# This is why it's almost impossible for new authors!



## Evenstar (Jan 26, 2013)

I did an experiment this week.

I launched a new book (first in a new series) with total radio silence.

I didn't tell anyone.

And you know what happened? NOTHING!

No sales, no reads, and straight down the charts it fell.

Now, usually when I put a new book out I can expect a few hundred sales in the first day or two (from my mailing list), which kicks in my also-boughts, which tickle the amazon algo's. Then I announce it to the wider world (twitter/facebook) and a few ads start running to keep numbers up.

This time I think I might have put it on my facebook page.... Yes, I did. But no boosted post.

And it occurred to me that this is exactly how a new author would start. With an announcement on facebook and no list to get them going.

So, how do they get visible? I guess you need to spend some money and give away a ton of free copies so you can build up your list. And then, maybe next time it will be better?


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## dianapersaud (Sep 26, 2013)

I started a new pen name at the end of last year, no mailing list nothing but AMS ads and enrolled in KU. Those two things are the only way for a brand new author to get visibility. That and choosing the right subcats!

It was a test book. It did better than expected and after book 2 was out, I did small ads (Fussy Librarian and a few others) to keep it visible.

It's much harder than it was a few years ago.

ETA:
I'v never set the books to free but I have done KCDs @ $0.99

I currently have 3 subscribers on my mailing list YAY!!!
I'm growing this one *slowly *but surely


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Evenstar said:


> I did an experiment this week.
> 
> I launched a new book (first in a new series) with total radio silence.
> 
> ...


This is also what happens when you don't have money for ads.


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## sela (Nov 2, 2014)

Deleted


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## Beth_Hammond (Oct 30, 2015)

I stopped with the mailing list. I stopped everything but AMS ads. I sell a little but not much. The only thing that seems to help is publishing more.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Does a falling tree make a sound if no one is present to hear it?

Back in 2012, I launched my first book and had $24 in sales. Over the next couple of years, I managed to consistently sell $100-200 a month as I published a 5-book series. Then I didn't publish anything for almost two years, but I did start promoting my books at least once a month. I still remember my first $500 dollar month, and then nine months later my first $1,000 month.

When I finally published a new book, I spent $300 on a cover (about what I spent total on the first 5) and $700 on ads and promos for a big launch. I sold $1,700 that month, and $6,000 the next month. The old series sold more in that time than it ever had.

Publishing is either a hobby or a business. If you're happy with $200 months, don't worry about promotion or ads or newsletters.


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## Trioxin 245 (Dec 29, 2017)

I have been in this business for less than a year and though I never discuss numbers for various reasons, I am paying my bills by writing. I mostly lurk here on this forum, but one question I never see people ask or talk about is  "Who is my customer?"  That is one of the most important questions you need to ask.  Once you figure that out, your sales will increase with your next book. Until then, it will be a matter of throwing more money at ads to sell a book to customers you don't know.


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## Shane Lochlann Black (Mar 3, 2015)

This is a complete guess, but how likely is it that Amazon's system rewards individual books based on how fast the total number of titles for a given author are published?

For example, let's suppose an author writes a book a month. The first four books don't get any significant visibility, but all of a sudden, book five trips the system and all five books are suddenly more visible than they would otherwise be via also-boughts or what have you. That would explain the sudden spike in sales some authors see when they are early in a series release: sales spikes that are otherwise inexplicable given what we know about the release cycle for any individual new title.

This would do two things. One, it would reward authors who are taking their writing seriously from a commercial standpoint and two, it would keep the tops of the lists clear of the one-offs that aren't likely to generate sustained sales because they don't have any follow-ons.

We all know series do well. It's rather likely Amazon does too, so what if they set up their system to reward the publishing format that sells best?
For that matter, what's stopping them from applying these automatic incentives to certain top-selling genres? They have all the numbers. Perhaps they simply base their incentives on what works. The authors that are now writing three titles at a time and then doing a superfast release of all three might find they have an advantage this way.

So then from an author standpoint the contest is just like my fictional space fleet's motto: Whoever gets there firstest with the mostest wins.


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## valeriec80 (Feb 24, 2011)

To be fair, yes, it took years for my books to take off, but things were still easier back then.

In 2009, when I first started publishing, you could legit make $$ with a crappy cover. It took ages for me to get good enough with my cover-making skills, and that was fine. I had time to fail and dust myself off and keep trying, and eventually, tweaking one series, it finally caught. Amazon algos were also different, and things could build slowly over months. Also, there was just way less noise. No one else was self-publishing in 2009. It was pre-Amanda Hocking. So, I mean, you were a bigger percentage of the pie. Plus, there was no KU, and B&N was more robust, and permafree was just a thing that just worked. Make a book free, make $2K. Cha-ching. Like that. And the best places to advertise your books? They took you for FREE and made all their money off affiliate sales from Amazon. It was tres easier. Just was. Life isn't fair. If that discourages you, stop trying to be a writer. It will break you.

Now, all that said, I have been publishing for, wow, NINE years? And, um, I have amassed no real audience in this time, due to my very amazing ability to switch genres like a mofo, and some other general bad luck, like my UF name just, like, dying for no reason I can figure. But I just launched a book into the top 10,000 with a mailing list of 200, only 11 of which even opened the damned email. I'm in the hole, of course, .

Anyway, so having gotten a head start has only helped me, I think, in the way that I have more knowledge and skills. And having a backlist that I can sometimes exploit. I feel like I am starting from scratch with practically every book. And that can still work.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Shane Lochlann Black said:


> This is a complete guess, but how likely is it that Amazon's system rewards individual books based on how fast the total number of titles for a given author are published?


The Martian. The Crimson Queen. Being single books didn't seem to harm their sales or visibility.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

There's no perfectly reliable formula for a book or series taking off. Each one is a roll of the dice. The odds get better as you release more books, as you improve covers and writing and metadata and all that--but it's all just odds.

Even if the odds are ever in your favor, you still might get killed before you even grab a weapon, so to speak.

My experiences mirror sela and brK. First book, almost nothing. By book 5, earnings were consistently in the three figures per month. By book 7, four figures. By book 10, 5 figures. All the time I was doing everything I could, plowing every dime I made, back into promos, better covers, re-edits, keyword improvement, ads, everything we all try before we find what works for us. 

If you genuinely want to make this a career, or at least a part-time job, writing more books increases your odds enormously, but you never know if sales will take off at book 1, book 3, book 5 or book 10--or never.


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## bberntson (Oct 24, 2013)

Thanks for the valuable thread!  There is a lot of good info here that answered a lot of my questions.  I've gone through slogs for years trying to figure out my own drawbacks, and it's nice to know we're not alone.  I just recently tried a non-fiction release and will be doing something more crime noir/pulp/Lovecraftian here soon, that I, ironically, found was the most damn fun I ever had writing.  It was the easiest for me too, and I found I could easily write in that genre for several books.  Of course the category might be questionable, but at least my backlist is growing.  Best of luck to everyone and their sales!


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## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

There are lots of ways to promote that don't cost money - from your email signature to building a free website. I use a free Google site and have for years. I even use a free Google doc to let people sign up for my mailing list. Then post a free chapter on your website, serial post a chapter on Facebook, and look for sites that let you post a free chapter or even the whole book. Just be sure you have a website set up that they can visit, and if not, the site you post to lets you include a link to your sales page(s). If you learn to build a site yourself, it's easy to update. Don't forget that Amazon lets you share the sample of your work on your website, which is easier than posting the chapters yourself.

In case you didn't know about it, on the Amazon sales page where you book is listed, on the right hand sidebar, is Click on that, copy and past the link, and embed it in your website. It's really very cool.

Public Bookshelf is a great place for romance authors to post their work for free. I'm sure there are more, but I can't remember the names.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

Literally THOUSANDS of books are self-pubbed every day.  Anyone who expects to publish a book and see it start to sell on it's own is living in a dream world. 

A friend of mine published a book, but would only give me a hint about the topic and one word that was in the title.  I knew it had been published one of two days... I did an advanced search on Amazon specifically for books published on those two days with this one word in the title. 

I went through 1204 books published on those days... and never found it. 

If you aren't planning to market your books, they'll sit on the pile with all the other books.  Some real, some mass-produced junk... there's no way for readers to find one random book they know nothing about.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

Evenstar said:


> I did an experiment this week.
> 
> I launched a new book (first in a new series) with total radio silence.
> 
> ...


I liken it to building sites to rank in Google.

Back in 2000, you could build a five-page site with crap content, manufacture a few "powered" (high pagerank) links, and rank for competitive keywords within days. Cost: less than $50.

By 2006, you needed to build a bigger site with higher-quality content, and develop a broad, relevant backlink profile to rank. And even then, establishing a persistent footing at the top could take weeks. Cost: more than $500.

Today, you need to build an authority site with deep content that attracts tons of links. Establishing a persistent footing can take more than a year. Cost: $5,000+

Indie publishing is similar. Building a fanbase takes a lot of time and/or money. Authors who lack a stable fanbase will find it increasingly hard to compete for visibility.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

I had the same thing... people quivering over making their site live on a specific date and time... and being incredibly disappointed that people didn't instantly flock to it. 

I guess people think that because a thing exists... other people will know it's there and want it. 

The big trend for a while (and possibly still is ) is finding "hungry categories" where there aren't enough books.  In those cases, you might be able to just put it out there and have the people who rake those categories for new titles snap it up... but with the flood of ebooks, I don't think there are many of those left.


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## Evenstar (Jan 26, 2013)

It's true, there are many ways to do it better than I did this time. I've forgotten them all because I've been an author now for (gasp at self realization) five years!

Five years... and I have a lot of books to show for it. So when I launch I kind of take that experience for granted. I know what to do, and I do it without thinking. Except this time... this time I didn't.

And it SUCKED!

now, I've put myself in a position where I'm going to have to scramble to recover. Which is kinda fun. I'm going to try some list swaps which I haven't done a lot of before. (So, if you're looking for a YA list swap then hit me with a pm). And I'm going to have to work hard at motivating my Review Crew to be quick.

It's a really good lesson actually. It shows me how far I've come but also to take nothing for granted. It's tough out there without back up!


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## L_Loryn (Mar 1, 2018)

Evenstar said:


> I did an experiment this week.
> 
> I launched a new book (first in a new series) with total radio silence.
> 
> ...


I launched a new book this week, too. It wasn't an experiment to see how things work, though. I always set up my preorder first and I have like two die hard fans who purchase my preorders immediately (I have no idea who these people are).

I emailed like... 1/10th of my email list, but I didn't get anymore preorders. I did, however, get a handful of purchases day-of. I screwed up my AMS ads, so they didn't kick in as normal. I screwed up scheduling the book so it wasn't distributed wide as normal (I am direct everywhere except iBooks.. but I actually get a fair amount of sales on iBooks).

I'm a new fiction author. I did short stories for a few months before taking time to write something full length. I don't know how a person would get any visibility if they don't at least build an email list beforehand. For the record, I built my list to 300 subscribers using Instafreebie's free month trial (I feel so cheap right now). I'm only saying it because I assume a lot of new authors start out with zero money to spend on advertising.


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## Guest (Jun 23, 2018)

Wow! Another timely thread just for me. I can't thank you all enough. I must admit that I'm more than overwhelmed right now with all that has to be done with the launch of my first YA. I don't have the best health so I only do what I like doing or have to do. For my previous books, I've done little to no marketing and they're all in print. 

But this is my first YA. I don't want it to tank. Should I enroll in KDP Select? I'm a slow writer, and it's not like I'll be able to have another YA out in 3 months. And I'm worried that if I give away the book for free, Amazon will not count it as a sale. I'm not planning on releasing it on other platforms, not right now anyway, because there's so much to learn just with the kindle. So I think, I should enroll in KDPS. Thoughts? What is the one thing I should do? One thing I shouldn't? 

Things in my favor: I'm already established as a children's writer and have a children's writing community I've been a part of for 14 yrs (Blueboards, now the SCBWI message board). Been blogging for 10. My plan is to release the ebook next week--let my family and friends know and go from there. Formatting the print book is a bear. Just when I think I've figured out one thing, there's another thing I need to fix. Gah. But I know too many people who will not read ebooks, so I have to have the print. Besides, it's my first novel and I want to hold my bookbaby too. I know, I know, vanity. 

Thanks for posting your experiment Evenstar. I hope you are able to climb back up to the top. Vijaya


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## unkownwriter (Jun 22, 2011)

> . . . one question I never see people ask or talk about is "Who is my customer?" That is one of the most important questions you need to ask.


This is most often covered as "write to market", so no, you won't specifically see people talking about "customer". I think it's important to know where your customers hang out when it comes to buying ads. If your readers are a niche of Romance, promoting in a children's book email list won't get you very far.


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## MyraScott (Jul 18, 2014)

Evenstar, those covers in your signature are gorgeous, by the way!!


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## John Hunter (May 11, 2018)

Wowers. I am certainly getting an education reading Kboards. As a noobie coming from scriptwriting sniffing the eBook airs...one more time, WOWERS. I can't even imagine spending the money or energy quoted here to cast my little buffalo chip of an ebook into the fire hose of new issues gushing forth daily over at Amazon, et al. For those of you who have cracked the code and made a buck in this arena, I salute you.


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## Evenstar (Jan 26, 2013)

MyraScott said:


> Evenstar, those covers in your signature are gorgeous, by the way!!


Aw, thanks Myra! I was getting tired of all my multi-coloured YA books clogging up my signature. I was hoping the ones from this pen name would make me look more 'mature'


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## R.U. Writing (Jul 18, 2015)

MyraScott said:


> Anyone who expects to publish a book and see it start to sell on it's own is living in a dream world.


This simply isn't true. I've had a book go to a rank of 7,000 by merely pressing "publish." It happened within 2 days. The only reason it died was a bad review came in  In my experiments, I've had a few other books go to 30,000 with no ads, no email list, no pre-existing audience, no nothing. Brand new pen names. I'm sure many others have gone even higher.

It all depends on genre, cover, and blurb.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Over the past year or so, I have seen (personal observation) fewer people have out of the gate successes with algorithm-driven sales and far more people wondering why their sales (and more importantly, their incomes) have vanished. 

IMO, the connecting issue here is: audience.

If you're a purely algorithm-driven seller, your tools are KU, 99c sales and lots of ads. It's very crowded there and those things don't actually make a lot of money unless your sales are really good.

Some people manage to build up a loyal audience in this way because their books strike a long-term chord with a good-sized audience. Those are the ones we see continuing to do well in KU. For most, however, it's a short term ride. Not having built a huge audience, and having ceded the way to reach that audience to Amazon, these writers struggle to recapture their success.

IMO the answer to selling well lies not in: how did writer A trick the algorithms to make $20,000 in the first month of starting with a new pen name. It is: how did writer B manage to continue paying the mortgage even though he published no new books in three years?

Audience.

Finding it. Continuing to expand it. Retaining it for your own use, and re-use.

When you start a pen name you throw away the audience you've built. And since purely algorithm-driven successes seem to be a lot rarer these days, you'll probably sink without a trace.


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## SomeoneElse (Jan 5, 2016)

Evenstar said:


> I did an experiment this week.
> 
> I launched a new book (first in a new series) with total radio silence.
> 
> ...


I launched my first book in 2015, no promotion - got a few full reads a couple sales in the first day or two. Another first in series in 2016, and that had reads before I promoted it. I just launched a new first in series a few days ago, and, exactly like you said - nothing. For the record, I have some promotions lined up, but nothing in the first few days.

So yeah, I'm really glad you started this thread, because I was beginning to think there was something wrong with my new book... now I can at least leave the panicking until after I see how the promotions go.


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## AlexaGrave (Jun 11, 2015)

The struggle to get noticed is so very real (and scary!).

And then if you're like me and don't have much to spend on advertising and what little you do have you don't want to funnel into advertising Book 1 until Book 2 is out... and then life and kids keep delaying Book 2.

So, new author who also is on a super slow publishing pace = near impossible (it also doesn't help that not even friends buy my stuff even when they say they will, and my immediate family doesn't read fantasy...).

I constantly feel like I'm shouting into the void.   Right now my freebie short story in my Fate series is the only thing getting an occasional download.


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## The Bass Bagwhan (Mar 9, 2014)

I'm really responding to this thread as a means to remind myself what I'm not doing ... it's not that I'm lazy or unmotivated, but _busy_. Life gets in the way - especially the kind of life that pays bills.

The real secret to sustained success is in persistence, work effort and doing those hard yards. Despite that a lot of authors here share their methods or madness towards good sales, those threads still don't really reveal just how much time and effort, and sheer hard work they devote to getting results. They write and write and write ... and market, and blog and post. And they ensure the highest quality of everything. You can't be "visible" if you've got nothing worthwhile to see.

As others say, build an audience for yourself. The book sales will come as a bonus.

Now to practise what I'm preaching...


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## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

Vijaya, if you already have "fans," then I'd just put it up for sale first, and then move it to KU (if you want to by then) when the sales start to dwindle.


