Marketing self-published books

Marketing continues to befuddle me as I try to promote Where Memories Meet – Reclaiming my father after Alzheimer’s. If my book doesn’t cross a reader’s radar, they won’t know it exists, let alone buy and read it.

Most times when I wade out onto the web with all the marketing and promotion advice for self-pubs, I just get discouraged and walk away. There is a lot of book promotion noise out there on the web. But I’m trying to keep in mind a quote I came across recently:

“The universe is infinite; there is space enough in it for everyone to succeed, including me.”

Although I want to make my books available in many formats for anyone who wants to read them, Amazon is making it tough. Several years back they instituted a program called  KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) Select. This program provides opportunities for authors to offer price promotions, and include your book in the lending library. For example, many authors promote their book for free during an introductory period. This successfully gets their book into readers’ hands, some percentage (and I don’t know how many) of whom will actually read the book and and even leave a review on Amazon. Because of the way Amazon promotes its products, including your book, having a lot of reviews and better yet, sales, gives you more free promotion. Your book will show up during searches. You’ve seen it, “Customers who bought this book (or product) also bought these products. . .” And magically your book gets on a reader’s radar.

To be on KDP Select, you have to sell your book exclusively on Amazon. I have not yet chosen to do that with Dancing in Heaven. But last month I enrolled Where Memories Meet in KDP Select. That means I can, and have, scheduled a countdown promotion where I set the book’s price at a discount for a period of time (a couple of days). Then Amazon notifies customers of the price break and how much longer it will be in effect.

My countdown promotion is scheduled to begin February 1. My normally $2.99 priced ebook will be offered at $.99 until February 4, and then it will be $1.99 for three more days until it returns to $2.99.

I think this is a good sales tactic, but it needs to be promoted. I’ve been researching websites that promote ebooks for a fee. They include but are not limited to Book Bub, Just Kindle Books, Ereader News, and Goodkindles to mention a few. For varying prices, these sites will blast your book out to their fans and followers, and perhaps list on their website for a day or longer. To promote my memoir at a price of $.99 via Book Bub  it costs $720. They are only able to accept 20% of the books submitted to be featured. My book was not accepted.

It’s a bit of a relief because $720 is pretty steep for my marketing budget. Instead I have paid a minimal fee to have my book (with the countdown deal) promoted on Just Kindle Books, and Goodkindles. I am still waiting to hear from Ereader News. I have no idea if promoting my book on these sites will produce any measurable benefit.

Another option I have is to buy advertising on Amazon. You have to bid for the advertising slot by entering a price per click. You set the total amount you are willing to spend. Amazon does not guarantee customers who click your ad will buy your book, but it will get on their radar.

I suspect your head is spinning by now. Mine is. So I’ll sign off from the marketing trenches.

I’ll let you know how it works out.

Here are a few links to my struggles with and thoughts about marketing during my first self-publishing experience:
Now marketing
Promoting in the world wide jungle
How much time should I spend promoting my book?

 

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