One of the biggest challenges indie authors face is that of marketing. We ask ourselves a million questions when putting together a marketing plan, often with answers that are hazy at best.
Who is my audience?
Where do they find books?
What marketing services should I use?
And so on, ad infinitum.
You can only spend so much time researching all this stuff; eventually, you have to get off the dime and make some decisions.
As a busy writer with freelance articles to write in addition to all my other duties, time is of the essence for me. So once I did my research, I started making decisions.
I’ll be the first to admit I made some doozies. But when I found something that worked for me, it worked really well.
The Power of Promotion
When profit margins on a single item are slim, it’s always good to make a larger number of sales. Sell a new car, and maybe you only need one or two sales a month; sell an ebook, and that big $0.99 royalty needs to be repeated again and again.
Because I’ve always priced my books fairly, I find I require some sort of paid promotions to keep sales going. Of the services I’ve used, a company called Written Word Media has worked the best for me.
Now, they’re not paying me to write this. In fact, I’d be surprised if anyone working there ever reads this blog. But I believe their service works because they have a large list of readers—we’re talking tens of thousands. For a small fee, I can get my work in front of all those book-lovers.
The first time I tried it for Whizzers, I saw the Amazon Bestseller Rank go from #1.5M to #125,783…a jump of 1.4M spots in a single day! Months later, when I used the service again, Whizzers had trailed back down to #800K. That promo moved it all the way up to #70,297. That’s out of 4M+ books in the Kindle Store.
So when I write a headline like Why I Don’t Want You to Buy My Latest Book Yet, it’s for one simple reason: I’m running another promo in ten days on Saturday, August 1st.
If you’ve already got a copy of Whizzers, I thank you. Hope you loved it enough to write a review and tell your book-loving friends.
If you haven’t bought a copy, August 1st would be the perfect time. It’s also #SelfPromoSaturday that day, which means people will move organically from Twitter to Amazon to check it out. But the majority of sales will likely come from the promo. Push it high enough on the Kindle Store list, and Amazon will take note…which will help sales in the future.
And there you have it. Authors, consider Written Word Media’s services to promote your book. Readers, thanks again, and please tell your network about the August 1st promo!
