Tag Archives: selling self-published books

How To Sell Self-Published Books: Read This First

5 May

I’ve christened May the How To Sell Self-Published Books Month here on Catherine, Caffeinated, but before we get into the nuts and bolts of marketing and promoting your book, we need to have a little tough love session first.

At my most recent workshop I started off by saying to the participants that my aim for the day was to send them home with everything I wished I’d known before I started self-publishing, or in other words everything I had to learn on the job because when I started self-publishing, I didn’t have a clue. And yet clueless and all that I was, I was operating with a huge advantage: realism. Because I’d spent a good decade of my young life poring over every How To Format a Manuscript for Submission To Within an Inch of Its Life Because, Yeah, That’s What’s Going to Be the Deciding Factor (Not!) and 500 Pages About Submitting to Agents Even Though You Haven’t Written a Word type books, I knew way more than I’d ever need to about the way the traditional publishing world works, and so I knew that as a self-publisher, I wouldn’t be sitting at the top table. I mightn’t even be in the same room. But that was fine by me. I still recognized what an amazing opportunity digital self-publishing provided, and I was excited about getting to avail of it. And because I knew the score, I could manage my expectations. (Truth be told, I didn’t have any.) Ultimately when success came, it was a welcome bonus. So before we get into the practicalities of selling your self-published book, let’s have cold blast of reality, shall we?

1. By Default, No One Cares About Your Book

Just because you wrote a book does not mean people are going to want to read it. Sounds suspiciously like common sense, but as I’ve said before, common sense isn’t as common as you might think.

Think of all the books you hear about on a daily basis. Think of all the books you see when you walk into a bookstore, or through the book isles of supermarkets. Think of all the books that pop into your line of vision while you’re on Amazon. Do you buy them all? Are you even interested in them all? Or are you like me—and, I’d suspect, most book-buyers—buying and ultimately reading just the very cream of the crop, the top 0.5% or less of the books we know about, just the ones that get us interested in them and wanting to read them, i.e. just the ones we care about?

At least once a day I receive an e-mail from an author I don’t know saying “I’ve wrote a book. Will you review it?” If this author knew that every Friday Oprah’s Book Club sends me an e-mail recommending several books—books that, this being Oprah’s Book Club, are hugely publicized, high advance, this-is-gonna-be-big traditionally published books—and that, on average, I make a note of maybe two of them and ultimately buy maybe one of them for every five or six e-mails I get, do you think they’d do anything differently?

It is very hard to get people to care enough about your book that they go and buy it. It’s the hardest part. And before you can even do that, you have to get them interested in it, and before that you have to let them know that it exists. But embracing this will help you achieve this, because you’ll know what lengths to go to in order to make it happen. I blogged a little bit more about this in How (Not?) To Get Your Book Reviewed.

2. Your Book is a Product—and It Had Better Work

We’ve seen time and time again that the self-publishers who enjoy consistent success are those who treat self-publishing like a business they’ve started up. They act like entrepreneurs, and make like their book is their first product—which it is. Your book is a product. While you were writing it you could be all writer-like, hanging out in hipster cafés with your soy milk lattes and your well-creased Moleskine, but now that the book is going to be out in the world, for sale with a price-tag on it, the romance must drop away and the book must meet standards and be a viable product. When it comes to books, we’re talking about a professional polish and it having appeal. I talked about appeal in Why It Doesn’t Matter Whether or Not Your Book is Good, so let’s focus on the professional polish bit here.

Self-publishers against enlisting the services of a professional editor and/or proofreader seem to be against it because it’s expensive and/or because they don’t understand what editing means. The “I can’t afford it” thing drives me completely cuckoo because if you can’t afford to spend some money on your product, you shouldn’t be self-publishing it. If you’re not prepared to invest, why should I be expected to buy? And buy a sub-standard product at that. Which brings me onto my next point: not understanding what editing is.

Generally we can divide editing into three stages: structural (think re-writing), copyediting (think language) and proofreading (think errors). (If there’s any editors hanging around these parts, feel free to correct me on that, or elaborate.) I can understand why self-publishers would skip the structural bit, because it’s the most expensive and going back to the business analogy, you wouldn’t buy Egyptian cotton tablecloths for a fast food joint, because you’d never make the money back off a $1.99 burger. But you would have tables, right? And chairs for sitting around them? Of course you would, because that’s what’s expected. That’s a minimum standard. When we go into restaurants, we expect there to be somewhere to sit. And when we buy a book, we expect it to be error-free. (Or at least almost error-free. I’m still searching for a way to make perfection happen right out of the blocks.) We expect the language to be correct. We expect clarity and consistency. And that’s what a copyedit and a proofread does: it brings your book up to the minimum industry standard.