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## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

John Hunter said:


> Wowers. I am certainly getting an education reading Kboards. As a noobie coming from scriptwriting sniffing the eBook airs...one more time, WOWERS. I can't even imagine spending the money or energy quoted here to cast my little buffalo chip of an ebook into the fire hose of new issues gushing forth daily over at Amazon, et al. For those of you who have cracked the code and made a buck in this arena, I salute you.


Don't let it overwhelm you. At least 50% give up after the first three months of not becoming a millionaire. The people you meet here are the "hang in there" gang. You've come to the right place to learn. Some of these gals/guys are the pro's.


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## RebeccaMarshall (Jun 21, 2018)

Martitalbott said:


> Don't let it overwhelm you. At least 50% give up after the first three months of not becoming a millionaire. The people you meet here are the "hang in there" gang. You've come to the right place to learn. Some of these gals/guys are the pro's.


I'm another newbie, but I've already learned so much from lurking the last couple weeks. It's a bit intimidating to jump in with so many experts, but you have all been very helpful.


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## RH Tucker (Nov 5, 2017)

Evenstar said:


> I did an experiment this week.
> 
> I launched a new book (first in a new series) with total radio silence.
> 
> ...


New author here 

In a few days, I'll have my books released for three months (hit publish March 26th). I'm keeping track of everything and still debating on whether or not to write my own kboards post next year, covering some stuff, but I'd like to add to this for any other newbies out there.

I started with no mailing list (I just got my 10th subscriber a few days ago  ) I used the variation of the Liliana Nirvana technique. I wrote three books last year and into the beginning of this year and released them all at the same time. The only advertising I did was all I could; post on IG and Twitter (I'm horrible on FB so I didn't even bother with that.) And those two accounts? Less than a hundred followers at the time.

The only other "promotion" I did on release day was from a well-known author who I know personally and we write the same genre. Different market, but same genre. She gave me a simple shout on a IG story on release day. So that was nice, but that's it.

First Day. 1 unit sold. 

But I just kept plugging away. The only ads I've done in these three months have been IG (seemed okay, but nothing crazy) and AMS ad. The AMS ad sucked. Like, SUCKED. I did the bare minimum because I'm still learning AMS, but from what I gather, I got 9 clicks on the ads, none of which led to sales. I'll figure it out.

Anyway, by the end of the first week, I'd sold a total of 9 units altogether. My page reads have increased week after week. Two weeks after release I used a free day for each book. I'd been promoting it for only three days earlier to try and build excitement promoting it as a "flash sale". A couple bookstagrammers with average size followers, but nothing insane (a few thousand) DM'd me and said if I send them a graphic, they'd post about the free books. I mainly used the free day as an event in hopes of getting reviews. That didn't work. 

This week has been my best yet. Not counting today, the last three days I've sold at least 10 units a day. Sure, nothing compared to the "big guys" but not to bad for selling 9 units that entire first week. Of course, not all weeks have been good for units, but still...

I agree with what everyone's said. It's about finding your audience. Simple promotion can work in the beginning if you don't have a big budget for spending on ads, which I didn't. Letting people know there's a book out there. At least,t that's what I've found. And I do think releasing three books at the same time helped immensely.



Martitalbott said:


> Don't let it overwhelm you. At least 50% give up after the first three months of not becoming a millionaire. The people you meet here are the "hang in there" gang. You've come to the right place to learn. Some of these gals/guys are the pro's.


True! I did my research beforehand, learning from established authors on podcasts and blog posts, but the help and info found on kboards has been invaluable.


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## Abderian (Apr 5, 2012)

I think the situation for many new authors is actually worse than releasing to crickets. Now that it's possible to spend thousands on promoting a new release, many are and not making their money back. I saw the figure of $10,000 quoted as a reasonable cost to publish a book these days. Bullcrap of course, but an inexperienced author could easily believe it. Spending a ton of money is being touted as a sure-fire way to success and tantalizing stories are told of writers who made it in an entirely different market. If you have that kind of money, and even if you haven't, the dream of writing full-time is tempting enough to entice some new writers to spend it.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

I started a new pen name a year ago with no connection whatsoever to my existing pen names. I did nothing to promote but drop $2 a day on AMS ads. After my second release came out a month later I was making enough on it to pay my rent and utilities. It isn't bringing in Amanda money, but it has consistently outperformed my established pen names. Why? Because I know a lot more now than I did when I started them.

I'll echo what has already been stated - know your audience. Know what they are looking for. Have professional, genre-appropriate covers and good blurbs. Grab them with the Look Inside and keep them wanting more with every single chapter. It isn't simple in practice, but the fundamentals haven't changed in the last seven years since I started. Like any other job you have to learn the basics and it takes time to get good at it, and yes, there is a fair amount of pure luck involved. The experience part is where you learn to stack the deck in your favor before the deal.

Still, sacrificing a virgin or two in The Well of Death can't hurt, either.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

I'll tell you what's even more depressing - getting a trad pub deal, seeing your books in local stores, and knowing that within a month or two they'll be gone. Forever.

At least ebooks are always available. Even if you don't have the time, energy or money to promote now, you can keep writing and publishing. I'll tell you why - in 4-5 years time, when you have a dozen books up, you can hit the promo button and it's like they're all brand new releases.


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

I put a 10% sample of my book on Instafreebie and Book Cave (and now StoryOrigin, a new upcoming service), and put a link at the end to the Amazon buy page so if people enjoyed the sample, they could buy the book. I also use that and a paranormal short story to collect newsletter subs and do newsletter swaps with other authors. Most of this can be done for free until you get enough subs to force a paid subscription.

I toyed around with FB ads and just haven't nailed those yet. I'll probably wait until I have more books before trying again. I don't feel these are worth messing with if you are on a tight budget.

AMS has been marginally successful. I've used the earnings my book makes to sink it back into advertising and so far the book has earned more than I spent except lately... grr... _Peeps need to buy my book!_  I'm only doing three different dollar a day ads to keep the costs down. I can only imagine the benefits when I have more books in the series besides the one and lonely. 

It's definitely doable for a new author, but you need to be realistic about your spending and have a good product people want to read. Try not to dump a lot of money into advertising until your book has proven it's likeable and you have more than just a single book to offer.


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## jb1111 (Apr 6, 2018)

It depends on the genre, and I think a lot of it is luck.

Writing something that grips your genre's audience probably helps, but then -- luck.

I have no FB. No ads. Nothing. I just release books. I started writing my own stuff some time in 2015, so it wasn't during the 'boom' that apparently occurred early on.

My first book sold a handful. The next one, a month later, sold a handful. After the fifth book, they were all increasing as people who apparently liked one work went back to check out the others.

To me, any sales are gratuitous luck. Sales aren't deserved -- even once you are 'established'. Readers do not owe you sales. They have a lot of places where they can spend their money.


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## notjohn (Sep 9, 2016)

dianapersaud said:


> It's much harder than it was a few years ago.


Indeed it is!



> I currently have 3 subscribers on my mailing list YAY!!!
> I'm growing this one *slowly *but surely


Unfortunately, mailing lists also are much harder than they used to be. Mine stays about constant at 634, give or take one or two. Every month four or five people sign up, and every month four or five addresses are purged because of three "hard" bounces. People die, move, change internet providers.

(Of course, some signed up in 1993, tee hee. Can't expect them to live forever!)


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

I find that my own #1 limiter is capital. Every financial decision that I make robs Peter to pay Paul. I'm always trading off editing vs covers vs advertising, to the detriment of the other two. I find that advertising is its own frustrating inquiry, well able to suck down funds for little return as you figure it out, in addition to all the review barriers thrown up against you.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Martitalbott said:


> Public Bookshelf is a great place for romance authors to post their work for free. I'm sure there are more, but I can't remember the names.


Thanks for this. If you are in Select can you publish on Public Bookshelf without violating Amazon's TOC's? Do you publish the entire novel or just a few chapters?


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## Guest (Jun 24, 2018)

Marti, thank you. That makes sense to me.



Simon Haynes said:


> I'll tell you what's even more depressing - getting a trad pub deal, seeing your books in local stores, and knowing that within a month or two they'll be gone. Forever.
> 
> At least ebooks are always available. Even if you don't have the time, energy or money to promote now, you can keep writing and publishing. I'll tell you why - in 4-5 years time, when you have a dozen books up, you can hit the promo button and it's like they're all brand new releases.


Simon, so true. The avg. lifespan of a book is 18 months. I've had friends whose books went OOP in less than a year.

You won't remember me, Simon, but I remember you. Years and years ago, when I began my first novel, you were very kind and I downloaded yWriter. I don't use it anymore because Word has the same features now and easy to set up but it was really good of you. Thank you!

So glad to have discovered these boards.


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## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

Abderian said:


> I think the situation for many new authors is actually worse than releasing to crickets. Now that it's possible to spend thousands on promoting a new release, many are and not making their money back. I saw the figure of $10,000 quoted as a reasonable cost to publish a book these days. Bullcrap of course, but an inexperienced author could easily believe it. Spending a ton of money is being touted as a sure-fire way to success and tantalizing stories are told of writers who made it in an entirely different market. If you have that kind of money, and even if you haven't, the dream of writing full-time is tempting enough to entice some new writers to spend it.


I have also seen a trend of more experienced authors dropping $5,000 plus on a release hoping to hit it out of the park. I'm sure some have been successful, but most often I hear about the struggle to break even. The most I've spent to launch a book was less than $1,000, and that includes the cover. As my revenues have grown, I spend more on promotion and advertising. I have a friend who spends $10K a month, but she grosses $30K. She didn't start by spending that kind of money, but she wrote a good book and followed it with six more.

I broke out of the bottom-feeder rankings when I made the commitment to promote every month, with a top limit of $100. This paid for itself, and following recommendations on this board, I got smarter, wrote more to market, and am starting to make enough money to count.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Vijaya said:


> Marti, thank you. That makes sense to me.
> 
> Simon, so true. The avg. lifespan of a book is 18 months. I've had friends whose books went OOP in less than a year.
> 
> ...


I just went off to check my email history, and you commented on my blog in 2011 ;-)

Glad I was helpful!

Cheers
Simon


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## Guest (Jun 24, 2018)

I am not sure why this would be a surprise to anyone. Any business that doesn't promote itself won't sell product. Doesn't matter if it is ebooks or hamburgers. If you don't have traffic going by your business, nobody will know it is there. 

This entire notion that writers can just sit back and let Amazon algorithms do all of the work is precisely the reason Amazon has so much control over indies. Why would people be shocked that no promotion means no sales? That is normal. People can't buy products they don't know about. And the only way people will know about your product is if YOU get it in front of them.


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## Indiecognito (May 19, 2014)

This is a much appreciated thread and topic. I just went through this because I released a first book by a new pen name, in a new genre. Holy cow. I’m used to having a 16,000-person mailing list. I’m used to an active and helpful FB network. Starting from scratch is hellish and humbling and ow.

One thing is: no ARC list. So I recruited a couple of my readers from genre number one—readers who are into anything that comes their way. But that’s a whole other challenge that I hadn’t considered.


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## L_Loryn (Mar 1, 2018)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> I am not sure why this would be a surprise to anyone. Any business that doesn't promote itself won't sell product. Doesn't matter if it is ebooks or hamburgers. If you don't have traffic going by your business, nobody will know it is there.
> 
> This entire notion that writers can just sit back and let Amazon algorithms do all of the work is precisely the reason Amazon has so much control over indies. Why would people be shocked that no promotion means no sales? That is normal. People can't buy products they don't know about. And the only way people will know about your product is if YOU get it in front of them.


Pretty much this. Though, now I want a hamburger.


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> Thanks for this. If you are in Select can you publish on Public Bookshelf without violating Amazon's TOC's? Do you publish the entire novel or just a few chapters?


10% sample, no more.


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## Catherine Lea (Jul 16, 2013)

Trioxin 245 said:


> I have been in this business for less than a year and though I never discuss numbers for various reasons, I am paying my bills by writing. I mostly lurk here on this forum, but one question I never see people ask or talk about is "Who is my customer?" That is one of the most important questions you need to ask. Once you figure that out, your sales will increase with your next book. Until then, it will be a matter of throwing more money at ads to sell a book to customers you don't know.


This.


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## Guest (Jun 24, 2018)

Simon Haynes said:


> I just went off to check my email history, and you commented on my blog in 2011 ;-)


Ah, the interwebs have a great memory


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

C. Gold said:


> 10% sample, no more.


Thanks. Do you recommend the 'Bookie' upload, or a couple of chapters using the 'novel' upload?


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## Morgan C (Jun 24, 2018)

I published at the end of 2016. No announcements, no efforts, no expectations. It was a quickly written short story just to get in the game. Of course, I learned how to make my own covers (not very well) with fonts that were already in my computer. So not the best fonts in the world. 

As expected, it didn't even get a page read!

Three short stories later, still nothing. I was publishing in erotica, so I had heard there would be at least a few people interested, but nope, none.

I kept writing. Two more published short stories later (five total) I got three page reads. Two days later I got a sale. After that, nothing for another week. Half way into January 2017, I started to get more reads and more sales. I was up to seventeen short stories by the end of the month. The longest was only 15,000 words. After that, I had at least one sale a day until August, with ten a day on average through the different months, and I had gotten into the top 100 in the genre a few times (which really helped with exposure).

Unfortunately, an injury kept me from writing for the rest of the year, and I had last published in the spring. Still, it seemed to find its own fans and buyers. They weren't great months, but at least I didn't have to advertise. 

Then my rank crashed in December, and I had to start in again, since my injury was healing. I would like to say I have recovered, but I have only been in the top 100 for erotica twice since last year. I have been tempted to advertise and start web pages for helping out, but really, I should just keep writing and publishing. I haven't gotten into the big bucks ever, but then, it is only a side project, and not a main job. Still, it would be fun to get into the top 100 and stay there, as someone who only publishes, and doesn't advertise. 

It's been my advice for new authors, that they just need to keep writing. Although some people are gifted with ads and social media, there are others that should just do what they can. And having more products out there is better than trying to make one carry the burden of the load. 

Just my story.


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## dgcasey (Apr 16, 2017)

MyraScott said:


> I guess people think that because a thing exists... other people will know it's there and want it.


I see this a lot in the artist community, too. It's amazing how many artists will do a painting, hang it on the wall of their living room, maybe put it on their website and then complain about why no one wants to buy their art. They never stop to consider that they haven't found a buyer because they haven't done what's necessary to let people know their painting exists.

"Well, I posted it on my blog and I posted it on XYZ art website."

"Really? How many people visited your blog last week?"

"I don't know."

"How many people visited XYZ website last week?"

"I don't know."

"How many artists are there posting their artwork on XYZ website?"

"I don't know."

"Well then. the problem with your painting not selling is I don't know."

A lot of new authors think that it's Amazon's responsibility to make the millions of people that visit the site each day, aware of their book and get them to buy it.

"Eeeh! Sorry Hans, wrong guess. Would you like to go for Double Jeopardy where the scores can really change?"

It is NOT Amazon's responsibility to make people aware of your book. That they provide things like Also Bought and Also Looked At lists is just icing on the cake. But the only real responsibility they have to us as authors is to give us a space on the bookshelf to place our books. Right smack in the middle of the same shelf occupied by millions of other books. Getting readers to your section of the shelf is solely your responsibility.


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## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

But money is required for advertising. A lot of authors don't have 5k, 1k, or even $100 a month to spend on marketing. I am one of those. What has, however, helped me immensely has been permafree, InstaFreebie back when it worked for me, networking with other authors, and Pinterest. Basically, I have done what I could get away with for cheap or free. 

What concerns me about threads like this is that they assume new authors just want to let their books coast with the Amazon algorithms when that's simply not always true. Marketing is expensive and not all of us are blessed enough to have extra money to spend.


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## Not any more (Mar 19, 2012)

dgcasey said:


> I see this a lot in the artist community, too. It's amazing how many artists will do a painting, hang it on the wall of their living room, maybe put it on their website and then complain about why no one wants to buy their art. They never stop to consider that they haven't found a buyer because they haven't done what's necessary to let people know their painting exists.


My brother-in-law. He's also resistant to doing pieces that are more marketable. Extremely talented, does beautiful work, and has decorated his, and my, walls so nicely.


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## Pandorra (Aug 22, 2017)

Rose Andrews said:


> But money is required for advertising. A lot of authors don't have 5k, 1k, or even $100 a month to spend on marketing. I am one of those. What has, however, helped me immensely has been permafree, InstaFreebie back when it worked for me, networking with other authors, and Pinterest. Basically, I have done what I could get away with for cheap or free.
> 
> What concerns me about threads like this is that they assume new authors just want to let their books coast with the Amazon algorithms when that's simply not always true. Marketing is expensive and not all of us are blessed enough to have extra money to spend.


^ This.

