How to Stand Out on Those Overcrowded Online Shelves
Guest Expert: Laurel Marshfield
Amazon.com is the world’s largest online bookseller. And if you’re an author with one or more books, it is the one place you most definitely want to be. Getting visibility, though, is no easy task. You are competing with millions of books, overall -- and perhaps hundreds or even thousands of titles in your specific genre or subject niche.
There’s an added challenge. Famous authors in your genre Read more [...]
Archive for: October 2011
The Amazon Launch for Your Book: What You Can Learn from My Mistakes
Expert: Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of the multi award-winning Frugal Book Promoter: How to get nearly free publicity on your own or partnering with your publisher
(updated and expanded to 416 pages!)
As the author of The Frugal Book Promoter and other award-winning books in the HowToDoItFrugally series of books, I probably shouldn’t have made any mistakes with the online launch of the second edition. And I probably wouldn’t have if I had been taking my own advice.
In the first edition Read more [...]
How to Sell More Books on Amazon
: A Book Review by Vikram Narayanan (CEO BookBuzzr)
I recently had an opportunity to review the book “How to Sell More Books on Amazon”. This book is short at less than 40 pages. But it is packed with actionable suggestions which, if implemented diligently, can yield significant results to an author. Here’s what you’ll find in the book:
1. A check list of essential and optional activities that you can do on Amazon to promote your book.
2. Strategies for increasing your visibility Read more [...]
How My Book Hit #1 on Kindle
Guest Expert: Shelley Hitz
Would you like your book to hit #1 in its category on Kindle and be able to say that you're a "best-selling author"? Of course you would! It not only increases your credibility, but can also help you sell more books. Let me explain.
The Key - Choosing Your Categories Wisely
As I was preparing for my book launch, I started researching how to choose categories on Amazon. To be honest, I didn't find a ton of information on how to do it.
However, I did finally figure Read more [...]
Amazon Author Page
Guest Expert: April L. Hamilton
Amazon has been instrumental in the rise of the indie author. Amazon provides do it yourself publishing platforms both for ebooks (Kindle Digital Publishing platform) and print (Createspace), as well as its own imprint for a print and ebook publishing model. But that's just the beginning. Amazon takes things a step further by treating indie authors the same as mainstream-published authors when it comes to marketing and promotional opportunities on the site. One Read more [...]
Productivity Tips & Tools for Authors, Mind Mapping
Guest Expert: Roger C. Parker
Mind mapping is a technique that visually displays ideas, and their relationships to each other. Authors can create mind maps by hand, on paper, or use one of the hundreds of computer software programs available.
Mind mapping is important for authors because getting started is the hardest part of any writing project. Getting started, generating ideas and organizing them in the proper order and relationship to each other, is the first step beyond intention and Read more [...]
Why Reviews in Online Bookstores Matter
Guest Expert: Dana Lynn Smith
Reviews and recommendations in online bookstores like Amazon.com and BN.com are a powerful selling tool. Many shoppers read book reviews before making a purchase, and reviews can be the tipping point that causes them to click the Buy button.
In fact, a study by the Yale School of Management concluded that book reviews on the Amazon and Barnes & Noble websites affect sales of individual books, and also increase total sales on these sites. (Which is exactly why Read more [...]
Marketing on Amazon? I Thought They Just List My Book
Guest Expert: Aggie Villanueva
Amazon is much more than just the world’s largest bookstore.
As an author you’ve made sure your book is listed on Amazon.com because everyone in the writing/promotion fields says you must. So what’s the big deal? You’ve actually made more sales to family and friends on your own than through Amazon.
Valid question. But here’s a question more to the point: once your book is published on Amazon do you let it just sit while waiting for sales that Read more [...]
Drumroll Please … The Next Generation of Facebook Marketing is Here!
The problem with today’s Facebook fan pages
So you’re an author with a Facebook fan page. You’ve got book trailers, polls, quizzes, photo and writing contests running on your page. You’ve even got a few hundred “Facebook Likes” for your page. And yet your book sales are not going up. You then compare yourself to popular authors with tens of thousands of Fans on their Facebook fan pages. And you wonder what they are doing that you’re not doing.
Here’s what’s happening.
If you Read more [...]
Book Marketing: ‘Do You Know Where You’re Going To’ Is Not Only A Diana Ross Song
Guest Author: Emily Hill
Whether one is a traditionally published author, or an IndieAuthor, the realization is soon reached that ‘nowadays’ book marketing lies squarely in the author’s lap if one is going to reach their readership potential. Any time I use the word ‘nowadays’ I enclose it in quotes because the original mention of ‘nowadays’, relating to publishing, came about when Lisa Gardner (author of Alone, Hide, and many other crime thriller titles) keynoted the 2010 Pacific Read more [...]