Every time I mention this, I get comments and e-mails saying things like, “But if a reader likes the story, they’ll overlook misspellings, etc.” I’m just going to say this once, okay? ONLY IF THE READER IS YOUR MUM. Take an hour to read a few Amazon Customer Reviews and then see if you still feel the same way.

3. Social Media is About Connection

I am evidence that social media does sell books, but only if you don’t use it to sell books. This is something I’ll be blogging loads more about this month, but for now I’ll just say this: you can’t use Twitter, Facebook, etc. to blatantly sell your book, because no one will buy it. Being subjected to the hard sell is not why anyone is using those platforms. We’re there for one or more of the following reasons: connection, entertainment and valuable information. Where does you saying “My book is on Amazon now: just $4.99!” or “My book is out now. Buy it!” fit into those? Obviously it doesn’t. (And no, it’s not valuable information!) I have a little giggle to myself every time I meet someone with a business who mutters, “I really have to get on Facebook” or “We really should start tweeting” as if social media is California during the Gold Rush and all you’ve to do is show up and start digging and—hey presto!—you’re a millionaire. News flash: starting a Facebook page does not equal sales.

Worse than the shameless self-promoter is the person who has no interest in blogging, tweeting or using Facebook but reluctantly comes to the table to flog their wares anyway. If you don’t genuinely enjoy connecting and sharing with other people online, what are you doing there?

A presence online takes time to build, and it isn’t suitable for people who don’t really want to be there or who don’t have an instinct for how it all works. So if you’re planning to self-publish a book and your marketing plan is to tweet a link to its Amazon listing once an hour 24/7/365, you’ve failed before you’ve even begun.

4. You Can’t Sell New Concepts with Old Ways

In my experience if your book is only for sale online, you should only be promoting it online. Time and time again I see self-publishers with money to burn hiring publicists who draft press releases for them and then send them round to all the usual suspects—newspapers, radio shows, magazines, etc. This is totally pointless, especially in the beginning, unless your book has a specific local interest or something. If you want to spend money, you’d be far better off doing it on a Goodreads ad or a Kindle Nation sponsorship, i.e. a place where readers gather online. You need to let go of any existing ideas you may have about selling books (especially if you’ve been traditionally published in the past) and haul them—and yourself—into this brave new digital world.

In February 2011 a series of events meant that in the space of a week or so, I was featured in The Sunday Times and appeared on several national radio shows, including the second most listened to show in the country with an average of 400,000 listeners. As far as I could tell, it led to no bump in sales. I suspect it has something to do with the fact that when I read about a book in a newspaper, chances are I’ll later walk into a bookstore, see the book on the shelf and think, Oh, yeah. That’s that book I read about. I must get that. But when you read about a self-published/only for sale online book in the newspaper, there’s no chance encounter later to remind you of it. And since apparently you have to be reminded of something three times before you’ll take action and buy it, it never translates into sales.

John Locke famously spent a fortune on “real world” advertising all to no avail, but became the first self-published author to sell a million Kindle books when he started focusing online instead. Traditional methods for selling books just don’t work when those books aren’t being sold traditionally.

(Note: I’m not saying say no to print and radio interviews. Say yes! They’re great fun and will make you feel like a proper published author. And your relatives might even believe you now when you say you’re selling loads of books online. Just don’t pursue them as a means to advertising a book, because they’re not effective when the book isn’t widely available in stores.)

5. You Are Not The Next Amanda Hocking

In all probability you’re not, anyway. And I’m not talking about becoming the first household name success story of this modern e-book self-publishing era—I’m talking about having to do little other than upload your e-books to achieve stellar sales. As in, chances are you’re going to have to do a lot more than that to shift any copies at all.

Let me explain. As in all walks of life, some people get really lucky at this self-publishing e-books thing. They upload their e-book and sell thousands of copies the first week, without ever having blogged or advertised. They massively outsell self-publishers who have been at it for years, and they do it almost instantly. So we should copy them, right? We should find out what they’re doing and do it ourselves. Wouldn’t that make sense?