Though, even if I had the money I still wouldn't use it just yet, I have 4 books out under my pen name and 5 more that should be done by the end of the summer, all of them completing series. Without those in my back-list... and one or two more passes for edits... spending that kind of money on adds would just be throwing away money I don't have. So I put out each book when its finished, tweak it as I go, blog on my website and socialize on FB to build an audience, use the free books and price changes to get eyes on the name and books... and I write. When I am 100% sure my catalog looks the way I want it to and my books are as polished as I can make them, I will advertise the most popular books. That's pretty much all I _can_ do...


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## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> Thanks for this. If you are in Select can you publish on Public Bookshelf without violating Amazon's TOC's? Do you publish the entire novel or just a few chapters?


I'm not sure. Of course, you would not be selling your book there, you'd be letting people read it free, so maybe it would be okay.


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## Abderian (Apr 5, 2012)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> I am not sure why this would be a surprise to anyone. Any business that doesn't promote itself won't sell product. Doesn't matter if it is ebooks or hamburgers. If you don't have traffic going by your business, nobody will know it is there.
> 
> This entire notion that writers can just sit back and let Amazon algorithms do all of the work is precisely the reason Amazon has so much control over indies. Why would people be shocked that no promotion means no sales? That is normal. People can't buy products they don't know about. And the only way people will know about your product is if YOU get it in front of them.


The reason newbies are shocked that their books don't sell without any promotion is because they've read successful authors' stories of doing just that. I've read those stories here on KBoards, where the writers say they just wrote great books and didn't do any promotion. So you can't really blame inexperienced writers for believing them. Of course, most of those successful writers started publishing several years ago when there was less competition, and they often didn't only write great books - they often had other things working in their favour, like stumbling into a hot subgenre, receiving a large leg-up from a popular author and so on. So new writers enter today's market with entirely unrealistic expections.


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## Abderian (Apr 5, 2012)

brkingsolver said:


> I have also seen a trend of more experienced authors dropping $5,000 plus on a release hoping to hit it out of the park. I'm sure some have been successful, but most often I hear about the struggle to break even. The most I've spent to launch a book was less than $1,000, and that includes the cover. As my revenues have grown, I spend more on promotion and advertising. I have a friend who spends $10K a month, but she grosses $30K. She didn't start by spending that kind of money, but she wrote a good book and followed it with six more.
> 
> I broke out of the bottom-feeder rankings when I made the commitment to promote every month, with a top limit of $100. This paid for itself, and following recommendations on this board, I got smarter, wrote more to market, and am starting to make enough money to count.


Yeah, successful promotion is definitely a learning curve and even experienced writers can get it wrong. Maybe they didn't have to be skilful with promotion when they started and what worked for them initially doesn't hold true anymore. 
I start out trying to write more to market and then something else takes over, lol. But I'm also learning how to promote better.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Urgh the whole "life was so much easier back then" mantra just stinks.

Maybe you had a bigger chance to be discovered when you started in 2009 or something, but there are a couple of huge fallacies there that are not only plain wrong, but self-sabotaging.

_That you just needed to fling up a book and it would sell._

NOPE. Nopity nopity nope. There are many of us here, myself included, who started around that time. WE DID NOT get automatic huge sales. WE WERE NOT discovered by the masses. WE SOLD BUPKIS if we did nothing, just the same as today, and not only that, there were far fewer avenues for us to advertise effectively. There were few tools.

_That Amazon would do all the marketing for you_

Again: a big fat NOPE. There used to be that trick when we first discovered how to make books free that you made it free for a few days and the kickback from the increase in ranking when it went back to paid would be nice. There was that time that ENT or KND would sell you hundreds of books on the day of the promo. But it was just that: nice, a bit of money. It didn't last, they were short-term spikes. These things were not discoverability magic pills.

_That everything is stacked against new writers now_

URGH! I don't even know where to begin with that one. Should I unpack the self-sabotaging, or the defeatism or the plain untruth? Writing has NEVER been an easy career. NONE of the creative careers are. ALL of them are driven by the creator, not by the freakin' stupid algorithms or whatnot bullshit. We play the algorithms as if they're the biggest and best fiddle in town, but they don't--or shouldn't--define your career. Algorithms or little tricksies are just short term nuggets that will, probably sooner rather than later, drown in their own success.

In 2018, we have great resources, a lot of really professional grade tools out there to help us make our books look great. Go use them!


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

We need a like button!


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Abderian said:


> The reason newbies are shocked that their books don't sell without any promotion is because they've read successful authors' stories of doing just that. I've read those stories here on KBoards, where the writers say they just wrote great books and didn't do any promotion. So you can't really blame inexperienced writers for believing them. Of course, most of those successful writers started publishing several years ago when there was less competition, and they often didn't only write great books - they often had other things working in their favour, like stumbling into a hot subgenre, receiving a large leg-up from a popular author and so on. So new writers enter today's market with entirely unrealistic expections.


The changes to Amazon's algorithms and product page layouts has also hurt, as has the gross abuse of the categorization system. Visibility on Amazon is far lower by default than it used to be. Plus there are a lot more _good_ books to compete against.

But let's be honest. Even in the Good Old Days most new authors flopped coming out of the gate. I know I did, and that was back in 2011 with professional (expensive) cover art and editing by the same person who did Konrath's books. Seven years later those books still haven't recouped what I put into them - but that's my fault because the books themselves were iffy and I had very little idea of what I was doing as a writer. You learn from your mistakes and move on, just like with anything else. Get better with each new book and release. You can't reasonably expect to hit a home run your first time at bat. I don't know why people think that should be different for authors when it doesn't work that way for _anything_.


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## Abderian (Apr 5, 2012)

Patty Jansen said:


> Urgh the whole "life was so much easier back then" mantra just stinks.
> 
> Maybe you had a bigger chance to be discovered when you started in 2009 or something, but there are a couple of huge fallacies there that are not only plain wrong, but self-sabotaging.
> 
> _That you just needed to fling up a book and it would sell._


This isn't only a mantra from new writers trying to figure out why they aren't selling. I've heard this many times from successful writers, except they usually add 'good' in there, and sometimes leave out other things they did.


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## RH Tucker (Nov 5, 2017)

Patty Jansen said:


> _That everything is stacked against new writers now_
> 
> URGH! I don't even know where to begin with that one. Should I unpack the self-sabotaging, or the defeatism or the plain untruth? Writing has NEVER been an easy career. NONE of the creative careers are. ALL of them are driven by the creator, not by the freakin' stupid algorithms or whatnot [bullcrap]. We play the algorithms as if they're the biggest and best fiddle in town, but they don't--or shouldn't--define your career. Algorithms or little tricksies are just short term nuggets that will, probably sooner rather than later, drown in their own success.
> 
> In 2018, we have great resources, a lot of really professional grade tools out there to help us make our books look great. Go use them!


Yes!

As a new author, ugh, forget about the algo's. Some days I have great page reads and my ranking hovers where it normally does. Two days later, my pages reads will drop, but I'll be higher in my category. I CAN'T FIGURE IT OUT. I don't know who can. I might try to pay them more attention later, as I have more releases and more experience, but right now, I've stopped paying attention to them. It was making me go crazy!

And I have to add about the whole thousands of dollars for marketing, I don't agree with that. Marketing isn't just "buying" ads. I'll say for myself, finding hashtags and befriending other authors in my genre (you actually have to befriend them though, not just "hey you don't know me but will you post about my release") has been my main way of gaining traction. Am I making a killing? No, but I'm definitely doing better than I thought I would at this point in time. I think a lot of authors, as has been pointed out, want to explode right out of the gate. I've never looked at it that way. I'd much rather have a steady, nice income for years, than a huge awesome payout for my first few months and then crickets.


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

RH Tucker said:


> Yes!
> 
> As a new author, ugh, forget about the algo's. Some days I have great page reads and my ranking hovers where it normally does. Two days later, my pages reads will drop, but I'll be higher in my category. I CAN'T FIGURE IT OUT. I don't know who can. I might try to pay them more attention later, as I have more releases and more experience, but right now, I've stopped paying attention to them. It was making me go crazy!
> ...


You get rank improvements whenever someone borrows your book, not when they read pages.


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## RH Tucker (Nov 5, 2017)

C. Gold said:


> You get rank improvements whenever someone borrows your book, not when they read pages.


But don't page reads determine how many borrows you get?


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## Abderian (Apr 5, 2012)

RH Tucker said:


> But don't page reads determine how many borrows you get?


No, page reads don't have any influence on the borrows.


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## RH Tucker (Nov 5, 2017)

Abderian said:


> No, page reads don't have any influence on the borrows.


Okay. Thanks.

See, still learning


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## C. Gold (Jun 12, 2017)

RH Tucker said:


> But don't page reads determine how many borrows you get?


Reader A borrows your book.
Rank jumps from 300 to 100.
Reader B borrows your book.
Rank jumps from 100 to 80.
Reader C borrows your book.
Rank jumps up from 80 to 70.

Reader A reads 10 pages and decides it wasn't what they wanted and returns the book.
Reader B reads 1 page before returning it. Maybe they did the page flip!  
Reader C loves your book and reads all 300 KENP worth of your book.

Your total page reads say that one book was read and a tiny bit over that. 
If you have 100 page reads, that could be 100 people reading 1 page and returning the book, or it could be one person reading all 100 pages.

The only way you can guess at how many people borrowed it is if you kept a close eye on rank jumps and counted them as borrows if there are no sales to account for the jumps. Plus you need to know how the rank changes per each book purchase/borrow since it's not a linear scale.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

Personally, I've given up on trying to convince people they are not failing. It's the same here as everywhere: failure is temporary unless you quit. Then it's permanent. 

I know a guy that wrote practically every day for 25 years. Wrote over 100 novels, amassing hundreds, perhaps thousands of rejection slips while selling a few short stories. Frankly, his stuff was terrible at the start. By 10,000,000 words, they weren't bad--but weren't great, because he never got developmental edits or even beta reads. He just wrote in imitation of his favorite books.

Then Kindle came along and changed the game. With a near-term goal in sight, he started really working to get his books cleaned up and self-published. He didn't take off like crazy, but he did grow his earnings into the low four figures per month with 30-40 books up. But he kept working, kept improving, and after about 5 years of Kindle publishing, he hit one out of the park. Like, his 50th book. That series of eight has sold a million copies. Maybe 2 million. 

The other 50-60 old books he has in the can, he doesn't think are even good enough to publish. They'll never see the light of day.

He didn't fail, because he never quit.

So frankly, if someone wants to quit because they haven't gained traction within a year or two or even five, I'm not gonna waste my breath anymore trying to convince them otherwise. It often takes grit to succeed. Fire in the belly.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Many years ago I got embroiled in a network marketing scheme. I'm seeing parallels with ebook publishing, where the few heroes who actually achieve the big numbers are held up as the example for everyone, _if you would only spend enough on advertising_ or _if you would only write to market_ or _if the amazon algos would only give you some lovin'_ or whatever the current _if you only_ might be.

As a long-time proponent of self-pub, and we're talking 20+ years, I've seen it all.

Truth is, as with trad pub, nobody knows why a particular book takes off. There's a whole combination of things, including a sprinkling of magic pixie dust which you just can't buy.

All you can do is write the best book you can, put the best covers & blurb on the thing you can, and then tailor your marketing to your budget. I had a marketing budget of $0 for the past 18 years, and only recently deigned to spend my hard-earned on actual *gasp* ads, but never more than 50% of royalties earned.

If you have no money, look at mailing lists and newsletter swaps and instafreebie/bookcave combined with perma-free. It takes time, sure, but you can gain a following.


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## BellaJames (Sep 8, 2016)

Abderian said:


> The reason newbies are shocked that their books don't sell without any promotion is because they've read successful authors' stories of doing just that. I've read those stories here on KBoards, where the writers say they just wrote great books and didn't do any promotion. So you can't really blame inexperienced writers for believing them. Of course, most of those successful writers started publishing several years ago when there was less competition, and they often didn't only write great books - they often had other things working in their favour, like stumbling into a hot subgenre, receiving a large leg-up from a popular author and so on. So new writers enter today's market with entirely unrealistic expections.


Sometimes a new author comes out with a book that just takes off because they put it in front of the right blogger, reader or fellow author who promotes that book to their audience/friends.

Some books become a word of mouth sensation. When that author tells other authors what happened, some believe they can do the same. However, sometimes it just comes down to that person being able to tell a good story that readers love.

I love datap**n or success story posts but sometimes you cannot replicate another authors success/sales.

The writing, the story telling, the cover, that beginning that hooks readers, the way that author communicates with readers on social media, _it all counts_.


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## Pandorra (Aug 22, 2017)

Lorri Moulton said:


> It makes sense to wait until we have enough book out (or a series completed) before we start spending money on advertising. And I love Voices!


..and not stressing so much before they are done. There is just no telling where any of the books will go until the series are complete, or at least have more to offer than the first book.

And thank you!! I still love that one, get caught up every time I read it!


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## Guest (Jun 25, 2018)

David VanDyke said:


> Personally, I've given up on trying to convince people they are not failing. It's the same here as everywhere: failure is temporary unless you quit. Then it's permanent.
> 
> I know a guy that wrote practically every day for 25 years. Wrote over 100 novels, amassing hundreds, perhaps thousands of rejection slips while selling a few short stories. Frankly, his stuff was terrible at the start. By 10,000,000 words, they weren't bad--but weren't great, because he never got developmental edits or even beta reads. He just wrote in imitation of his favorite books.
> 
> ...


What a great story. Thanks for sharing.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

KelliWolfe said:


> But let's be honest. Even in the Good Old Days most new authors flopped coming out of the gate.


As I've mentioned previously, most books, Indie or Trad, turn out to be damp squibs.


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## It&#039;s A Mystery (Mar 14, 2017)

I think the main thing you need is a plan, and hard work to execute it.

From 2015 to 2017 I published seven books under pseudonyms of various lengths, genres and styles. I did this in order to find my voice, test the market, understand what was involved.

At the end of 2017 I was completely clear about what, and how, I was going to write. I've released two under my own name so far, with the third released next month and am on course to sell 50k odd in this financial year. I have also picked up an audio deal along the way.

The next stage of the plan is writing multiple series and building up that back list of books at 4 a year pace. Then I might give up the day job and go full time depending on how things are going.

Have a plan, put the work in.


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## Guest (Jun 25, 2018)

Rose Andrews said:


> But money is required for advertising. A lot of authors don't have 5k, 1k, or even $100 a month to spend on marketing. I am one of those.


And?

Welcome to Business 101, where the business owner is expected to have money to pay to run the business.

I hate to be blunt, but I don't understand why writers think it is silly to be expected to have funds to promote. I am sure there are millions of people who would love to own a franchise but don't have $100,000 lying around to buy one. There are people who would love to own their own boutique, but don't have the money for a lease or utilities or inventory.

Publishing in 2018 has such a low entry requirement that I can't bring myself to feel sorry for people who don't want to market. Particularly when there are so many ways to promote that require very little money.

Caveat: As I have said a trillion times, publishing is not my full-time gig. I have a day job that I enjoy that pays my bills. But my publishing company is profitable, because I built it to be profitable by doing a lot of heavy-lifting early. When I started publishing over a decade ago (when there was no KDP and the only POD service available was lulu...yeah, I'm old) and there was no Bookbub or newsletters to use for promotion, I had to do things the "old fashion" way: I had to go find my readers and reach them.

I built a reputation BEFORE I started publishing. I submitted work to paying magazines in order to build my credentials and establish contacts. I did pro bono articles for genre-specific websites to build a readership. I was involved in genre-specific online communities. I wrote book reviews for books in my genre that people read and valued. None of that cost me a dime, but it did cost me in time. But it was an investment in my brand. By the time I published my first book, people already knew who I was because they had read my articles or book reviews or seen my work elsewhere. I wasn't "an unknown author." I was already part of the community.

The single biggest problem new authors have is that they don't do this legwork BEFORE uploading their first book. They don't join Facebook or Goodreads groups until they have something to sell, which means people tune them out. They don't post or join discussions until they are selling a book. They haven't done the work up front to establish who they are before publishing.

And, no, I am not saying this is easy. But nothing worth doing is easy and anyone who walks into this thinking it should be easy doesn't deserve success because they aren't willing to work for it.

I hate to sound like that old person yelling at kids to get off her lawn, but I established my website TWO YEARS before I published my first book. Over half the new authors I come across don't even have a real web presence! They just link to their Amazon author page. The only time they post on Twitter is when they are running a sale. You don't see them on FB unless they are saying "Buy my book." Nobody knows who they are not because they are "unknown authors" but because they never spent the time to let people get to know them.


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

Rose Andrews said:


> But money is required for advertising. A lot of authors don't have 5k, 1k, or even $100 a month to spend on marketing. I am one of those. What has, however, helped me immensely has been permafree, InstaFreebie back when it worked for me, networking with other authors, and Pinterest. Basically, I have done what I could get away with for cheap or free.
> 
> What concerns me about threads like this is that they assume new authors just want to let their books coast with the Amazon algorithms when that's simply not always true. Marketing is expensive and not all of us are blessed enough to have extra money to spend.


