Tag Archives: marketing

I didn’t start speaking until I was ready for full sentences. I don’t like making mistakes and hate being laughed at. Like most people, when I got into art or writing, I wanted my work to be “finished” before sharing it. Even though I’ve learned to share work earlier to get feedback before committing to something, I still feel like most …

Work in progress! Someone asked for a ‘quick and easy guide’ to Facebook advertising for authors, so I wrote this:   1. Use your hook/story for text. Test out 10 different hooks. Test out some with reviews. Make sure you mention the genre clearly, but incite emotion. 2. Don’t use your cover, use a pretty image that attracts readers of …

  Porto and Harry Potter This month we’ve been travelling through Portugal, seeking out JK Rowling’s favorite writing spots for inspiration. Rowling started planning Harry Potter in Porto, and it’s easy to see the connection. The university students wear black capes, and Porto is home to the “most beautiful bookstore in the world” – Livraria Lello. You may not know this, …

A few years ago I wrote a post about how authors can use press releases to actually sell books. But the main takeaway was that authors shouldn’t try and do a press release because most of the time, they haven’t actually done anything newsworthy. I’ve somewhat modified my position, because: doing a press release might get lots of good backlinks …

I was pretty sure I  sucked at Amazon ads. Which is mostly fine: I’m still making money and I figured I couldn’t *really* spend big on Amazon ads until I had a bunch of finished series out. Tonight I took a look at the ads I’m still running. My average cost per click is about $0.30; and my average Advertising Cost of …

I’ve talked before about how doing boxsets and anthologies can be great for building your author platform – not only to reach more readers, but also to build long term relationships with other authors in your genre. And I’ve talked a lot about doing book giveaways to encourage shares and promotion; and also about doing newsletter swaps to reach more readers. …

Today I redid some of my covers. I’ve actually gone through at least 5 covers for Shearwater (my YA mermaid romance novel), and since publishing part one I haven’t been happy with it. Even though most people like it, and it performs OK, I wanted something stronger. But people are asking me why – why switch covers? Isn’t that bad for …

Even though I don’t consider myself an expert at doing online courses, I did pretty well with my first one. So this is an (epic) case study explaining everything I did to make 5-figures with my first course launch – without any affiliates promoting it for me, and without doing any webinars. I hope it will be useful for anyone else thinking …

Since I started Creativindie I’ve been running it as a personal blog. Sure I try to get some traffic, and want people to sign up on my list, and maybe eventually hire me or buy something… but it’s been sloppy and haphazard. However, since I’ve decided I want to be writing fiction full-time, that means I need to stop working …

UPDATE: I made a video talking about this stuff but it’s down at the bottom of this post. Scroll down to see it.      I’ve been self-publishing for about a decade, and have sold thousands of books. I haven’t made a living (yet), and like most self-publishing gurus and experts, I make my living in services rather than with …