
Yes, I do know my breakeven point, and there’s an amount I’m willing to invest each year in my self-publishing efforts. You could think of them as a serious hobby: I enjoy the challenge of seeing if I can learn enough about the dynamics of self-publishing to see if I can break through, but I’m realistic to know that the odds are long no matter how well you understand the realities and the table stakes.
What methods have you found to be most successful in promoting your books?
I have a sort of “unformulated” plan. To my surprise, my book, “It’s a Woman’s World,” has ranked decently, and I think that ranking is generating some sales. I also have two blogs – one that I own, and one on WordPress – again to my surprise. I didn’t intend to get the wordpress.com site for various reasons, but it is easily and automatically linked to various other things, so I added it. I warn you, the site is kinky, but I think you might find it instructive as an author’s site – because it does not speak to authors. Rather, it attempts for the most part to speak to the customers.
I have done no other promotion than those sites and my book listings yet – still only on Amazon at this point.
I wasn’t expecting anything out of that, and the fact that there have been some sales has disarranged my plans, actually. I was going to work on the site and social media, and publishing on other outlets, but this has been slowed down by the need to create more original material. EVENTUALLY I will broaden the social media net and build up the site (the one I own) more – including different ways to purchase the books. Eventually, if the books generate the money to do so, I may go with some sort of paid advertising or promotion.
Here’s a question I wrestle with, though: “is it better to have 100 people who will pay at least $5.00 for your books, or 500 who only pay $0.99?” My provisional answer seems to differ from yours. I’m not concerned with the comparative cash return – no, I am concerned, actually, I’ll admit it – but the main question is in the minds of those readers. Are 100 full-price readers better than 500 cut-price readers? My sense is that the 100 are better in the long run, but your strategy would imply you have reached a different answer.
I’ve visited your blog before, and I think that it does a very good job of speaking to potential readers; something I haven’t really done much of at my blog before, but will be doing more of now.
I think that the 500 at $0.99 is always better than the 100 at $5.99 if your goal is to get more readers and/or ultimately to make more money. The reason I say that is that promoting a book is exceptionally hard. There’s only so much that one person can do, and there are only so many techniques to try – all of which are also being used by hundreds of thousands (!) of other authors.
On the the other hand, having 500 readers who hopefully like your book and all have social media accounts and friends gives you enormously more leverage than you had before.
The last thing worth noting is that no promotional technique can ever be more effective than a recommendation from someone you know, trust and respect. So if a friend tells you, “you’ve got to read this book!” that’s the most powerful promotion you can ever get.
And with 500 people reading your book, you’ve got five times more opportunities for that to happen, and a much greater chance for the recommendations to build and grow from there. That’s what I’m trying for.
I said that my WordPress.com site would automatically link, but it looks like it doesn’t do that here, now that you’ve changed your site. LOL. So now I have to give you the link if you want it: https://xxxperimentblog.wordpress.com/2016/01/14/the-world-of-its-a-womans-world/
Again, I warn the easily shocked that this site may not be for you, but I think it holds an important insight for those who look for it.