Marketing doesn't have to be expensive. And genre makes a difference--some are more ad driven than others, like in contemporary romance. But even in that genre, books can still break out with little to no ads...the book Cake by J. Bengtsson comes to mind. That book just took off on word of mouth. But that's not something you can plan for.

The more on target your book is, the more it is what the target audience wants to read, the less you'll need to market it. And there are lots of cheap to free things you can do. Newsletter swaps that are tightly focused can be very effective--and to clarify because people get nervous about what that means--by swap, I mean that I will include someone's new release in my newsletter and others will include mine. This is a free thing and the more tightly focused the better. Same heat level, same genre.....I only send book suggestions if I am certain my readers would be interested. You can boost a post for $5-10 on release day, have people share the post on FB and Twitter and other social media. Set up a very cheap AMS ad, maybe $2 a day. There are some inexpensive genre sites out there too I hear, which can be especially helpful if you release at .99. I don't usually do that, so I tend to rely more on Facebook, AMS, and Bookbub ads for new releases.

The best marketing you can do is still to release the next book in the series. That usually gives everything a lift.


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## Guest (Jun 25, 2018)

David VanDyke said:


> He didn't fail, because he never quit.


I agree with this 100%. Great story too! This writing life has so many parallels to my life before as a research scientist.

I recently read Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell and I highly recommend it. He uses many ideas from epidemiology to explain the success of a certain brand of shoe or reducing crime, etc. The important thing is that little things do make a difference. Great lessons to glean.


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## Guest (Jun 25, 2018)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> And?
> 
> Welcome to Business 101, where the business owner is expected to have money to pay to run the business.
> 
> ...


God, that will never be me. I absolutely HATE the non-writing side of being a writer. Here's an example of someone arms-wide-open embracing that.

New authors should buy ads, if the ads prove profitable and can sell books. Free promotion still works in getting your book into the hands of readers.

But developing an online personality BEFORE publishing and hanging around forums and twitter all day, who the hell can be bothered doing that? I think that's a far cry from what's expected and certainly won't gel with many authors who are naturally introverts and not SEO / internet marketing graduates. Of course if that's your personality then you can throw yourself at everyone like that but, most authors, I don't think so.


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## ibizwiz (Dec 25, 2014)

It's A Mystery said:


> I think the main thing you need is a plan, and hard work to execute it.
> 
> From 2015 to 2017 I published seven books under pseudonyms of various lengths, genres, and styles. I did this in order to find my voice, test the market, understand what was involved.
> 
> ...


Well-done, IAM, and well stated.

I'm doing essentially the same, though I started a bit later and lost a year in 2016 to non-publishing work.

Your steps are:

1 Write enough to begin to develop your craft. "Begin" because this part of the work never ends.

2 Self-publish enough to learn the Indie mechanics and experience as many of the potholes in your chosen road as possible. It's far cheaper to make newbie errors when you're still a newbie. And make them you will, or you're not learning.

3 Find your Voice.

4 Find the genres where your Voice has a good chance of being heard. IAM calls this testing the market. I'll call it "testing the odds in a given audience of being discovered".

5 Develop your successes. Get emotionally free of the meh and loser books. Put your time into series. Put your money into small-scale promo and reader-base building; there's always a ton more to learn about promotion.

This is a carefully designed approach, with focused execution. I've coached hundreds on marketing, and congratulate IAM: she or he will likely succeed, and be a six-figure Indie in a year or two.

IAM is clearly stepping back from the writerly work and seeing the project from a business perspective. With his/her approach, IAM is concurring with many successful and striving KBoarders: as Indies, we have to balance the creative work of writing with the creative work of selling the writing.

This wouldn't be an "ibizwiz" comment if I didn't presume to add to IAM's excellent plan.

For you, the Indie business owners, I'll add a missing step "3a". Newbies will benefit by doing the hard work of marketing first. Yup. Before publishing the book you expect to lead the series you're building as the financial foundation of your plan.

"Marketing" isn't selling or promotion. It's not really WOM either, such as the work one does to build engagement with a reader base. And it certainly isn't "advertising".

Over fifty years, I've written the book on marketing in a hundred conference rooms and seminars. The book is good, thanks mainly to the hundreds of superlative women and men I worked with or led, and thanks even more to my making every marketing mistake known, and making several that were not.

Marketing begins with deciding who the company is. What's it for? What value does it offer to those who'll be asked to pay for its services? For us, it's asking what I as a writer can uniquely bring to the human experience, which is why I place it after IAM's effort to find his/her Voice.

This inner dialog quickly leads to who am I writing for?

Not surprisingly, almost every new Indie assumes the answer to this question is in a book. Or is decided by an arbitrary list of categories or popular genres. In a hurry to publish, most select the category or two they feel most comfortable writing, or personally like, or that seems, based on hearsay or "marketing tools", to offer the largest mob of potential readers. Many assume that KU has already done the work of aggregating the reader base and leave it to the KU mechanism to deliver their books to the audience.

A genre or category is *NOT* an audience. Humans are more complicated than most appreciate. A "Like" is simply that; it's not a preference.

By accepting the definitions and thematic boundaries of Amazon and its copy-catting competitors, an Indie is placing her or his work into a pigeon-hole he or she does not control. For your Voice to be heard, it'll need to sound pretty much like all the other Voices in that little sliver of human interest.

In short, step "3a" is about deciding who you are and then analyzing who might care to hear you.

By "going with the flow" of pop genres, accepted categories, and look-alike characters and stories, an Indie risks losing his or her new-found Voice in the din of a thousand other similar voices.

Those who've patiently read through my comments know I'm concerned mainly with numbers, with quantifying what we do and how well it works.

Here are the numbers that matter to your new writing enterprise:

a # of readers in KU -- Perhaps a million who read material other than "Lady P*rn". Thanks to Amazon's fog shield, we'll never know.

b # of other reading customers of Amazon -- Two additional million? Three?

c # of customers of competing online bookstores -- I'll say about half as many as Amazon serves.

d # of additional literate adults (16 and up) who likely include your readers -- assuming you can reach them? Approximately 50 to 150 million, depending on how well your Voice can penetrate their hunger to hear.

This thread is about how many new authors find the deck to be stacked against them. The main problem IMO is they've already drunk the Amazon Kool-Aid.

It's certainly an economically viable choice for many to voluntarily accept the limited audience of Amazon and its competitors. But understand: in a wide-open, totally accessible digital era, Amazon has become simply a new kind of "Trad": a business relying on the willingness of authors to play by the corporate rules.

You may make a living by playing the game their way, but you're not "writing to market". You're writing to Amazon's market. And, unless you do your own marketing, and make a much more comprehensive plan like Patty Jansen has, you'll be missing 90% of yours.


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

C Winters said:


> God, that will never be me. I absolutely HATE the non-writing side of being a writer. Here's an example of someone arms-wide-open embracing that.
> 
> New authors should buy ads, if the ads prove profitable and can sell books. Free promotion still works in getting your book into the hands of readers.
> 
> But developing an online personality BEFORE publishing and hanging around forums and twitter all day, who the hell can be bothered doing that? I think that's a far cry from what's expected and certainly won't gel with many authors who are naturally introverts and not SEO / internet marketing graduates. Of course if that's your personality then you can throw yourself at everyone like that but, most authors, I don't think so.


I think this is where a lot of new authors go off course and waste a lot of time doing what they think is marketing, but it's really not. Posting in a ton of groups that you never visit otherwise? Biggest waste of time out there.

But, joining one or two highly targeted reader focused groups in your genre before you publish? That can be hugely effective and it doesn't take much time at all. When I launched a historical pen name a few years ago, I joined one of these reader groups....as a reader because I'd just discovered the genre and liked it. I then met some of the authors writing in the genre and they encouraged me to try it. So, I did and because I occasionally commented on threads in the group, readers felt like they knew me and gave my books a chance. I also joined a group promo over a long weekend and tied my release into that promo, which helped quite a bit too.

Later this year, I will be releasing a suspense book. I started another reader group over two years ago now because I couldn't find a reader group in the genre that wasn't all spammy. So I started one with a few other authors and we limit promo to new release announcements only and the group is really fun and lively. I meant to release this book long before this.....but by the time I do release it, hopefully having the group will help launch it a little. Every little bit helps, and this group takes me no time at all because I am also a huge reader in the genre, so I pop in and talk about what I'm reading and get recommendations from others in the group, so for me, it's just fun. Not really marketing.....more building some relationships and talking about books.


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## Guest (Jun 25, 2018)

C Winters said:


> But developing an online personality BEFORE publishing and hanging around forums and twitter all day, who the hell can be bothered doing that? I think that's a far cry from what's expected and certainly won't gel with many authors who are naturally introverts and not SEO / internet marketing graduates. Of course if that's your personality then you can throw yourself at everyone like that but, most authors, I don't think so.


Who said anything about "all day?"

Again, not to sound like an old timer or anything, but I have always worked full time. So, no, I've never spent all day doing social networking. I picked a handful of genre-specific forums/sites and I was active there. That established my core base. Even now, I really only spend a couple hours a week on it. (I don't count KB toward that total, because this is more therapy for me than anything else lol)

But as a business owner, you often have to perform a lot of tasks you don't want to be involved with. And if you aren't willing to perform those tasks, then you have to pay others to do it. But what you don't do is on one hand say, "I don't have money to do X" and on the other say, "Oh, I hate doing X so I'm never going to do it."

If you don't have money to spend on promotion, then you need to figure out non-monetary methods of promotion. And if you are unwilling to spend money on promotion AND you are unwilling to engage in non-monetary methods of promotion, then good luck with Amazon's algorithms.

Writing is a passion. Publishing is a business. And businesses need to promote if they expect people to know that their products exist.


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## Guest (Jun 25, 2018)

PamelaKelley said:


> I think this is where a lot of new authors go off course and waste a lot of time doing what they think is marketing, but it's really not. Posting in a ton of groups that you never visit otherwise? Biggest waste of time out there.
> 
> But, joining one or two highly targeted reader focused groups in your genre before you publish? That can be hugely effective and it doesn't take much time at all. When I launched a historical pen name a few years ago, I joined one of these reader groups....as a reader because I'd just discovered the genre and liked it. I then met some of the authors writing in the genre and they encouraged me to try it. So, I did and because I occasionally commented on threads in the group, readers felt like they knew me and gave my books a chance. I also joined a group promo over a long weekend and tied my release into that promo, which helped quite a bit too.
> 
> Later this year, I will be releasing a suspense book. I started another reader group over two years ago now because I couldn't find a reader group in the genre that wasn't all spammy. So I started one with a few other authors and we limit promo to new release announcements only and the group is really fun and lively. I meant to release this book long before this.....but by the time I do release it, hopefully having the group will help launch it a little. Every little bit helps, and this group takes me no time at all because I am also a huge reader in the genre, so I pop in and talk about what I'm reading and get recommendations from others in the group, so for me, it's just fun. Not really marketing.....more building some relationships and talking about books.


If you enjoy that sort of online discussion and participation, then of course you should do it (because you're doing it already) and reap whatever benefits appear from that. Benefits, while they may help, are not guaranteed. And the personality of someone who enjoys such tasks I wouldn't say is necessarily compatible with being a writer - often probably the opposite. I believe to my fullest the focus should be on storytelling and making your stories as best as possible. And of course someone with a hundred online friends and beta readers assisting your progress is going to help you, but some of us find it hard to make friends online, just like in real life.


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## Guest (Jun 25, 2018)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Who said anything about "all day?"
> 
> Again, not to sound like an old timer or anything, but I have always worked full time. So, no, I've never spent all day doing social networking. I picked a handful of genre-specific forums/sites and I was active there. That established my core base. Even now, I really only spend a couple hours a week on it. (I don't count KB toward that total, because this is more therapy for me than anything else lol)
> 
> ...


Well, I would think it would take a new author many full days and years of online activity to catch up to your online presence which was started in the pre-KDP days of Lulu and whatnot.

I believe in spending money on promotion, but only when there's proper variables to measure. Buy a bookbub ad and you know what you're getting. But play around with AMS or Facebook blah blah and they're just inviting you to empty your wallet down the drain a few times before you either quit or maybe figure the mess out. Not my cup of tea thank you.


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## Justawriter (Jul 24, 2012)

C Winters said:


> If you enjoy that sort of online discussion and participation, then of course you should do it (because you're doing it already) and reap whatever benefits appear from that. Benefits, while they may help, are not guaranteed. And the personality of someone who enjoys such tasks I wouldn't say is necessarily compatible with being a writer - often probably the opposite. I believe to my fullest the focus should be on storytelling and making your stories as best as possible. And of course someone with a hundred online friends and beta readers assisting your progress is going to help you, but some of us find it hard to make friends online, just like in real life.


The focus should ALWAYS be on storytelling, and making your book as good as it can be. That is a given. My point was simply that marketing doesn't have to take all day. There are things you can do that are effective, free or cheap and don't take much time. The reader group was just one example. AMS, BB and FB ads are another. Depending on your genre, different things will work better than others and the only way to find out is to research what others are doing and to test it for yourself. You don't have to dump a ton of money on ads, in fact it would be silly to. You start really small, like $1 a day on AMS and $5 a day on FB and you see what works. If you want writing to be a business that is. If you don't and you just want to write, that's cool too. You may want to pursue trad publishing. Self-publishing isn't right for everyone.


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## GeneDoucette (Oct 14, 2014)

Effective social media means engaging because you WANT to engage. My online 'persona' is a version of me, and has been since before i was self-publishing. (Note: i've had an online presence since AOL in the early 90's, including when I wrote humor columns on AOL.) engaging people online where you have an agenda--buy my book!--is always going to be more exhausting and less effective than engaging with people for the sake of engaging.


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## Guest (Jun 25, 2018)

PamelaKelley said:


> The focus should ALWAYS be on storytelling, and making your book as good as it can be. That is a given. My point was simply that marketing doesn't have to take all day. There are things you can do that are effective, free or cheap and don't take much time. The reader group was just one example. AMS, BB and FB ads are another. Depending on your genre, different things will work better than others and the only way to find out is to research what others are doing and to test it for yourself. You don't have to dump a ton of money on ads, in fact it would be silly to. You start really small, like $1 a day on AMS and $5 a day on FB and you see what works. If you want writing to be a business that is. If you don't and you just want to write, that's cool too. You may want to pursue trad publishing. Self-publishing isn't right for everyone.


Yeah I just want to write. But no to trad publishing. I don't want someone else telling me what to write or rejecting my stories. Everything I read about FB and AMS ads are ugly, apart from the people who are spending 30k a month or whatever to make 50k. I write, I upload, people can choose to read or buy the book or not. I don't owe them anything else and have no interest in creating an online personality. I'm sure plenty of other authors feel the same way.


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## writerc (Apr 15, 2016)

C. Gold said:


> We need a like button!


Seconded. Way to go Patty.


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## m123xyz (Oct 16, 2015)

brkingsolver said:


> Does a falling tree make a sound if no one is present to hear it?
> If you're happy with $200 months, don't worry about promotion or ads or newsletters.


ha I'd be happy with $100 a month. clawing to make that with promos ads etc! can't wait until I do!

good info/thanks


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## m123xyz (Oct 16, 2015)

Russ Munson said:


> This simply isn't true. I've had a book go to a rank of 7,000 by merely pressing "publish." It happened within 2 days. The only reason it died was a bad review came in  In my experiments, I've had a few other books go to 30,000 with no ads, no email list, no pre-existing audience, no nothing. Brand new pen names. I'm sure many others have gone even higher.
> 
> It all depends on genre, cover, and blurb.


wow didn't realize one bad review could have such and adverse affect (effect) on sales. ha. I better the angry guy who 1 starred me to change his ways


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## m123xyz (Oct 16, 2015)

a bit off topic maybe...

totally agree w never quit until you stop mantra. but also know at least 87% (random number. it's probably more like 98%) of everyone will not "succeed will tons of monies. 

you're in a creative area where "failure is the norm" I personally keep forgetting how amazing the people here are who actually make a living with this! congrats! you're all literally in the top 95% 

I remembering seeing something like 1000-2000 authors make over 30k a year writing. there are probably a million authors in the world that's like .00001 who earn a living! 

if I was trying to become a barrista (nothing against them I love them) and couldn't get hired after 5 years of trying I'd probably be pretty bummed since 99% of the people who apply get hired. 

with writing I knew I was getting into a lottery scenario and I still get bummed all the time. Anyones' gotta be kind of  delusional to try. Like actors/muscians/athletes the success rate is basically zero. Luckily it's still a lot better than acting/music/opera/ballet and of course...mime. Oh those poor mimes! 

I don't know what I'm saying. sorry. just had to write something today because I'm so frustrated with how sucky I am I writing too slow and bad grammar! thanks all. these convos are great.


