Today I bring you the very first guest post on this blog, written by Indie Author Karen Baney. She and I are both participants in Melissa Foster’s big book launch on November 1st and she has a lot of valuable insights into the self-publishing world.
Okay. So, I don’t really know the sure-fire way to double your sales as an author. But, I can share with you what has been working well for me over the past three months—months where I’ve double my sales each month.
First, and most importantly, none of the following suggestions will be successful if you haven’t written a great novel and you don’t have a good cover. Those two things are absolutely critical for your success as an author.
That little disclaimer aside, here are the three things that have helped me the most in the past three months.
After much nagging from my hubby, “Are you on Twitter yet? You need to be on Twitter.” I finally broke down and got on Twitter. The first month I was on it, I could hardly figure out what to do with the thing. I mean 140 characters is frightening to a word smith. How was I going to say anything in that short space?
So, I started reading other people’s blogs about Twitter. I learned about hash tags, how to schedule tweets, what kinds of things to tweet, and how to engage with others. The first month I was on Twitter, my Amazon sales ranking went from somewhere around 108,000 to hovering around 35,000. Pretty good, say you? I thought so. And I doubled my sales from the previous month.
(Yes, my hubby was right – just don’t tell him I said so.)
But that wasn’t the only front of my marketing efforts.
Blogging
Yes. I just said the dreaded “b” word. But, let’s get real. Blogging does help.
I’ve finally got in a routine with blogging. I started a series highlighting the main characters from my Prescott Pioneers Series. This blog series runs every Wednesday. I include a photo (purchased for less than $5 at iStockPhoto), the character’s stats, and a few insider secrets that only I as the author know about the character. My fans love it. It also gives me a chance to promote my books in an interesting way.
The other blog series I started was a Friday post just for authors about various writing topics. This is a great way to network with other authors and some of them may even buy my books too. If nothing else, they will have learned something from my posts.
I’ve also recently added an author spotlight series on Mondays, where I feature interviews with other indie authors.
During this time frame, my Amazon ranking went from 35,000 to about 11,000. Oh—you guessed it—I doubled my sales from the previous month getting very close to that 1,000 book a month barrier.
Then, the next big thing hit…
Cross Promotion
I finally had enough money coming in from my sales that I could spend a little extra on marketing. So, I started snooping around to find some cheap ways of marketing. Well, in that process, I connected with Melissa Foster, best-selling author on Amazon. I was invited to participate in a big promotion (coming very soon).
This promotion hasn’t even launched yet, and I’ve seen tremendous benefit. I’ve connected with 36 new author friends. We’ve been helping cross promote for each other over the past month. I’ve also learned from them ways to work smarter and not harder (like scheduling tweets, getting my book on various websites, etc.)
Since meeting this great group of people, my Amazon sales rankings have jumped from 11,000 to hovering around 2,500. Wow! I call that a success. And… I doubled my sales from the previous month, finally breaking the 1,000 books a month barrier by a significant amount.
While I can’t guarantee you’ll see the same results, I hope I’ve given you a few ideas on how you, as an indie author, can market your books and reach out to new readers.
Karen Baney, in addition to writing Christian historical fiction and contemporary novels, works as a Software Engineer. Her faith plays an important role both in her life and in her writing. Karen and her husband make their home in Gilbert, Arizona, with their two dogs. She also holds a Masters of Business Administration from Arizona State University. Check out Karen’s blog at http://www.karenbaney.com/
Join us and over 30 other great authors for the 99 Cent Book Event, in celebration of the release of Melissa Foster’s latest novel COME BACK TO ME, Tues., Nov. 1 – Thurs., Nov 3. ALL BOOKS 99 CENTS, ebook giveaways, and more! www.womensliterarycafe.com
Great ideas! Thanks!
LOVE this post! Fantastic! Clear, succinct, and helpful. A sure winner. Congrats on your success so far, Karn.
**Karen** SORRY xox
Good info. I’ve done some similar things, and over the past few months, I’ve seen by books double. I’m nowhere near your numbers, but then again I only have short stories and novelettes (with a couple collections in there.) If I keep up the pace though, I’ll be a happy.
Great blog…looking forward to hearing more about your promotion in November! Much success to all of you!!
Wow! Here’s the marketing blog that I’ve been looking to find, full of concrete suggestions based on actual experience. Too often blogs on marketing are extremely vague. I often finish reading them thinking that perhaps the author actually hasn’t experienced any marketing success and thus has no tips to pass along. Karen’s blog on this topic was a refreshing and educational change of pace. Great to hear what worked for her!
Karen, you point out some great info regarding marketing and reaching out to new readers. It works, plain and simple. A large time commitment is involved, but it’s your baby! Wendy, congrats on your 1st guest post, excellant!
Terrific post! Thank you so much for sharing! I wish you all a world of success!!
I’m glad you all are finding this helpful. I love sharing what I’m doing and what’s working for me. I hope you all are inspired to keep marketing. Thanks for hosting me, Wendy.
Wow! Great interview. You’ve given me hope. Self published or not – we all market. Thanks so much for sharing. I Facebooked this and hit twitter too. I’d wish you Good luck, Karen, but it looks like its already found you.
Karen, thanks for the great article! I’m curious, on Twitter, what types of Tweets do you send and what do you find works the best to garner sales? I’m tweeting (that 140 thing IS rough!), I do a lot of RTs, some of my own tweets just on positive things to pass on to people and about 10% of promotions for my own books. I have 10 books up on Kindle now, and I’m trying to straddle how to promote all of them.
Any advice would be MOST appreciated!
