Where’s the Money? Ideas on Book Promotion

Where’s the Money? Ideas on Book Promotion Ruth Ann Nordin ***** Where’s the Money? - Smashwards Edition Published by Ruth Ann Nordin at Smashwords Copyright © 2010 by Ruth Ann Nordin All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner. This is a work of nonfiction. The contents are based on the author’s experience. There are no promises that what worked for me will work for someone else. The hope is that other authors will benefit from the information provided. Smashwords Edition, License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. Cover Photo © Copyright Photo Getty Images. All rights reserved – Used with permission. ***** Why Should You Listen To Me? Who am I to offer any advice on book promotion? Well, I’ll let my sales record speak for me because when it all comes down to it, the proof is in the numbers. In 2010, I reported about $18,600 from book sales as income on my taxes. About $15,500 came from Amazon (US), about $40 came from Amazon (UK), about $2800 from Smashwords, $160 from paperback sales, and $45 from my old books with vanity presses. The total books I sold came to about 110,000. Keep in mind over half were free, and for most of the year, I asked $0.99 on them. So 110,000 may no longer be as impressive, but free and $0.99 (from the past) has led to a nice start this year. At the time I am updating this ebook (March 7, 2011), I have earned the following and sold these many ebooks: January Amazon US Kindle $1350 at 1800 books sold. Amazon UK Kindle $40 at 110 books sold. February (when I published a new book in mid-Feb.) Amazon US Kindle $1890 at 4865 books sold. Amazon UK Kindle $965 at 4320 books sold (3044 copies being one book that took off all of the sudden) Smashwords: I got a check for $9260 (not 100% sure how many books were sold and I don’t want to take the time to find out, but you get the point—things are going up) March (so far) Amazon US Kindle 1720 books sold. Amazon UK Kindle 1732 books sold. *And as for paperbacks, I sold about 10. Now, I’m a simple stay-at-home mom who is not even exactly sure how she got to this point. I never expected it, to be honest, and I wasn’t a big promoter with my books as far as going out and telling other people my books existed. I’m an introvert who loathes the chance to talk about my books, except to my readers or author friends as we discuss what we’re working on. So I’m hoping this ebook will help other introvert authors like myself who hate going on social networking sites and mentioning their books more than once or twice. I hope something in here can be useful to those who read it. ***** Promotion Strategy Ideas for Authors I`ve been mentally going through and thinking of everything I`ve done since I got serious about book promotion back in March 2008, weighing things that worked (both in the short and long run), and trying to decide what I would do differently today if I were starting out all over again. This is what I came up with... 1. Get familiar with networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Kindleboards.com is a nice place too, but I don’t get a chance to hang out there as much as I’d like. Some people like to hang out on Goodreads and the Amazon forums, but I suggest hanging out there first to get a feel for how receptive people will be when you mention your book. Some forums are more author-friendly than others. 2. Try to make your ebook and/or paperback as professional as possible. a. Tell a good story and polish your content. A good story covers up for the minor errors that might pop up. I’ve discovered that no matter how much you edit your book, someone won’t think you did a good enough job. So what do you do? The very best you can. No book is perfect, and you can’t please everybody. Just do your best and write your next book to improve your overall work. You can hire an editor or proofreader or barter for these services. I barter. But I’ll tell you even if you have another person look at your book, you might miss something anyway. I’m not saying to shrug off mistakes. I’m just saying when you become aware of them, change them, learn, and move on. I also think it’s better to have a compelling story that will sell well than a perfect book that doesn’t. (This is my opinion, of course.) Just do your best. I know I keep saying that, but it’s really all any of us can do. When you mess up, be merciful with yourself. You’re only human. b. Formatting. When formatting your interior file, I suggest looking at a popular ebook or paperback. For paperbacks, I look at traditionally published romances because I write romance. Things I look at are the title and copyright page to see how they look. Unless I’m doing a Smashwords version, I copy the copyright out of a traditionally published book. For your paperback, you may want to look at other books in your genre to determine where the page numbers go. Top or bottom? Left, center, or right? What do the chapter pages look like? What do the scene divisions look like? Are there *** or ~*~* ~ or some other symbol separating scenes in a chapter? I also notice that all margins are justified. If you are going to upload to Smashwords or to the Kindle, you will not have to worry about page numbers and headers, but you still want to use a page break between chapters and make sure your paragraphs are adequately spaced. However, if you can manage to figure out those tabs, then you’re way ahead of me. ... - tailieumienphi.vn