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## Arches (Jan 3, 2016)

David VanDyke said:


> Personally, I've given up on trying to convince people they are not failing. It's the same here as everywhere: failure is temporary unless you quit. Then it's permanent.
> 
> I know a guy that wrote practically every day for 25 years. Wrote over 100 novels, amassing hundreds, perhaps thousands of rejection slips while selling a few short stories. Frankly, his stuff was terrible at the start. By 10,000,000 words, they weren't bad--but weren't great, because he never got developmental edits or even beta reads. He just wrote in imitation of his favorite books.
> 
> ...


The success story you describe is inspirational.

One of the great things about self-publishing is that you can learn from your readers' reactions to your books, both through their reviews and by watching for follow-through sales. The author you describe probably learned to write better by seeing what worked for his readers and what didn't.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

I have never, ever bothered with social media for my pen names. I have basic Wordpress blogs to announce cover reveals, sales, and new releases and to have a place to show my catalogs with all the series listed in order, etc. That's it. No FB, no Twitter, etc. I have set up Goodreads accounts, but that is again strictly to have the author pages with the book listings. I don't hang out there. I've been making enough to live on for about 5 years and living solely off of my writing income for the last 3 with no day job, so it is not necessary to do any of those things to be successful. And no, I don't spend a fortune on advertising. I spend between $100-$150 a month on AMS ads that more than pay for themselves and that's largely it.


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## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

Bards and Sages (Julie) said:


> Who said anything about "all day?"
> 
> Again, not to sound like an old timer or anything, but I have always worked full time. So, no, I've never spent all day doing social networking. I picked a handful of genre-specific forums/sites and I was active there. That established my core base. Even now, I really only spend a couple hours a week on it. (I don't count KB toward that total, because this is more therapy for me than anything else lol)
> 
> ...


I do agree with you on this, although I hadn't been lamenting my lack of money for marketing situation. It's a fact of life and I accept it as is. Besides, I enjoy Pinterest and networking with other authors. I do what I can for free or cheap and have found social networking to be a lot of fun. I never really did get into building an audience before I published because it took me some time to settle into my genre and figure myself out as a published writer. Posting on Wattpad has also been a lot of fun--maybe not the best (if at all) good for sales but I've gotten some reads and people who like my work so the more exposure the better. These things just take time. Three to five years is a likely outlook for me, if not more. I'm only on year two right now and due to life crisis after life crisis after life crisis, I haven't been able to publish anything since December. If I can get back on track and keep networking, something will surely come of it.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

The dichotomy between creative and business is the norm.

Some chefs just want to be chefs. They seek to work for a great restaurant, but just create great food.

Some want to own the restaurant.

In either case, an author or a chef, the mantra "all you need to do is create great (whatever)", in other words "if you build it, they will come" is demonstrably flawed. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

Bottom line, if all you want to do is write, you have to either figure out how to work for someone else (something like the traditional model--find a publisher) or you have to hope doing minimal "business" will get you through--because good writing+good business is more likely to succeed than just good writing alone. If that's your situation, then so be it--BUT, that unwillingness or inability to do the business comes at an estimated monetary cost, unless you just happen to get lucky and go viral organically.


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## Morgan C (Jun 24, 2018)

David VanDyke said:


> In either case, an author or a chef, the mantra "all you need to do is create great (whatever)", in other words "if you build it, they will come" is demonstrably flawed. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
> 
> Bottom line, if all you want to do is write, you have to either figure out how to work for someone else (something like the traditional model--find a publisher) or you have to hope doing minimal "business" will get you through--because good writing+good business is more likely to succeed than just good writing alone. If that's your situation, then so be it--BUT, that unwillingness or inability to do the business comes at an estimated monetary cost, unless you just happen to get lucky and go viral organically.


There is always another approach to the classic scenario. If you slip into a unique niche and hammer out products, so customers get used to seeing your work, someone will get curious after a while. If there's any level of skill in the product, then they will be interested in trying other stories. Maybe I just got lucky and people latched onto me sooner than I expected, but the only aspect of the business I have done besides just writing is creating an author page, running promotions through Select, and making sure every story points people in the direction of my other work, so if they are interested, they can find more of it. Other than those small additions, I just focus on the creation of a product.

Sometimes the little things help out greatly.

Truth be told, I have contemplated ads and websites, but for now, I don't think I have enough published works to do that. I need to scrape together enough material for a paperback or two!


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## LukeSchmidt (Jan 15, 2018)

Yeah, I assume it would take years to get a following as a new writer. And that would be after writing twenty or so books. 

I listed my novella, which I didn't think would sell, for free for a few days and advertised on Reddit for free. That was the only advertisement, but it brought me to #23 in my category. Not bad, but it was free of course so it didn't mean much. Reddit has a subreddit for advertising free books so that was the only advertisement I did besides Twitter... which I use once every few months (forcing myself to post on it now). I wanted to at least put my name out there.

A lot of people say to pay for advertising. The problem is I don't know where to advertise, and how much, and so on. Then again, I spent all my money on an editor so I can't pay for advertising now.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

LukeSchmidt said:


> Yeah, I assume it would take years to get a following as a new writer. And that would be after writing twenty or so books.


No. Just no. This is a myth. I started a new pen name last year from scratch. I launched the first book into the top 5k with zero advertising. I released the second book in the series about 3 months later and using $2/day AMS ads got the new one up to about #700 and the first one to #3500. I've got half a dozen books in the series now with a constantly growing mailing list and they're making more than enough to pay my rent every month using nothing but KU free days and $2-3/day AMS ads to keep their ranks at a decent level. These are all 30k-ish novellas, by the way, not long novels.



> I listed my novella, which I didn't think would sell, for free for a few days and advertised on Reddit for free. That was the only advertisement, but it brought me to #23 in my category. Not bad, but it was free of course so it didn't mean much. Reddit has a subreddit for advertising free books so that was the only advertisement I did besides Twitter... which I use once every few months (forcing myself to post on it now). I wanted to at least put my name out there.


Free books don't do you any good unless you have more related books for people to buy after they've read it. The only point of free books is to act as a funnel to draw people to your paid books.



> A lot of people say to pay for advertising. The problem is I don't know where to advertise, and how much, and so on. Then again, I spent all my money on an editor so I can't pay for advertising now.


AMS ads on Amazon are a good way to start, especially if your books are in Kindle Unlimited. You can do as little as $1/day to get the ball rolling. A lot of people use Bookbub and FaceBook's ads, although I haven't personally tried either. But like free copies, there isn't a lot of point in paying for advertising until you have at least two books out there.

I think of the books in my catalog like a uranium in a reactor. When you have one uranium atom sitting there, it isn't going to do much. You start piling more on, though, and things start happening. The more you get the more the reactions start feeding off of each other.


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> This is also what happens when you don't have money for ads.


Or _enough_ money for ads. These days I keep hearing about people flooding AMS with ads that have a daily limit in the hundreds of dollars. That's something I simply can't afford to compete with and my sales have tanked as a result.


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## The Bass Bagwhan (Mar 9, 2014)

Perry Constantine said:


> Or _enough_ money for ads. These days I keep hearing about people flooding AMS with ads that have a daily limit in the hundreds of dollars. That's something I simply can't afford to compete with and my sales have tanked as a result.


You've prompted a question that's been intriguing me ... how _do_ people spend hundreds and evens thousands of dollars on advertising? Aside from maybe Bookbub, most web-based services are comparatively inexpensive, so are we talking about large AMS or FB ad budgets? Just where can you effectively spend that much money?


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## Abderian (Apr 5, 2012)

The Bass Bagwhan said:


> You've prompted a question that's been intriguing me ... how _do_ people spend hundreds and evens thousands of dollars on advertising? Aside from maybe Bookbub, most web-based services are comparatively inexpensive, so are we talking about large AMS or FB ad budgets? Just where can you effectively spend that much money?


I would say many of the big spenders are spending on Facebook ads. When you have a successful ad on FB you can scale up - if you're making a profit, the more money you put in the more profit you make. That's harder to do with AMS, or at least that's what I've found. Some writers also do well from regularly hitting the effective book promo sites and that can cost a few hundred a month.


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## KelliWolfe (Oct 14, 2014)

Some of these people are running hundreds of AMS ads for their books. It adds up.


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

The Bass Bagwhan said:


> You've prompted a question that's been intriguing me ... how _do_ people spend hundreds and evens thousands of dollars on advertising? Aside from maybe Bookbub, most web-based services are comparatively inexpensive, so are we talking about large AMS or FB ad budgets? Just where can you effectively spend that much money?


So far this month I've spent about $900 across about 20 AMS ads. Some of those ads spend barely anything, a few spend a lot.


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## Arches (Jan 3, 2016)

LukeSchmidt said:


> Yeah, I assume it would take years to get a following as a new writer. And that would be after writing twenty or so books.
> 
> I listed my novella, which I didn't think would sell, for free for a few days and advertised on Reddit for free. That was the only advertisement, but it brought me to #23 in my category. Not bad, but it was free of course so it didn't mean much. Reddit has a subreddit for advertising free books so that was the only advertisement I did besides Twitter... which I use once every few months (forcing myself to post on it now). I wanted to at least put my name out there.
> 
> A lot of people say to pay for advertising. The problem is I don't know where to advertise, and how much, and so on. Then again, I spent all my money on an editor so I can't pay for advertising now.


Contrats on being a published author. You're right that it usually takes a while to become established, but you're on your way. The best thing you can do now is write a follow-up book, and that mainly costs your time. Good editing and covers are important, and they are only one-time expenses. Best of luck to you.


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

The Bass Bagwhan said:


> You've prompted a question that's been intriguing me ... how _do_ people spend hundreds and evens thousands of dollars on advertising? Aside from maybe Bookbub, most web-based services are comparatively inexpensive, so are we talking about large AMS or FB ad budgets? Just where can you effectively spend that much money?


We're talking massive AMS/FB ad budgets.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

Perry Constantine said:


> We're talking massive AMS/FB ad budgets.


Don't forget Bookbub ads. You can easily sink a LOT of money in those.


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## NedMarcus (Dec 29, 2017)

C. Gold said:


> We need a like button!


Yes!


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## dgcasey (Apr 16, 2017)

The Bass Bagwhan said:


> You've prompted a question that's been intriguing me ... how _do_ people spend hundreds and evens thousands of dollars on advertising? Aside from maybe Bookbub, most web-based services are comparatively inexpensive, so are we talking about large AMS or FB ad budgets? Just where can you effectively spend that much money?


Yes they are, but let's look at AMS ads for example. I'm running three ads right now, soon to be two, and I only spend about $20 a month. What does that buy me? About 1000 impressions a day and maybe four or five clicks. Now, how are some authors paying hundreds or thousands of dollars? You know that line of books just below your your book's description? The one that says Sponsored. Yeah, that one. Notice how some authors come up in those first four to six slots almost every time without the viewer having to scroll to the right? It's because they're paying a LOT more for their bids than I am. Where I might be paying .25 cents, they might be paying $2-3. They get to be in the first set of slots on the carousel, I'll be down on page 17 or 18. Being in those first slots are going to get them a lot more clicks, thus a higher bill at the end of the month.

They obviously have the budget for it. I panicked the other day when I looked at my BB ads and found I had created one that was using up my $2.00 daily budget every single day, usually by about ten in the morning. Great results, but I don't have the budget to spend $60-120 a month on one ad, so I cut it back to $1.00 a day.

I look forward to the day I can spend $100 a day on ads and know it will be returned three or four fold. Or more.


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## Anarchist (Apr 22, 2015)

dgcasey said:


> Yes they are, but let's look at AMS ads for example. I'm running three ads right now, soon to be two, and I only spend about $20 a month. What does that buy me? About 1000 impressions a day and maybe four or five clicks. Now, how are some authors paying hundreds or thousands of dollars? You know that line of books just below your your book's description? The one that says Sponsored. Yeah, that one. *Notice how some authors come up in those first four to six slots almost every time without the viewer having to scroll to the right? It's because they're paying a LOT more for their bids than I am.* Where I might be paying .25 cents, they might be paying $2-3. They get to be in the first set of slots on the carousel, I'll be down on page 17 or 18. Being in those first slots are going to get them a lot more clicks, thus a higher bill at the end of the month.
> 
> They obviously have the budget for it. I panicked the other day when I looked at my BB ads and found I had created one that was using up my $2.00 daily budget every single day, usually by about ten in the morning. Great results, but I don't have the budget to spend $60-120 a month on one ad, so I cut it back to $1.00 a day.
> 
> I look forward to the day I can spend $100 a day on ads and know it will be returned three or four fold. Or more.


My data suggest there's more to placement than just bids. I suspect conversion rate is playing a role.


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## Nic (Nov 17, 2013)

Everything KelliWolfe said. 

I don't run advertisements as I hate the stuff when confronted with it. I've never once bought anything because I saw an ad for it. I don't click on ads, and all my web browsers have strict popup and ad shields. I've never bought a book because of an ad somewhere. Absolutely never. 

It is possible to just do it by choosing the right blurbs, covers and keywords. I count heavily on word of mouth, because a lot of what I write is nothing which I would push at the public for fear of censoring. Occasionally I put a book up on Smashwords and open half of it as a sample, then funnel people to it from Goodreads groups. That's a nice way to start the word of mouth effect. Costs me nothing, maybe 5 or 10 minutes to set up and announce. Like KelliWolfe I have websites for my pen names, people can subscribe to be notified of new releases and I only do that. I don't do weekly letters or anything.

Or you can do it the way a friend of mine does: he hired a good manager, who does the entire business and marketing side of it.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Abderian said:


> I would say many of the big spenders are spending on Facebook ads. When you have a successful ad on FB you can scale up - if you're making a profit, the more money you put in the more profit you make. That's harder to do with AMS, or at least that's what I've found. Some writers also do well from regularly hitting the effective book promo sites and that can cost a few hundred a month.


I was having good success with FB ads, with a rating of 8 on a couple and a per-click spend of 0.08-0.12. I was only spending $5/day, and I tried to push it to $8 just to see what would happen. The cost per bid climbed, the saturation (naturally) increased, and I never got it down to previous levels again.

My problem is that I write in a fairly small niche. Therefore, my FB ads go something like ... target that niche. Start spending. Watch it saturate. Stop the ad.

I'm not sure how to break out of that - if I widen the market I just end up paying more for fewer clicks, becuase the ad is less relevant. And once you've advertised to a particular segment, and 'mined all the ore' so to speak, what's the point of showing them the same ad a week later?


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## Abderian (Apr 5, 2012)

Simon Haynes said:


> I was having good success with FB ads, with a rating of 8 on a couple and a per-click spend of 0.08-0.12. I was only spending $5/day, and I tried to push it to $8 just to see what would happen. The cost per bid climbed, the saturation (naturally) increased, and I never got it down to previous levels again.
> 
> My problem is that I write in a fairly small niche. Therefore, my FB ads go something like ... target that niche. Start spending. Watch it saturate. Stop the ad.
> 
> I'm not sure how to break out of that - if I widen the market I just end up paying more for fewer clicks, becuase the ad is less relevant. And once you've advertised to a particular segment, and 'mined all the ore' so to speak, what's the point of showing them the same ad a week later?


There's definitely an art to it that I've also failed to master. I think it helps to have a wide market for your books. Space comedy is pretty niche, I've found. My space opera sells much better. That's a tried and tested method for a better chance of success - find a hungry subgenre. Chris Fox has been saying it for years and I've seen a three or four pop up in that time. I might try to jump in at the start of the next one.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Abderian said:


> There's definitely an art to it that I've also failed to master. I think it helps to have a wide market for your books. Space comedy is pretty niche, I've found. My space opera sells much better. That's a tried and tested method for a better chance of success - find a hungry subgenre. Chris Fox has been saying it for years and I've seen a three or four pop up in that time. I might try to jump in at the start of the next one.


It helps to have a wide market, sure, but once you factor in the increased competition, the actual number of potential sales/readers per title probably ends up being the same.

After I've written my current fantasy/comedy series I might look at writing a one-off in a promising subgenre, just to see what happens. I do have a mil-sf novel on the back-burner which I started years ago, and that's one of the titles I planned to finish this year.

(My goal was ten novels for 2018. I've done 4 novels plus the non-fic so far, and am halfway through number 5. I have 8 more novels on the drawing board, some already in progress. If I spend a month on an experiment in writing to market, it's hardly going to make a dent in my overall progress. In fact, I'll probably welcome the change of scenery.)


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## The Bass Bagwhan (Mar 9, 2014)

Thanks for info, everyone. Dang, it takes me forever to compose and manage a single FB ad. I can't imagine managing and keeping track of dozens, let alone hundreds of the things. I guess it's all about assessing risk and potential ROI. I mean, spending large amounts of money on marketing doesn't guarantee the book will sell. You must have some reasonable belief that it will sell, if you reach the right market.

Interesting to contemplate.


