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Authors who need their book marketed on social media


poetist

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I see these gigs that boast they will market your book to their large social media, and I hear authors saying the seller delivered but it’s too early to tell if the gig helped their sales.

So, I just want an update from authors who took advantage of social media gigs that said they will post your book in book social media sites. Did it increase sales? (I’m not too concerned about free downloads. I want to hear about sales)

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Well, I can’t help you in regard to whether there are any decent publicity gigs for authors. However, I have found (by accident) that if I give away books on Smashwords for free, I seem to sell more books on Amazon at the same time.

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KJ, I’ve suspected that. I see writers thanking the seller and saying it’s too early to tell whether the marketing affected sales.

Get this!

I saw one writer said he noticed the seller was just doing some photo shopping in that the tweets had the same address. That seller didn’t send links; they only sent screen shots. Still, people were signing up for this service and giving it 5 stars, because the seller made it appear as if s/he was giving their book massive exposure.

There is one or two that seems to do something. I say this because there are writers who do repeat business on some gigs, and they say they saw the sales. These are the ones that got me a bit interested.

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If you are not enrolled in kdp select, you can publish your books on as many other websites as you like. After a 6 month trial I decided to ditch kdp select as on places like Smashwords, you can publish your books to lots of different platforms at once. ibook store, kobo etc.

Anyway, I screwed up my pricing on Smashwords and accidentally started giving away my books for free. (In fact, always make sure you double check your pricing on SW after saving, as I think the system might be buggy). At the same time, though, I started selling more on Amazon but when I realized my mistake and started charging at SM, my sales on Amazon started to flatline again.

All that said, there is no secret to selling books successfully. I was lucky in that I wrote one book in a very niche area and it quickly got picked up by an influential blogger who promoted it without me even asking. Then I (because my book was about unsolved murders and suspicious deaths) I was promoted FOC by a surviving relative of a victim I mentioned in my book. That too, though, was completely by chance.

In fact, I have had a golden run of luck as far as marketing goes. However, I still only make $40 a month. The trick, in this case, is not to think you are going to get rich by self-publishing. You’re not. All you can do is try to slowly build up a portfolio of books which slowly gather some great reviews, before publishing more work and building on that success. My only problem is that I rarely have time to write now or focus on marketing my books anymore.

Anyway, good luck.

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No thanks, Backlinks. You are apparently a bad seller. Here is what one of your customers says about you:

“Screenshot shows use of an application to post to groups, also doesn’t actually show proof of posting to a real group. Sorry for the feedback, I just feel misled.”

You seem to be running the same scam as some of these other people, who promise to market material.

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Cy, thanks. My dream of instant success is quickly evaporating. I have written 5 books before I published, because I knew I would not be inspired to write, if I saw this dismal reception before that.

A friend told me something smart. She said you don’t need the money, at least not right, so why do you care about how many books you sell?

I know, for me, it’s totally about ego, but she is right. I do know I will write broke or rich, so in essence it doesn’t matter.

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The best way for indie publishers to market their book on social media is to build their own loyal followings. Having a third party send a link to your book to a bunch of random Twitter users or Facebook groups will not help you because those people, if they are even real people and not just bots, are unlikely to be your target market. The reason BookBub and the Fussy Librarian work is because these sites have cultivated carefully curated lists of books with solid reputations. They have thousands of real people who sign up to get genre specific notices.

As an author the best use of social media is to create a community of people who are into the same things you are writing about. This takes time and hard work, but if done right , you become your own BookBub! You will be able to post a link to anew book or pay for a small ad and get a great launch bounce. But, you have to earn the right to link to your book on social media with your fans. Spend time posting things relevant to your genre. Be funny and interesting. Entertain. If you post regularly, even if you automate the posting, you will gain real followers who are much more likely to buy your book.

One last idea is to do more than just post a link to your book and ask people to buy. Create interesting images with provocative quotes from your book. Create teaser images that make people curious about an upcoming book. Think about how you find out about books. How often do you buy something because someone you don’t know posted a link to a book? Why would anyone else buy your book if that is how they hear about it?

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That’s true, JC. I’m going to save my pennies and hope to be offered the opportunity to advertise on Bookbub. I already have posters of my quote that did quite well on Pinterest, but I didn’t publish my book at the time.

JC, what do you think about a SHORT pre-quel with a sample chapter? I write romance, and I was thinking of adding a sample chapter from the novel.

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I think that is a great idea. The most important thing for an author is readers. The more books/content you have out the more chances there are that people will find you. A prequel is great because of people like it, there is a great chance they will pay for the main book.

Selling books is the same as selling anything else. People buy on emotion and justify their purchase with facts. Many people are hesitant to buy an ebook because they are afraid of a bad experience. They are afraid the book will be bad and they will have wasted their time (much more valuable than money) and they are afraid of feeling ripped off.

You can overcome these fears by offering shorter work for free. It lowers the emotional resistance to the transaction.

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