I’m finally catching up with work and had some time to update my fiction platform… so I decided to record all the behind-the-scenes stuff I’m doing to build my author platform quickly. I published my first fiction this year but have 15K email subscribers, thousands of social media followers and a decent amount of traffic...
Recently I wrote a post about how it doesn’t make sense for me to market your books for you (or even hire virtual assistants to help you do it). But that doesn’t mean VA’s aren’t crazy useful, if you hire your own. Authors always complain about book marketing because they just want to focus on The 3 secrets to book...
Recently I wrote about how most authors will never make any money. I was surprised by the comments, which I expected to be more negative. It seemed to comfort people to learn that they weren’t failing at being an author – they were doing as well as 99.9% of other self-publishing authors, because almost everyone fails. But...
I talk a lot about book marketing on this site, but I’m not very organized… so I went through and picked some of my favorite posts. There’s a LOT of content here. For the most recent stuff, you should Click Here to search the site for new posts on book marketing. Also, you should grab Book The 3 secrets to book...
A while back I was going to write a post or email about this topic: the majority of authors have been doing it for years, spending a lot of money, and don’t see a profit. It’s an expensive hobby. So they start asking “how do I sell more books?” or “when should I just quit?” The 3 secrets to book marketing...
You may have heard of the idea of giving away free books. Yes, it works wonders if done correctly: you can giveaway a book for a short time and get lots of downloads – it’s a great way to gain new readers. You can offer one book (usually in a series) “permafree” to entice readers The 3 secrets to book marketing, and a...
Most book marketing tips and strategies are for non-fiction authors. When publishing experts are asked, “well what about fiction writers,” the answer is usually, “um, I don’t have experience with that, but it should work too.” Here’s how to sell books: build a platform and an email list. BUT HOW?! Usually by...
I’ve written a lot about book marketing. Some people read my books and learn how to do it right. Other people are lazy, so they just wait for any old offer to appear. Something I see being done far too often, is the invitation to write a guest post for a small blog with low The 3 secrets to book marketing, and a haunted castle tour...
For the last couple of years I’ve been helping authors market books. But I haven’t really offered book marketing services. That’s because the best marketing is done by you. There are some things you can outsource, and you could pay for advertising or promotions, but real, long-term, successful, author platform building...
Self-publishing is big business. And most self-published books don’t sell – for a variety of reasons, but mainly because: 1. There isn’t any market for them; they were written without considering the genre readership. 2. They are poorly designed. 3. The authors have no platform (blog, traffic, followers, email list, etc). And...
In my books I urge against marketing your books on Twitter, or paying anybody else to do it for you. I’m annoyed by the hundreds of misguided tweets shouting and bouncing all over my Twitter feed like “Sexy, hot, 5star reviewer says ‘Must Read!!’ On sale now #99 #kindlebooks #amreading #bestseller” And recently I...
For a lot of authors, “book marketing” still means something like advertising or publicity. In other words, you put something in front of people that tells them about the book, and that they should go buy it. Here’s why that doesn’t work: People need repetition before they notice, then take action. So they’ll need...