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## Word wrassler (Jun 9, 2018)

Lots of good info here. Cover, blurb and keywords are my current mantra but promotion is something I need to consider properly. Looking at this as a business, promotion, in some way, is a definite requirement and reading everyone’s approaches to it is very helpful.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

I use marketing to give my books a tiny bit of visibility. I'm not interesting in spending big to push them up the bestseller lists or make a splash.

If the books are any good, that visibility will lead to reviews, word of mouth and sales, however modest. If they're not, I'm not about to throw good money at them.

I will continue to write novels, no matter what.

By the way, the second novel I ever wrote, first published in 2002, was my third-best seller this past seven days ... just behind my two new releases which came out this week. (My first novel is a perma-free so that doesn't get a spot.)

Writing and publishing is a LONG game, not a get-rich-quick scheme.


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## John Etzil (Nov 15, 2016)

I second that. My main goal? Pile up those back of book email signups...



Simon Haynes said:


> Writing and publishing is a LONG game, not a get-rich-quick scheme.


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

Anarchist said:


> My data suggest there's more to placement than just bids. I suspect conversion rate is playing a role.


Agreed. I bid nowhere near $2-$3 and most of the ads I've kept running fall in the first three slots on their respective carousels.



The Bass Bagwhan said:


> I mean, spending large amounts of money on marketing doesn't guarantee the book will sell. You must have some reasonable belief that it will sell, if you reach the right market.


What I do is throw some advertising at the books I think have potential (mostly using AMS ads). Those that do have that potential sell more than they cost to advertise and I keep them going and try to up my ad spend on them. Those that didn't have potential after all and so cost me more than I earn from sales I either scale back the ads or shut them down. In this current climate unless you are hitting a hungry market or have an established audience that gives your new books visibility I think you have to advertise to get sales, even if it's just a couple dollars a day.


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## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

Cassie Leigh said:


> So far this month I've spent about $900 across about 20 AMS ads. Some of those ads spend barely anything, a few spend a lot.


I can see how people spend a fortune on AMS ads just by looking at the sponsored ads under all of my 50 books. Many are totally unrelated to my genres, so I know they have to be using every word possible in their keywords.

I'm starting to think that when I put an author's name in my keywords, their books also show up in the sponsored ads on my pages. I'm still researching that theory. If I'm right, then it is better to eliminate authors and just go for book titles so that my ads are more relevant. I mean, I don't think there is much chance of selling a historical romance under Science Fiction books, and a lot of authors publish in multiple genre. Ah, to have the time to really do the research. (sigh)


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## CassieL (Aug 29, 2013)

Martitalbott said:


> I can see how people spend a fortune on AMS ads just by looking at the sponsored ads under all of my 50 books. Many are totally unrelated to my genres, so I know they have to be using every word possible in their keywords.
> 
> I'm starting to think that when I put an author's name in my keywords, their books also show up in the sponsored ads on my pages. I'm still researching that theory. If I'm right, then it is better to eliminate authors and just go for book titles so that my ads are more relevant. I mean, I don't think there is much chance of selling a historical romance under Science Fiction books, and a lot of authors publish in multiple genre. Ah, to have the time to really do the research. (sigh)


At the risk of derailing this thread...

You only pay for an ad when someone clicks on it. So just having books in the carousel costs nothing and if someone's targeting is that far off base that no one is going to see that book on that page and click then that will cost that author nothing. (This is where that relevancy thing can come into play. I think Amazon eventually kills ads that aren't getting an appropriate click-through which may be why some people's approach to AMS is to run a ton of ads to get around that.)

I keep a fairly narrow focus on my keywords, although I will say that "fiction" was a successful keyword for me for a while.


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## LukeSchmidt (Jan 15, 2018)

Arches said:


> Contrats on being a published author. You're right that it usually takes a while to become established, but you're on your way. The best thing you can do now is write a follow-up book, and that mainly costs your time. Good editing and covers are important, and they are only one-time expenses. Best of luck to you.


Thank you. I'll definitely be putting what you said into action this year. Writing in a series seems to be what everyone says to do... reminds me of the pulp fiction days where there were a lot of popular books that were written in a series, like Tarzan and John Carter (Barsoom). But my first book was just to get experience self-publishing before I delve into it with more books this year. Making the paperback took longer than expected so I learned a good amount of what needs to be done.


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## Saffron (May 22, 2013)

I agree. I launched a new book last week. FLAT SQUIRREL. I've done a ton of Facebook posts and tweets, but as you say, it's really hard to get lift off. I have a small promo budget with a marketing co and they are sending out review copies, but I don't have the budget for Facebook boosts. They really add up and become expensive. I do interact in FB books and readers groups though. I was hoping to generate some interest on Goodreads, but that is uphill too.


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## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

Cassie Leigh said:


> At the risk of derailing this thread...
> 
> You only pay for an ad when someone clicks on it. So just having books in the carousel costs nothing and if someone's targeting is that far off base that no one is going to see that book on that page and click then that will cost that author nothing. (This is where that relevancy thing can come into play. I think Amazon eventually kills ads that aren't getting an appropriate click-through which may be why some people's approach to AMS is to run a ton of ads to get around that.)
> 
> I keep a fairly narrow focus on my keywords, although I will say that "fiction" was a successful keyword for me for a while.


You're right, I wasn't thinking in those terms. Oddly enough the most hits I get are on the keyword "books." I don't even know what to say about that. I mean, who searches for just "books" on a book site? Keyword fiction doesn't work at all for me.


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## Abderian (Apr 5, 2012)

Saffron said:


> I agree. I launched a new book last week. FLAT SQUIRREL. I've done a ton of Facebook posts and tweets, but as you say, it's really hard to get lift off. I have a small promo budget with a marketing co and they are sending out review copies, but I don't have the budget for Facebook boosts. They really add up and become expensive. I do interact in FB books and readers groups though. I was hoping to generate some interest on Goodreads, but that is uphill too.


Facebook is usually only cost effective when you have a series. It's rare to even break make your money back on FB ads on one book so I wouldn't worry about that yet if I were you. Concentrate instead on building up a backlist of books so that when you promote you have a better chance to make a profit.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

One of the things that always baffles me is how many people seem to think that marketing (any form) will make your book "take off" and that "taking off" is a continuously upward trajectory that will feed itself and needs no further work. It's not like that at all. When you just start and land some promo, your "taking off" will most likely consist of a sad little bump after which sales will bump along as they were before. Then you do another bit of promo and there will be another bump, and then you might release another book, and get a longer bump and the sales won't fall to as low a level as they were before.

And eventually you have a number of books and things start feeding off each other. People come into your series from different angles. Promotions, Bookbubs, Instafreebie, ads, whatever you're doing to put your books out there.

You may have books that do well and ones that do less well, but they all feed into each other in some way.

So when you see a successful author successfully launch a new series, what you're not seeing is the tremendous amount of WORK that has gone into the author's career prior to the point that you're seeing. You're seeing someone years ahead of where you are, and it's utterly unrealistic to assume that you'll have anything like that level of success in months. The insidious thing is that it *does* happen, and that people then assume that either it's the norm or that they're so awesome that it will also happen to them. I think it's Murphy's Law for writers that the more you assume this will happen, the less likely it is. This level of out-of-the-gate success almost always comes as an utter surprise to the author.

But it's the WORK part that people like to skip over.


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## BrunoMiller (May 10, 2018)

Patty Jansen said:


> So when you see a successful author successfully launch a new series, what you're not seeing is the tremendous amount of WORK that has gone into the author's career prior to the point that you're seeing. You're seeing someone years ahead of where you are, and it's utterly unrealistic to assume that you'll have anything like that level of success in months. The insidious thing is that it *does* happen, and that people then assume that either it's the norm or that they're so awesome that it will also happen to them. I think it's Murphy's Law for writers that the more you assume this will happen, the less likely it is. This level of out-of-the-gate success almost always comes as an utter surprise to the author.


I'm not an overnight success by any means - I'm still very new. But my books are doing pretty well, so I feel okay saying this even though I only have two books out: it was a *lot *of work. A lot of head down writing, a lot of setting things in place, a lot of listening to other authors and applying every bit of advice I could. A ton of research, reading, paying attention to what was working and what wasn't. I did everything I could to line things up properly on my end according to what I was told to do: good solid covers, strong blurb, clean writing. But I am still surprised by how my books are doing.


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## The Bass Bagwhan (Mar 9, 2014)

Cassie Leigh said:


> In this current climate unless you are hitting a hungry market or have an established audience that gives your new books visibility I think you have to advertise to get sales, even if it's just a couple dollars a day.


Absolutely, I'm looking ahead to a concurrent release of a new book with an audiobook version, and that'll have a FB ad campaign too that I'm prepared to lose money on until I tweak it into shape (or not). Above all else, I still prefer FB ads with the ability to precisely design the "look" and target an audience, but of course there's no guarantee anyone's FB skills - and certainly mine - hit the mark.


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## boba1823 (Aug 13, 2017)

Abderian said:


> Facebook is usually only cost effective when you have a series. It's rare to even break make your money back on FB ads on one book so I wouldn't worry about that yet if I were you.


Depends in part on pricing. A lot of people seem to prefer to price their books relatively low, and/or enroll them in KU (which gives pretty crummy royalties unless a book is really, really long). With that approach, I would imagine that it's difficult to be cost effective with FB ads. I price high, and no KU, which makes things easier in that regard - though at least half the equation is reducing CPC costs by targeting, copy, etc. Plus the question of conversion.

More books never hurt, of course


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

Saffron said:


> ... but I don't have the budget for Facebook boosts. They really add up and become expensive.


Don't do post boosts, look into highly targeted CPC ads to drive web traffic to your book's product page.


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## jb1111 (Apr 6, 2018)

Saffron said:


> I agree. I launched a new book last week. FLAT SQUIRREL. I've done a ton of Facebook posts and tweets, but as you say, it's really hard to get lift off. I have a small promo budget with a marketing co and they are sending out review copies, but I don't have the budget for Facebook boosts. They really add up and become expensive. I do interact in FB books and readers groups though. I was hoping to generate some interest on Goodreads, but that is uphill too.


Great cover, and it looks like it is a fun kids' book, but your LookInside shows smeared images on all 3 of my browsers. If it is happening on others' computers, it may not be helping your sales.


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## The Bass Bagwhan (Mar 9, 2014)

Simon Haynes said:


> Don't do post boosts, look into highly targeted CPC ads to drive web traffic to your book's product page.


With all the mumblings and grumblings about how 'Zon is experimenting with product pages (AMS ads and also-boughts) it prompts revisiting the question of whether FB Ads should link to product pages or website landing pages. I wish landing pages were more effective, but I think the current argument is still about reducing the amount of clicks a consumer needs to complete a purchase.


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## David VanDyke (Jan 3, 2014)

jb1111 said:


> Great cover, and it looks like it is a fun kids' book...


Hoo, Becky... Kids book, LOL.


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## 75814 (Mar 12, 2014)

The Bass Bagwhan said:


> With all the mumblings and grumblings about how 'Zon is experimenting with product pages (AMS ads and also-boughts) it prompts revisiting the question of whether FB Ads should link to product pages or website landing pages. I wish landing pages were more effective, but I think the current argument is still about reducing the amount of clicks a consumer needs to complete a purchase.


I say definitely still link to the product page. Unless you're going to sell direct from your website or you want to offer links for more than one store, a potential reader will have to get to the Amazon product page eventually, so adding an extra step in that process doesn't seem beneficial to me. Unless I'm misunderstanding something about your post.


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## The Bass Bagwhan (Mar 9, 2014)

Perry Constantine said:


> I say definitely still link to the product page. Unless you're going to sell direct from your website or you want to offer links for more than one store, a potential reader will have to get to the Amazon product page eventually, so adding an extra step in that process doesn't seem beneficial to me. Unless I'm misunderstanding something about your post.


I completely forgot about asking this question. Thanks Perry, makes sense.


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## John Hunter (May 11, 2018)

Simon Haynes said:


> I'll tell you what's even more depressing - getting a trad pub deal, seeing your books in local stores, and knowing that within a month or two they'll be gone. Forever.
> 
> At least ebooks are always available. Even if you don't have the time, energy or money to promote now, you can keep writing and publishing. I'll tell you why - in 4-5 years time, when you have a dozen books up, you can hit the promo button and it's like they're all brand new releases.


Digital Immortality...I like it!


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## Jack Krenneck (Feb 9, 2014)

Anarchist said:


> My data suggest there's more to placement than just bids. I suspect conversion rate is playing a role.


I agree. Another major factor is sales rank. I suspect review numbers play a part too.

All the more reason to promote on release, when a book likely has its best sales rank, than to try to revitalize an older book with AMS.


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## Douglas Milewski (Jul 4, 2014)

What I've really come to understand is that self-publishing is really three hard fields: writing, publishing, and marketing. If you're weak in any of those area, you'll feel it. While I like to think that I've developed my writing into excellence, and my publishing into acceptable, my marketing skills are still sub-par even with active study. Marketing may look easy (just do it), but forming and accomplishing marketing goals requires both skill and experience to pull off well.


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## Mylius Fox (Jun 2, 2014)

jb1111 said:


> Great cover, and it looks like it is a fun kids' book, but your LookInside shows smeared images on all 3 of my browsers. If it is happening on others' computers, it may not be helping your sales.


Same here, but I suspect the problem is on Amazon's end, as I recently found another trad-published book with the same exact problem. For what it's worth, I submitted a ticket about that book in question, days ago, and still haven't heard back from them.  But that was through customer relations, so maybe as the author going through KDP, the response will be less moribund...


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## Guest (Jul 5, 2018)

Douglas Milewski said:


> What I've really come to understand is that self-publishing is really three hard fields: writing, publishing, and marketing. If you're weak in any of those area, you'll feel it. While I like to think that I've developed my writing into excellence, and my publishing into acceptable, my marketing skills are still sub-par even with active study. Marketing may look easy (just do it), but forming and accomplishing marketing goals requires both skill and experience to pull off well.


I love learning new things and really enjoying this journey. I know I'll be writing till the day I die.


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## Nev (Nov 9, 2017)

Douglas Milewski said:


> What I've really come to understand is that self-publishing is really three hard fields: writing, publishing, and marketing. If you're weak in any of those area, you'll feel it. While I like to think that I've developed my writing into excellence, and my publishing into acceptable, my marketing skills are still sub-par even with active study. Marketing may look easy (just do it), but forming and accomplishing marketing goals requires both skill and experience to pull off well.


Good observations, Douglas. I think many self-published authors struggle with marketing their works, even when they excel at writing and/or publishing. The truth of the matter is that unless an indie author is willing to invest in marketing his/her books, even if it means taking losses for a period of time, the chances of success dwindle. Yes, there are the lucky few who knock the ball out of the park with seemingly no effort, but for most it's like any investment - a balancing of risk and return.

I consider myself an above-average writer, not an excellent one. I consider myself an above-average publisher, not an excellent one. Yet, I was willing to risk my financial capital to gain a foothold, and even though I took my lumps learning how to navigate AMS, Bookbub, Facebook and Google, I've found success marketing my books. Not as much as some, but I was one of Amazon's top-1000 royalty earners last year in my 2nd year of publishing, and made back my risk capital and then some in that stretch. It can be done, I'm no genius, but it does take a willingness to incur risk and invest one's capital.


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## EBWriter (Jan 26, 2017)

Marti talbott said:


> ...In case you didn't know about it, on the Amazon sales page where you book is listed, on the right hand sidebar, is Click on that, copy and past the link, and embed it in your website. It's really very cool.


Completely wowed by this! Can't believe I never knew this before. Thanks so much for sharing.


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## EBWriter (Jan 26, 2017)

Simon Haynes said:


> ...Even if you don't have the time, energy or money to promote now, you can keep writing and publishing. I'll tell you why - in 4-5 years time, when you have a dozen books up, you can hit the promo button and it's like they're all brand new releases.


I so needed to hear this! Thanks, Simon.


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## Simon Haynes (Mar 14, 2011)

I'm confident in my writing and publishing, it's just the marketing I have problems with. It's all so ... nebulous.

I'm the sort of person who likes to pull lever A and see B happen. For example, change the title font on the cover, export, upload. Done.

With marketing, you pull lever A and you don't even know whether it's connected to anything.


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## BonafideDreamer (Jul 22, 2018)

I expect to publish my first book early 2019. And although I am anxious because of the millions of books that my own will be competing with, I have learned so much from this thread. And have somewhat of a marketing plan in place.

Reach out to bloggers/booktubers/ for early reviews.

Give away e-book on Library Thing for reviews.

Once I have ten reviews, can shift focus to promo sites. 

Also will have on opt in on the last page of e-book for mailing list.

Hopefully this will help my books do well on limited funds.

I also have a YouTube channel with about 300 subscribers, so I will do an unboxing my book video when I can.


If these steps work for the first book, I will repeat them with the second and third. Only then will I try for a Bookbub.


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## Aloha (Jun 5, 2018)

Simon Haynes said:


> ...With marketing, you pull lever A and you don't even know whether it's connected to anything.


