It’s all well and good having written a book, what about selling it? Not wanting to talk dirty or anything, but seriously people, you’ve poured a lot of time into the who literary process, so it wouldn’t hurt to get a few bob back.
After all, a couple of weeks back I talked about how much it cost to produce this book. (So how much money is there in this book writing job anyway)
So how do you do it?
Well frankly I don’t think a lot of Indie author’s actually do any marketing. There was a fascinating article in the Guardian about the Self-Publishing boom.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/13/self-publishing-boom-lifts-sales-18m-titles-300m
It made the fascinating comment “18m self-published titles purchased, worth £59m,”
By my reckoning this means the average self-published book nets £3.27.
Even if 6m of the self-published titles are free this means the average purchased on brings in £4.91.
That means that an awful lot of books aren’t hitting double figures in their sales figures. I suspect that this figure probably gives us the number of supportive family and friends self-publishing authors have. Granny will buy a copy come what may, even if she has to buy a kindle first to read it on.
And the rest of us; how is our marketing going? A lot depends on genre. Talking to a friend who works in a library, they might lend out five SF books in a month as opposed to thirty thrillers in a day. So choose your genre with care!
So where do we market? At the moment ‘on-line’ is everything. Personally I don’t rate twitter. All you end up with is a crowd of authors screaming ‘Buy my book’ at each other. I do have some hard figures. Due to a statistical fluke my first book, “Swords for a Dead Lady”
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Swords-Dead-Lady-Jim-Webster-ebook/dp/B006C4C8OO
was picked up and massively tweeted. About ten Americans (by their pictures they’re the sort of lady whom some might have described as ‘underwear models’) all tweeted that you buy it. If you clicked on their tweet and purchased it, they’d have got a payment from their Amazon retailer account. I totalled up their combined followers, it was well over 100,000.
In that week I sold one book in the US.
Facebook? It can help, especially if your friends spread the word by sharing your links. At least with Tallis Steelyard, I’ve always got something fun for people to read
Goodreads? Yes, you’ll see sales and you’ll actually get a lot of support, but you’ll have to become part of the community. You’ll have to spend time, interact with people, chat, and just join in. Just spamming them and moving on is going to get you nowhere.
The real world? Well frankly my best sales have come after my local paper mentioned the book and my local radio station did an interview. It was as if it made me ‘real’ and gave me credibility. The problem is that to get this level of credibility you really need a paperback to flourish and that will be more expense. E-books might be gaining market share, but for many people, until you’ve got a book they can hit somebody with; you’re not a proper writer.
So I’ve got my new marketing plan. Buy my book or my new sales manager will be round for a frank and open exchange of views.
♥♥♥♥
But then what do I know?
This seems to be an appropriate book for somebody who gets his works pushed by underwear models
As a reviewer commented “The tales of Tallis Steelyard are always entertaining and this collection of short stories, plus a few poems and reminders of his other works, does not disappoint.”
Jim Webster 