This makes me feel a lot better after all that “blogging is dead” stuff. I heard years ago from a mystery writer that his idea for cross promotion helped them all gain a larger market share. I think all writers should cross promote to gain share back from video games. I can’t interact with readers yet on my blog. I’m still querying. But I’ve sure devoted a lot of time to interacting with other writers. I felt the exact same way about twitter, so I’m also new. It’s been an invaluable tool so far.
Together, we’re unstoppable! I love it when authors come together to support each other and learn from each other. Thanks for sharing your knowledge Karen, and for hosting her Wendy.
The most important point, to me: There is no one answer. Marketing anything involves patience, trying new tactics, being where your customer is and connecting on a real level.
That’s what you’re doing Karen! And it’s working!
Great interview. Good suggestions. I am trying them all and am hoping for success. I think the important thing to remember is that it doesn’t happen over night. You have to work at it and work at it and hopefully it will pay off in the end. Oh yeah, don’t forget to keep writing!
Thank you for sharing these useful insider tips. As a newbie on Twitter, and to indie publishing, I’m forever on the lookout for good marketing advice (got my blog started this week). You’ve provided a little gold mine here. Re: book covers, do you have specific recommendations on how best to proceed?
Jaur – Check out Tirz on Facebook. She does some pretty great covers and trailers, and they won’t cost you your first born child. LOL
http://www.facebook.com/TirzahLaughs
After reading this post, I am now looking for a few Christian authors who are on Twitter, FB, and have a blog or two who might be interested in cross promotions. I have three signed up so far. Might anyone here be interested? If so, email me at staci_stallings at hotmail dot com and I’ll give you more info.
Fabulous post, Karen! Thanks for sharing!
On the topic of book covers, this is where I spend the most of my money for producing a new book. I have a designer that I found on ConceptArt.org (not suitable for work) that provides quality designs for a low price.
Also, check out iStockPhoto.com. There’s tons of great photography. The cover art for my new novel, Nickels (coming in Dec) only cost me $35 from iStockPhoto. You can also pay a graphic designer.
What not to do: generic cover generator. Your book will look like everyone else’s.
To answer the question about Twitter, I send out tweets about my books, my blogs, and the authors I’m cross promoting with. I also RT things of interest to me.
A great resource for learning more about twitter:
http://www.copyblogger.com/ultimate-twitter/
I learned a lot from it.
It really is amazing how all these things you mentioned make a difference isn’t it? You shouldn’t have shared your character blog post idea though becauase I love it so much, I may eventually have to steal it, lol!
I was just going to write asking for more info on Twitter, as I have yet to master it. I know have two web pages bookmarked. 🙂 I am enjoying a lot of interaction with fellow writers, but am not sure how to reach readers (I am also pretty new to publishing, with just two months of my book being live. Still, I’d like to sell more than 3-4 books per week!). Thanks for posting this – this whole article is just what I needed!
Great post with some excellent nuts-and-bolts info. Social networking works best when we actually *network* doesn’t it? Teaming up with 36 fellow authors sounds brilliant. That’s how it’s going to work in the future I think–loosely affiliated publishing “tribes” rather than big, soulless conglomerates.
This is what I love about the writing community..writers sharing helpful information and encouragement. Thanks for posting this!
Great ideas – thanks for sharing! 🙂
Great post! I think the first two points you mention are the most important though. If you haven’t got these then there is no point reading the rest:
‘First, and most importantly, none of the following suggestions will be successful if you haven’t written a great novel and you don’t have a good cover. Those two things are absolutely critical for your success as an author.’
Thank you for the interview and thank you to the other people for the tips and comments – it’s great to help each other. I’m happy to promote authors’ books on my blog, especially if it’s ‘sweet’ romance (no erotica). My blog is http://katheryn-lane.blogspot.com. Please email me at Katherynlane1@hotmail.com if you’re interested
[…] read an article by Karen Baney (https://wendylyoung.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/guest-post-how-to-double-your-sales/ ) called How to Double Your Sales. In the article among other things, Karen talked about how she […]
Great post, Karen! Thank you for sharing. I’m looking forward to connecting with you on Grace & Faith Author Connection!
Please point me in the direction of blogs explaining all the Twitter things you mentioned like hash tags. I feel clueless. I never know what to blog about, and can’t get much traffic if any to my blog. I love your idea about giving highlights of characters on your blog, great idea. At the moment, I have only one short story collection on Smashwords. I hired a formatter to format it for Amazon because I just can’t figure it out. http://twitter.com//madisonjohns11
Madison – here’s the links about twitter:
Writing Killer Content in 140 characters or less: http://www.twitip.com/writing-killer-content-in-140-characters-or-less/
The Ultimate Twitter Guide – explains everything about twitter from the basics to more advanced topics. http://www.copyblogger.com/ultimate-twitter/
Common Hash Tags Used By Authors http://www.karenbaney.com/archives/900
Thanks Karen.
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Great post! It’s surprising how spending time on these venues can make the difference in your sales. It can go up AND down, depending on the effort you allot to social media each month.
Now, if we could all just could our day job and write…
😉
Great post! Thank you!
Great post… I am very pleased that it is working out so well for you – your book must be very good as well !!!
It sounds like you are on a roll. Good job and thanks for sharing. It is interesting to connect with other authors and I enjoy helping others promote their books too. Blessings, Deborah H. Bateman-Author
Looks like you’ve got some great advice here. Oh, how I wish I had more time to read the many wonderful blogs out there…and the books…and the magazines…
Anyhoo, I just wanted to pop by and say thanks for following my blog.
Have a super great week.
TTFN