Finally.

Good to find someone who feels the same way about marketing.


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## BonafideDreamer (Jul 22, 2018)

LilyBLily said:


> If you can afford some advertising, you might get better results with Facebook or AMS ads, paying strict attention to budget limits. You don't need reviews to do those, and they can be running for weeks. I realize the learning curve is steep (I haven't tried a FB ad in a long while despite listening to a lot of podcasts about how simple and logical it is). But sweating for reviews is a beginner's mistake that I also made. They really do not matter. If you can get a handful that indicate the book actually is what you say it is, that's probably enough. If you're publishing next year, reserve a review spot with Hidden Gems (booked up until next year in many categories) and relax about the reviews. You still want them, and you want quality, but you don't need them.
> 
> Also, since you have YouTube subscribers, you can offer them a sneak peek at the book as an incentive to subscribe to your mailing list. It's slow going with back-of-book calls to action to join your mailing list (though it's still a worthwhile tactic), so do what you can to pump up your list in advance of the book releasing.
> 
> Good luck.


Thank you!


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## Nope (Jun 25, 2012)

.


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## Aloha (Jun 5, 2018)

P.J. Post said:


> ...Retail theory can't explain it because there's always something intangible at play, or, from a different perspective, so many variables in flux that it's impossible to account for them all. ...The other truth of the matter is that, for the most part, the literary merits of books and novels have become irrelevant, now it's just selling [crap] on the internet, no different than fidget spinners or news...


Yes.


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## 87552 (Nov 4, 2015)

As a newbie who is just getting in the "mood" of becoming a full-time writer, I find this thread to be informative, entertaining, and encouraging. Thank you, everyone!

I am now working on my 3rd book. The sales for the first two are abysmal. I didn't do much marketing and focused on other things. Now, as I am slowly coming to an end with my first trilogy, I am looking for audience building, marketing, connecting, etc. For some, this may be late, for others, it may be early. It was the right time for me due to other "obligatory" life commitments. I have a job, and I have to attend college full-time, and I also work with my partners to start-up a company. I relocated to another country, I lost people that I loved, etc. Life happens. It has a habit of doing that.

Through these struggles, there were times that I thought I could never become a full-time writer, and my time was over. What I learned from this topic is that there is an excellent chance to become a full-time writer and I can pay for my rent. There is no such thing as being late in this digital world. You work hard, and you do certain things right (without the necessity of becoming an AMS statistics guru), and the results will come.

Finding the right audience takes time and research. Something that I am always digging.

Again, thank you!


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## Bookread (Mar 8, 2016)

It sounds like you started out with nothing, then slowly built up your stats, following, etc. To your question, new authors will have to do the same. It's an organic process that probably won't be shortcutted anytime soon.

Congrats on all your success.


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## L_Loryn (Mar 1, 2018)

dancing squirrel said:


> Or maybe it's because I put zero romance in my books; I don't know.


Who was it that said every storyline should have a hint of romance?

I'll admit, no matter what I'm reading, I like a little romance. I'm not much for 100% romance (even though I guess I supposedly write it), but like 37% romance works.


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## davisbates (Dec 27, 2017)

Trioxin 245 said:


> I have been in this business for less than a year and though I never discuss numbers for various reasons, I am paying my bills by writing. I mostly lurk here on this forum, but one question I never see people ask or talk about is "Who is my customer?" That is one of the most important questions you need to ask. Once you figure that out, your sales will increase with your next book. Until then, it will be a matter of throwing more money at ads to sell a book to customers you don't know.


Thanks for the good advice. My best markets disappeared for travel and health/yoga in magazines, so paying my bills is at the top of my life list.

Do you write to market (watch the best sellers in your genre, etc.) Do you have a reader group, scream team, where do you find your beta readers & editors? do you do any advertising & what is it? Thank you.


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## JadePowers (Aug 1, 2018)

One of the things I see a lot is the "10,000 month" or "$300 month" notifications from authors.  While those are really awesome to see, sometimes I wish it was broken down, like, "Gross: $10,000.  Net:  $2,000" .  No one wants to talk about losing money.  I'm currently in the hole for this pen name, but because I'm super cautious, I will recoup the loss with these novels. 

It's such a tough balance between spending for ads to rank and making smart choices for a good Return on Investment.  It's WAY too easy to throw money away on ads, especially if you only have one novel and are trying to sell it at a 35% margin during an advertised sale. 

I really like Michael Anderle's theory of "minimum viable product" and testing the market before you throw a bunch of money into a book that won't sell regardless of how much you advertise.


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## davisbates (Dec 27, 2017)

I wrote non fiction travel articles for years, was a regular contributor & published easily.  I was pretty lazy, figured I'd be serious later,  & my pieces paid the bills. I traveled in Asia, wrote about the cultures, life was grand.  The markets changed completely, & I'm writing my first clean regency rom novel now.

I had some personal issues the year I changed, so the writing I did then is pretty worthless.  But I wrote, every day.

My supportive communities have moved on, though, & are talking hard & fast about advertising, newsletters, their own issues & I feel the loss.  Any tips?  Thank you.


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## Patty Jansen (Apr 5, 2011)

> It's such a tough balance between spending for ads to rank and making smart choices for a good Return on Investment. It's WAY too easy to throw money away on ads, especially if you only have one novel and are trying to sell it at a 35% margin during an advertised sale.
> 
> I really like Michael Anderle's theory of "minimum viable product" and testing the market before you throw a bunch of money into a book that won't sell regardless of how much you advertise.


If you have money to spend, spend it on the product, because that will earn out on its own with a small push. But more than that, it's not about money. Spend TIME on the product. Time to learn, time to mull it over (sure, go write something else while you do this, but put it aside for a bit and come back to it later, don't be in such a hurry, especially if you're new to writing).

I loathe the minimum viable product method. LOATHE.

Minimum viable packaging, I can get into (i.e. don't have money for a great cover? Get a nice premade), but the product? The words that make up your story and the plotting that makes it a good story? Spend as much on that as you can. Time or money, both, but if you don't have the money at least spend the time.

Minimum viable product advocates are why people in trad still look down their noses at selfpublished authors.


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## davisbates (Dec 27, 2017)

Is a review crew something to do with beta readers you've found & enlisted? how did you to this? Thanks. (The bottom fell out of my writing market, & I'm starting over...mags to amazon clean regencies)



Evenstar said:


> It's true, there are many ways to do it better than I did this time. I've forgotten them all because I've been an author now for (gasp at self realization) five years!
> 
> Five years... and I have a lot of books to show for it. So when I launch I kind of take that experience for granted. I know what to do, and I do it without thinking. Except this time... this time I didn't.
> 
> ...


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## Marti talbott (Apr 19, 2011)

When my books are not selling, I change the blurb. It's very easy to do, and you never know what might be the breakthrough blurb. Know what else? This is a great place to ask for help.


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## davisbates (Dec 27, 2017)

she-la-ti-da said:


> This is most often covered as "write to market", so no, you won't specifically see people talking about "customer". I think it's important to know where your customers hang out when it comes to buying ads. If your readers are a niche of Romance, promoting in a children's book email list won't get you very far.


Yeah, I'm a write to market expert, but I'm still terrified. I'm bookish & introverted, live overseas. The soul of a zen monk poet writing clean regency romances ...


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## davisbates (Dec 27, 2017)

Simon Haynes said:


> it's just the marketing I have problems with. It's all so ... nebulous.
> 
> With marketing, you pull lever A and you don't even know whether it's connected to anything.


! Thank you


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## Usedtoposthere (Nov 19, 2013)

I think the idea of lower quality goes along with how "hot" a trend you're writing to. If you're writing, excuse me, but more fungible fiction--that is, you aren't EXPECTING much shelf life--this makes sense. The consumer is probably not as discriminating. They are looking for their Trend X book, and will go from that to another Trend X book. They are more trend-loyal than author-loyal.

If you're writing for any kind of shelf life, any kind of legs, it makes no sense at all. 

The author quoted, I believe (sorry; quote functionality broken), works with many, many co-writers to create fungible fiction written to a template. This is not meant to be disparaging. It's a model like many others, and clearly, it works for him. It's important to know what you are writing and what you are trying to do.


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## Evenstar (Jan 26, 2013)

davisbates said:


> Is a review crew something to do with beta readers you've found & enlisted? how did you to this? Thanks. (The bottom fell out of my writing market, & I'm starting over...mags to amazon clean regencies)


The way I built my Review Crew is like this:

A mailing list sign up that is a different link than my main mailing list (although it looks identical and has the same landing pages). This link goes into books that are on Amazon, are not free and are not in KU. This means that I *know* this person has *paid* for the book (which is what makes them eligible, freebie only means they may be unable to leave reviews, also I only want Amazon people, I don't care about the other sites in terms of reviews).

This targeted mailing list then gets all the same mail-outs as my main list but at the bottom I add in a bright box that says:

_Do you want to get my book FREE for life and ahead of everyone else?
Join my Review Crew and you will get an ARC (Advance Reader Copy) of my books before they are even released! All I ask in return is that you leave an honest review on Amazon when the book goes live*
*You do not have to read or review every book, they are yours anyway, but do let me know if for some reason you are unable to review at least one in three.
Join now CLICK HERE and I'll send you my latest book straight away to get you started._

Does that help?


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Quote from: dancing squirrel on Yesterday at 06:19:42 pm
_Or maybe it's because I put zero romance in my books; I don't know.

Who was it that said every storyline should have a hint of romance?

I'll admit, no matter what I'm reading, I like a little romance. I'm not much for 100% romance (even though I guess I supposedly write it), but like 37% romance works._

John Gordon-Davis said "Every story should have plenty of URST." UnResolved Sexual Tension.


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## Saffron (May 22, 2013)

I had the same problem, but I had paid for some promo with my publisher of the paperback. However, I'm doing the promo for the Kindle book myself. It had peaked at #16 in one category and Amazon featured it as a "hot new release" for a week or so, but I haven't been able to keep up the sales momentum. I'm doing some promo through KBoards, and regular promo through Facebook groups. I also ran a successful giveaway, but it's very difficult to get the hang of this promotion thing.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

dancing squirrel said:


> If I could go back in time to when I had hormones, maybe I could do that. When I think about sexual tension now, I kind of go "EWWW!" in my ancient head. Once you lose all your hormones, sex seems kind of, well; creepy, messy, and a tad ludicrous. (No offense intended to those are interested in it.)


This is when the writer's imagination has to come into play


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## Armchair Writer (Jun 26, 2018)

I thought I might share my approach to the problem outlined in this thread. It is neither a case of brilliant success nor of dismal failure, but a middle ground that works for me. 

I had been writing for the fun of it years prior to releasing my three science fiction novels in 2015. My next project was a long episodic sequel to The Bright Black Sea. That, however, was a two year project, so I released the first 80K word episode as a stand alone sequel in 2016 to fill that year gap. In 2017 I withdrew that book and published the complete sequel, The Lost Star’s Sea. I will be releasing my 2018 adventure novel this fall. I do not write to market. I write books that I personally enjoy – old fashioned, (like my covers), rather leisurely, character orientated novels in various science fiction sub-genres, which is to say, niche books. I produce my books in-house, with the help of volunteer beta readers, so my books cost me little more than the proof copies of my paperbacks to publish.

I only use my royalties to promote my books, or rather the royalties that I leave on the table by releasing all my books for free and wide via Smashwords and Amazon (at the 35% royalty rate to avoid having to pay the delivery fee). So far Amazon has kindly price matched my books most of the time in the US. And judging from my sales when they have not, this is a very inexpensive and easy way to promote my books. Many indie authors give away books in order to build an audience. (The average may be four free books for every one sold.) The difference is that I do it all time, not just for a day or a week here and there as part of a paid promotion. 

So how well does this work?  Well, after three years, I have a some 20,000 books in circulation, with The Bright Black Sea being my most popular book with 8,100 copies downloaded. I realize that compared to the best sellers in the genre – people who actually sell their books for money – this result is nothing to brag about. Still, it is likely 100x more books than I would have sold at $.99. And because I produce my books at nearly no cost, I have been (slightly) profitable from day one on Amazon foreign sales, the rare non-price matching times, and the inexplicable sale of a paper book now and again.

One rap against free books is that they are downloaded but never read. In my case, I have found that not to be true. My Amazon reviews per Amazon sales ratios are: A Summer in Amber 1/126, Some Day Days 1/200, The Bright Black Sea 1/106, and The Lost Star’s Sea 1/99  – which, I believe, are all within the range of paid books. 

There is also a valid question as to whether the buyers of the free books could ever be induced to pay for a book down the road. I would certainly not, at this point, feel comfortable flipping that switch. But, if it takes 5 to 10 years to establish a writing career – as some say it does – then I still have a few years to produce that break-out novel that would allow me to up my prices. Not that I ever intend to. I am too old and lazy to start a new career. I am quite content to be an amateur writer/publisher.

And then too, writers of free books, are sometimes looked down on. The point to remember is that price is a business decision, not a self-awarded prize of excellence. Underselling your competition is how businesses build their market share. Forgoing profits to build a business is how Jeff Bezos built Amazon. It may work for you as well. Or not. But if your books have yet to be discovered, you might ask yourself, at some point, what do I have to lose?


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## WDR (Jan 8, 2014)

(I'm probably going to cheese off a few people with this...)

I did no real advertising at all when I had released my second book. My sales took off almost right away. I was doing over a thousand copies per month for a few months before I maxed out my audience. 

While I didn't advertise in the usual sense, I have been active on social media. Primarily Twitter, and a few other sites. Just being active on Twitter seemed to be a primary driver of my book sales. Not because I was pushing my book, but because I was interacting with other people---a witty comment here, supportive comment there. I also have a couple of friends with good followings who would retweet any posts I made about my book, and that too pushed sales. Posting on Facebook proved to be a relatively bust effort, as FB throttles any one of your posts so only a few people see it (unless you are willing to pay for it).

Could I have had better sales for longer had I actually advertised? I think we can all assume the answer to that would be, "Yes." However, the test ads I ran had negative returns on investment. I found I was doing better with continuing my above activities. Combined with a severely limited budget, I had to go the cheap route, and that was "Post & Pray."

I DO intend on advertising with the release of my third book. But I also intend to continue with my usual activities because they do have a positive effect.


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## MonkeyScribe (Jan 27, 2011)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> This is when the writer's imagination has to come into play


No kidding. I've never murdered someone or started a riot before, but it should be easy enough to write. I don't know why sexual tension should be all that difficult, even if you're not feeling it yourself.


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## dgcasey (Apr 16, 2017)

c.litka said:


> wide via Smashwords and Amazon (at the 35% royalty rate to avoid having to pay the delivery fee).


Okay, I have to wonder about that statement. My biggest book only costs me nine cents in delivery costs and your longest book is only a couple hundred pages longer than mine. So, being conservative I would say your delivery costs on your first book would be about thirteen cents. Now, I would usually say that's silly to give up larger royalties to avoid paying pennies, but I see that all of your books are free, except for the paperbacks, obviously.

That's not exactly the road I would take, but that's just me. I enjoy writing and telling a good story, but I'd also like to get paid for them. I just hit the big 6-oh-my-gawd a couple of months ago and I'd like to build a writing career that will supplement my disability check and my Social Security checks later on. I'll gladly pay the pennies to make a couple of extra dollars on each sale. But, to each his own. Some people have different goals than I do.


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## notjohn (Sep 9, 2016)

dgcasey said:


> Okay, I have to wonder about that statement. My biggest book only costs me nine cents in delivery costs and your longest book is only a couple hundred pages longer than mine. So, being conservative I would say your delivery costs on your first book would be about thirteen cents. Now, I would usually say that's silly to give up larger royalties to avoid paying pennies, but I see that all of your books are free, except for the paperbacks, obviously.
> 
> That's not exactly the road I would take, but that's just me. I enjoy writing and telling a good story, but I'd also like to get paid for them. I just hit the big 6-oh-my-gawd a couple of months ago and I'd like to build a writing career that will supplement my disability check and my Social Security checks later on. I'll gladly pay the pennies to make a couple of extra dollars on each sale. But, to each his own. Some people have different goals than I do.


Well, of course it depends on the formatting (Word being the worst way to go, with Vellum a close contender), but a well-formatted novel of 80,000 words with no illustrations should be no larger than 500 KB, for a download fee of a tad more than 7 cents. My very largest book (140,000 words, 20 images) is 4.5 MB.


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## Ancient Lawyer (Jul 1, 2013)

Simon Haynes said:


> I'll tell you what's even more depressing - getting a trad pub deal, seeing your books in local stores, and knowing that within a month or two they'll be gone. Forever.
> 
> At least ebooks are always available. Even if you don't have the time, energy or money to promote now, you can keep writing and publishing. I'll tell you why - in 4-5 years time, when you have a dozen books up, you can hit the promo button and it's like they're all brand new releases.


