Marketing
Wait! You mean my book isn't going to sell itself?! (Don't worry, I'm not going to quit my day job!)
My friend Kerri Cuevas (a really amazing YA author) warned me that marketing a novel was a lot of hard work. She wasn't kidding! It is much harder when you've decided not to go with a traditional publisher and are doing the whole thing on your own. I have no regrets, the marketing would have had to be done either way.
One way I'm trying to leverage my eBook, Amrita, is by using the Amazon KDP program. This allows me to offer the eBook for free for five days every three months. My first go with my YA novel is going to be Sunday. For one whole day you can get the book for free. While Amazon will do a lot of the leg work on making it more noticable to buyers, I still have to do a lot of work. My first line of attack is getting web sites that announce/promote free Kindle eBooks to list Amrita on the days it is free. I found the list of sites I used at the Training Authors blog article, 47 Places to Submit Your Free KDP Promotion for Kindle eBook (note, the author makes a lot of references to Christian books and publishing a Christian eBook but the information is good for a wide range of genres). They provide a list of places to contact before the event and places to contact the day of the sale. The authors of the article also give you a template to follow for providing most of the information that will be needed. I'll let you know if I can see a difference in my "sales" tomorrow.
Two of my beta readers were nice enough to post their reviews of Amrita. (Thank you so much guys!) I know, however, that I need more reviews. Ugh. Kerri shared with me a blog that lists some of the many book reviewers out there. You can find the list here. (Did I mention yet how amazing and knowledgable she's become with this marketing thing?) A lot of them are not currently taking new books or do not review YA novels but there's still a lot of reviewers out there that are looking for new content to read and review. I am hoping one or two of them will be willing to read Amrita.
Finally, Kerri has decided to create a blog hop. I'm still not completely sure what it is going to entail but I've signed up for it. How could I not after all Kerri has done to help me out? Basically the way it works is that you "hop" from one blog to the next. All the people who are signed up write for children or YA. I'm not sure when it starts so you'll have to check back so you can find out more about it.
I hope this post about marketing helps you out. I know it has helped me to organize my thoughts about it and see what my next steps are. Do you have any marketing tips? How do you get your book out there for people to read?
My friend Kerri Cuevas (a really amazing YA author) warned me that marketing a novel was a lot of hard work. She wasn't kidding! It is much harder when you've decided not to go with a traditional publisher and are doing the whole thing on your own. I have no regrets, the marketing would have had to be done either way.
One way I'm trying to leverage my eBook, Amrita, is by using the Amazon KDP program. This allows me to offer the eBook for free for five days every three months. My first go with my YA novel is going to be Sunday. For one whole day you can get the book for free. While Amazon will do a lot of the leg work on making it more noticable to buyers, I still have to do a lot of work. My first line of attack is getting web sites that announce/promote free Kindle eBooks to list Amrita on the days it is free. I found the list of sites I used at the Training Authors blog article, 47 Places to Submit Your Free KDP Promotion for Kindle eBook (note, the author makes a lot of references to Christian books and publishing a Christian eBook but the information is good for a wide range of genres). They provide a list of places to contact before the event and places to contact the day of the sale. The authors of the article also give you a template to follow for providing most of the information that will be needed. I'll let you know if I can see a difference in my "sales" tomorrow.
Two of my beta readers were nice enough to post their reviews of Amrita. (Thank you so much guys!) I know, however, that I need more reviews. Ugh. Kerri shared with me a blog that lists some of the many book reviewers out there. You can find the list here. (Did I mention yet how amazing and knowledgable she's become with this marketing thing?) A lot of them are not currently taking new books or do not review YA novels but there's still a lot of reviewers out there that are looking for new content to read and review. I am hoping one or two of them will be willing to read Amrita.
Finally, Kerri has decided to create a blog hop. I'm still not completely sure what it is going to entail but I've signed up for it. How could I not after all Kerri has done to help me out? Basically the way it works is that you "hop" from one blog to the next. All the people who are signed up write for children or YA. I'm not sure when it starts so you'll have to check back so you can find out more about it.
I hope this post about marketing helps you out. I know it has helped me to organize my thoughts about it and see what my next steps are. Do you have any marketing tips? How do you get your book out there for people to read?
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