This is so true. You get one (maybe two) chances, and the way that bookshop purchasing software works, they will end up ordering no more of your books, and sales will tank (unless you are successful, in which case other rules apply).

On the other hand, it is well-nigh impossible to get anything self-published, or even published by a small press, into bricks and mortar stores. And believe me, I have tried.

(And Simon, I too would like to acknowledge a debt to yWriter software!)


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

dancing squirrel said:


> Interesting. Write a realistic scene about successfully starting a riot and tell us how it goes. I suppose you could look at a historical example of someone doing that and copy the method employed; that might work. (If anyone pops in here and tells me it should be "an historical" example there will be fictional bloodshed. When you talk about a house, do you say "an house"? No.)
> 
> Writing sexual tension while either laughing out loud or constantly fighting the urge to say, "Ew!" would be impossible for me. Not for many people, but for me?
> 
> If I really wanted to write sexual tension, I probably could. Actually, I did do that in one of my books. I forgot about that; I completely forgot. I took it out; then I put it back in. Both versions failed to produce any income. Maybe I need to put "Hot sexual tension!" in the description. I should do that; it can't make matters any worse.


Sexual tension (URST) is not really about sex. It's more to do with the interaction between the characters, which usually begins as hostile. In _With The Headmaster's Approval _the MC , Adam Wild, has taken the job that Jenna Murray expected to get. This is an excerpt from their initial meeting when the all-female staff are introduced to the new male headmaster.

"I think Mrs O'Brien and I can go over that syllabus in private," he replied. "And I should also point out that I did relief teaching at a co-ed so I am not totally unfamiliar with teenage girls. I will be having a glass door installed in my office which will serve two purposes. I will be able to observe who is coming and going in the reception area, and my desk, and whoever is in my office, will always be visible. The inter-leading door to Mrs Ryan's office will remain open, and she will sit in on any interviews I have with the girls."
"You seem to have a lot of plans," Jenna Murray said stonily. "Does this mean your appointment is more than temporary?"
"My contract is renewable after one year."
"I see," said Jenna. "Then are we permitted to ask about your teaching background?"
Adam leaned lazily back in his chair and tapping his pen on the table said with a slow smile, "What would you like to know, _Mizz_ Murray?"
"To put it bluntly - why did they choose you for this job?"
There was a collective intake of breath from the staff, but they waited in expectant anticipation for the answer they all wanted to hear.
"I have a naval as well as a teaching background. The governing body felt the discipline would be good for the school."
Jenna made a sound that was between a derisive snort and laughter. "This isn't a Naval Academy. It's an Academy for Girls," she said. "What sort of discipline do you mean to mete out? Are you going to be forcing teenage girls to scrub the deck as punishment?"
He gave a slow smile. "Hardly. But I might make them sweep the playground, or weed the hockey field."
Lisa put down her pen. "I've switched the urn on in the staff room," she said hurriedly. "Mr Wild, will there be anything else?"

This sets the scene for further tension between the characters, tension that the rest of the staff (and readers) recognise as a suppressed sexual attraction.


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## dgcasey (Apr 16, 2017)

JessieCar said:


> On the other hand, it is well-nigh impossible to get anything self-published, or even published by a small press, into bricks and mortar stores. And believe me, I have tried.


This is so true. And it says right on the B&N website that your only hope of getting your paperbacks on their shelves on a regular basis is to have them printed through B&N's print services. They will not stock anything printed by KDP or CreateSpace.


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## Evenstar (Jan 26, 2013)

dancing squirrel said:


> (If anyone pops in here and tells me it should be "an historical" example there will be fictional bloodshed. When you talk about a house, do you say "an house"? No.)


I'll take that fight!

Do you say "it would be an honor"? Or do you say "it would be a honor"?

It is the sound of the first letter of the word following the article that determines whether to use a or an. The "h" in honor is silent so the word is pronounced on-or. Therefore it sounds like it starts with a vowel, so we say "It's an honor to meet you."

It is a traditional rule of English that an can be used before words that begin with an H sound if the first syllable of that word is not stressed. Indeed, some traditionalists would say it must be used before such words. Since the first syllable of historic is unstressed, it is acceptable to use an before it.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Evenstar said:


> I'll take that fight!
> 
> Do you say "it would be an honor"? Or do you say "it would be a honor"?
> 
> ...


I had a problem with "... get a friend to give you a (honest) opinion". Should it be 'a' or 'an' if the _honest_ is in brackets? I went with 'an'.


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## Evenstar (Jan 26, 2013)

dancing squirrel said:


> If I could go back in time to when I had hormones, maybe I could do that. When I think about sexual tension now, I kind of go "EWWW!" in my ancient head. Once you lose all your hormones, sex seems kind of, well; creepy, messy, and a tad ludicrous. (No offense intended to those are interested in it.)


I think it's all in the kiss. I rarely watch a sex scene that has the same impact as a kiss for sexual tension. There have been some great screen kisses that just blew me away and I wanted to capture that in print.


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## Evenstar (Jan 26, 2013)

Jan Hurst-Nicholson said:


> I had a problem with "... get a friend to give you a (honest) opinion". Should it be 'a' or 'an' if the _honest_ is in brackets? I went with 'an'.


It's definitely _an_ honest opinion


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## L_Loryn (Mar 1, 2018)

dancing squirrel said:


> Writing sexual tension while either laughing out loud or constantly fighting the urge to say, "Ew!" would be impossible for me. Not for many people, but for me?
> 
> If I really wanted to write sexual tension, I probably could. Actually, I did do that in one of my books. I forgot about that; I completely forgot. I took it out; then I put it back in. Both versions failed to produce any income. Maybe I need to put "Hot sexual tension!" in the description. I should do that; it can't make matters any worse.


I try to focus more on "emotional tension" so to speak. Sex is an extension of wanting a connection with someone. But butterflies, that excitement you get when you connect on an intimate level with someone, whatever you want to call it --- that can happen even if you're not particularly interested in writing "sexual tension".

Likewise, I don't write a lot of intercourse scenes. Sensual scenes, sure. Your partner drawing a bath for you can be incredibly sensual. But the, uh "Tab A in Slot B (or C or D)" isn't for everyone.


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## Jan Hurst-Nicholson (Aug 25, 2010)

Evenstar said:


> I think it's all in the kiss. I rarely watch a sex scene that has the same impact as a kiss for sexual tension. There have been some great screen kisses that just blew me away and I wanted to capture that in print.


I found the Moonlighting scene when Bruce Willis and Cybil Shepherd finally kiss after all the build-up of sexual tension to be a 'blew me away' moment.


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## Guest (Aug 10, 2018)

In all the Indian movies, just as the couple began to kiss, they'd fade out (into a song). I still think all that tension beforehand the most delicious part.


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## Rose Andrews (Jun 1, 2017)

Lorri Moulton said:


> One of the best scenes ever...and all because Hollywood wouldn't allow lips to maintain contact for more than 3 seconds. So, Hitchcock worked around the rule and here's the result.


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## Saffron (May 22, 2013)

I've been promoting like crazy to try and boost my eBook, but nothing's working and I'm watching the rankings drop like a stone. I know it means only that I'm not finding my audience but it's still very disheartening. I need to get the second book out and it's outlined in my head, but it's gonna take a year. I have to get my artist on board too, for the illustrations. I used all my promo budget and I can't keep throwing money after something that's not selling. I guess I'll have to take the long view.


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## Abderian (Apr 5, 2012)

Saffron said:


> I've been promoting like crazy to try and boost my eBook, but nothing's working and I'm watching the rankings drop like a stone. I know it means only that I'm not finding my audience but it's still very disheartening. I need to get the second book out and it's outlined in my head, but it's gonna take a year. I have to get my artist on board too, for the illustrations. I used all my promo budget and I can't keep throwing money after something that's not selling. I guess I'll have to take the long view.


I'm seeing nothing but grey streaks after the chapter one heading in your Look Inside too. It's definitely worth addressing. Also, children's books are a hard sell in self-publishing. Children's books are more of a paperback market, whereas most self-publishers make their money in ebook sales and KU page reads.

Finally, it's rare for the first book by a new author to take off, even with the best and most expensive promotion in the world, and when it does happen it's most often in popular subgenres that are starved of books. Bear in mind that most book promotion doesn't make a positive return. It's on the read-through to the next books in the series that the profit is made. So you would be better off saving your dollars for when you have a few books for buyers to read after their initial purchase.


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## Ancient Lawyer (Jul 1, 2013)

dgcasey said:


> This is so true. And it says right on the B&N website that your only hope of getting your paperbacks on their shelves on a regular basis is to have them printed through B&N's print services. They will not stock anything printed by KDP or CreateSpace.


It's a bit of a drawback! In the UK, bricks and mortar stores are supposed to stock paperbacks or hardbacks printed through Lightningsource, but in fact they seem to only have them on back order, and they are listed on the store's web-site as not in stock.

(Apologies for popping up in the middle of the chat about kissing! I replied to a post higher up the thread and...oops! It had moved on, ever so slightly).


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## boba1823 (Aug 13, 2017)

Saffron said:


> I've been promoting like crazy . . .


I think the lines that people have mentioned in the Look Inside is an image that has been stretched out vertically.

You, or whoever does your formatting, should check out the markup code for that first image (and maybe the others as well) - particularly the _height_ property. It looks like it may be stretched out to 1000% or more. Although if it doesn't show up in the final book, this might be something funny with the Amazon previewer. Still, probably some non-standard formatting code to blame.


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## Gone 9/21/18 (Dec 11, 2008)

dgcasey said:


> This is so true. And it says right on the B&N website that your only hope of getting your paperbacks on their shelves on a regular basis is to have them printed through B&N's print services. They will not stock anything printed by KDP or CreateSpace.


My books are all exclusive to Amazon, and the Create Space paperbacks for all of them are available at B&N. On the search I did a couple of minutes ago, two had "cover not available," which is strange, since the ebooks were once on their site, but they're there.


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## Jena H (Oct 2, 2011)

OT but on the topic of "a historical" vs. "an historical"...  I never thought of it before, but I (and likely a lot of others) say something is "an historical treasure," but we also say "a history lesson."  So I guess it could be a matter of whether the word is a noun or an adjective.  FTR, I can't think of another example of this same phenomenon, though.


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## Guy Riessen (Mar 27, 2016)

dgcasey said:


> A lot of new authors think that it's Amazon's responsibility to make the millions of people that visit the site each day, aware of their book and get them to buy it.


Actually it is their responsibility as a publicly traded company. (it's also their responsibility to make as much money as possible off of each sale while balancing with the total number of sales). Ideally Amazon wants to match your book with someone who is interested in buying it. But currently algorithms need data before they can adequately market to potential markets.

New books from unknown authors equal no data. Perhaps one day AI will be able to scan each book for content and structure and match it to profiles from harvested info from Big Data crunching. But that said, I don't know if book-reader optimization will happen first, or if AI writing to market will happen first.


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## xcaliber (Feb 1, 2017)

boba1823 said:


> I think the lines that people have mentioned in the Look Inside is an image that has been stretched out vertically.
> 
> You, or whoever does your formatting, should check out the markup code for that first image (and maybe the others as well) - particularly the _height_ property. It looks like it may be stretched out to 1000% or more. Although if it doesn't show up in the final book, this might be something funny with the Amazon previewer. Still, probably some non-standard formatting code to blame.


I have the same image in several books, formatted the same way. The image looks fine in all the books, and in most of the Look Insides, but in a couple of the Look Insides it is similarly stretched out vertically.

Any suggestions?


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## boba1823 (Aug 13, 2017)

xcaliber said:


> I have the same image in several books, formatted the same way. The image looks fine in all the books, and in most of the Look Insides, but in a couple of the Look Insides it is similarly stretched out vertically.
> 
> Any suggestions?


Hmm.. that makes me think it may be an error that is introduced on Amazon's end, in the creation of the Look Insides. My guess would be that Amazon generates the Look Inside only once. I'd try contacting KDP support, telling them that an image on the Look Inside is not showing up correctly (and you've checked that the formatting is correct) and asking if they can re-generate it.

If they won't, or can't, I would think that uploading a 'new' (not actually new) version of the book would update it. And hopefully make it look right. This is all speculation though.


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## Guest (Aug 11, 2018)

QUOTE from dgcasey:

*"They will not stock anything printed by KDP or CreateSpace."*

If you use your publishing name instead of KDP , Amazon or CreateSpace, and your own ISBN, how would B&N know who printed your book?


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## dgcasey (Apr 16, 2017)

okey dokey said:


> If you use your publishing name instead of KDP , Amazon or CreateSpace, and your own ISBN, how would B&N know who printed your book?


It doesn't matter if you do all that. The B&N buyers at each store will do the ordering and if your book is printed by KDP or CS, they won't be ordering from them. If you want to order up a few thousand copies yourself, then you can take them around the country and talk to the buyers yourself and hope they will buy them, but I don't see them going online and looking through the book catalogs and ordering them.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

okey dokey said:


> QUOTE from dgcasey:
> 
> *"They will not stock anything printed by KDP or CreateSpace."*
> 
> If you use your publishing name instead of KDP , Amazon or CreateSpace, and your own ISBN, how would B&N know who printed your book?


Because Barnes and Noble only considers self published paperbacks printed through its own operation. You might be able to camouflage the origin of your book, but you can't camouflage the book as one printed by B & N, and that would be the only way to get the book in.


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## jb1111 (Apr 6, 2018)

Jena H said:


> OT but on the topic of "a historical" vs. "an historical"... I never thought of it before, but I (and likely a lot of others) say something is "an historical treasure," but we also say "a history lesson." So I guess it could be a matter of whether the word is a noun or an adjective. FTR, I can't think of another example of this same phenomenon, though.


It's a matter of how the H is pronounced in speech.

And it's different in the UK than it is in the US, for the most part.

Some Americans always pronounce the H in 'historic'. A few don't. I suppose in some cases the use of 'a' vs. 'an' is up to the taste of the author.

In most cases, I'll go with the UK version. Few readers are going to stress out over the use of 'a' or 'an'. If they think it's unusual, they may well see it as a typo anyway.


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## hjordisa (Sep 4, 2017)

jb1111 said:


> It's a matter of how the H is pronounced in speech.
> 
> And it's different in the UK than it is in the US, for the most part.
> 
> ...


Yeah, it's mostly a US vs UK thing. If I see "an historic" or the like I'll drop the h sound for that word and just assume the author doesn't pronounce it. If I look into it I'll usually find they aren't American. [Although people who get it wrong for their area may have taken "vowel vs consonant" as being about letters and not sounds, since that's how they're taught in school. Or have seen one or the other too often in writing and assumed that's correct. For me my instincts scream out against it (since in my area going by letter would be correct for historic, I might see, for example, "an universe" and twitch a little), but I've found some people, often those who spoke non-standard dialects or other languages at home, don't have such good instincts for standard English grammar (whatever that is in their area) even if they went to school in English. Which makes sense.] I absolutely notice, though, and trip up a bit. It's not something that can be helped, so I don't worry about it after that.

You also might get 'a opossum,' but it's debatable whether people are just not pronouncing the 'o' or are using the word 'possum' to refer to both possums and opossums, and whether people should call opossums possums is a whole other debate, so I'll leave it there.


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## Used To Be BH (Sep 29, 2016)

Puddleduck said:


> The use of "an" for words like "history" always grates me. We don't say, "The man rode an horse" or "I've developed an habit of reading". So why do Americans (where the H in words like 'historic' are always pronounced, aside from maybe a few small regional accents or odd verbal ticks of an individual) persist in writing and even sometimes saying "an historic"? It's stupid and always strikes me as the author/speaker not knowing how English works. Like they're using "an" in those instances because they think that's the "proper" way to do it because that's what they've seen somewhere without considering if it makes any bleeming sense.
> 
> So yeah, I may not leave a bad review or something telling the author they're wrong, but that doesn't mean it isn't incredibly off-putting or that (taken with other problems I may have with a book) it won't cause me to put a book down or opt not to buy it.
> 
> (Obviously, the exception is if I'm reading a book from an English author or from an English-character POV. I'm familiar enough with certain other accents like that to know that they often don't pronounce the H and so for them the "an" makes sense.)


You're missing the fact that grammar is fundamentally not logical. It develops out of the muddle of human experience rather than being rationally planned. Unlike some languages, there is no single authority that proclaims what the rules will be, and even such rules as get general agreement change over time.

If anything, English is worse than a lot of languages because it draws from more diverse roots. It has a Germanic base, but it also has a large infusion of Latin (by way of Norman French and other complications). Even worse, when scholars decided to construct a grammar for English, they used Latin (the language of learning at the time) as a model. That wasn't a wise choice, since English is primarily a word-order language and Latin is an inflected language. In any case, English grammar was born in the ivory tower rather than in the streets and has spent the rest of its existence either fighting against normal usage or clumsily incorporating it.

It shouldn't be surprising that there are irrational things in grammar. It is more surprising that there is any logic left in it at all.


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