No, it wouldn’t. Because they’re the outliers. They’re the extremes. You’d be better off focusing on the people in the middle, the ones who never meet the bleak abyss of failure or the dizzying heights of success, but instead consistently sell and can tell you what they did to achieve it. As I’ve always said, it’s better to hear from me, a moderate seller who can say I did x, y and z to sell my books and you can do it too, then a mega-seller who isn’t quite sure how they managed to sell a hundred thousand books.

Think of it this way: You meet a newly published author who is now sitting atop the bestseller lists with a debut novel that scored her a top agent and a six-figure deal. A movie adaptation is in the works. She’s rich, successful and she has achieved a lifelong dream. How did you do it? you want to know. She says that she was interviewing for a position as her agent’s assistant when they got talking about a recent news story, and she said “I bet the girlfriend did it. Wouldn’t it make a great story if she did?” The agent instantly got dollar signs in his eyes, told her to forget about being a PA and instead go home and write a one-page synopsis, which she did, and seven days later she had her six-figure deal. Now, knowing this, what would you do about your own published writer dreams? Would you continue to polish your novel, write a synopsis, craft a query letter and politely submit to suitable agents and editors, or would you start scanning the jobs listing for admin openings at literary agencies and publishing houses?

(I sincerely hope it would be the former!)

Your model for success shouldn’t be an extreme, because chances are you’re not going to be one. Millions of authors have self-published but only a relative handful had found success comes easily. Instead, get ready to work really hard.

And read all my upcoming posts, of course…!

L-R: the gorgeous spa-style bathroom of the St. Regis San Francisco, which I loved, and the dirty deathtrap of a “shower” in our room at the [cough, cough] “Hotel” San Francisco in San Pedro, Guatemala. Which I did NOT.

I’m testing KDP again with Backpacked: A Reluctant Trip Across Central America. It’s the story of me (loves Starbucks, boutique hotels and inactivity) going backpacking in Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama (climbing active volcanos, sleeping on planks of wood, cockroaches, etc.) and it’s FREE between now and Wednesday 9th May for Kindle. So please, feel FREE (see what I did there?) to download it for yourself, or let your anti-backpacking friends with e-reading devices know that they are also FREE to download it for FREE from Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk. For FREE.

(FREE!)

See you on Monday!

[UPDATE May 5th: Woo-hoo: Freshly Pressed! Not quite sure how it happened but thanks Word Press—and hello to everyone who came here because of it. *waves* Do say hello below.]

May is How To Sell Self-Publish Books Month on Catherine, Caffeinated. Find out more about here, or read all related posts by paying a visit to the category page. Get every new post direct to you inbox by subscribing to this blog (see the sidebar or footer for the sign-up box).

My New Favorite Twitter Thing: Buffer

13 Feb

The observant among you may have noticed that in the past week I’ve been uncharacteristically tweeting at all sorts of times, e.g. very early in the GMT morning/very late in the EST night. Have I cut out my beloved sport of regular napping? No. Have I suddenly fell victim to insomnia? Chance would be a fine thing. Has my almost total immunity to caffeine undone itself? I wish. If it did, I might get some actual work done.

Was I tweeting at four am? HARDLY. And also: isn’t the headline all you need to know?

No, it’s none of the above. Instead I’ve taken the advice of Steven Lewis of Taleist and signed up for Buffer, a service that helps you to spread out your tweets. And in doing so, enables you to schedule your tweets. And which makes it super easy to tweet links in the first place. And it’s free, by the way.

I’m a little bit in love with it.

Here’s how it works (click the images for larger versions):

You sign up for Buffer and link it to your Twitter account. Create a schedule for your buffered tweets based on your own time zone. I don’t think there’s a limit on times but for a free account you can only buffer up to 10 tweets at a time.

Then put the snazzy little “Add to Buffer” button to your browser. (It’s the one that looks like a stack of three square things.)

Click it whenever you’re on a page you want to tweet a link to and then sit back and relax while Buffer sends out your tweets as per your schedule. Every time you add a tweet it’ll show you by way of a progress bar how many tweets you have waiting to go out, and if you want to tweet it right now instead, you just press the—yes, you’ve guessed it—”Post Now” button.

And you can of course also just write Buffer tweets if tweeting links aren’t your thing. You can do that from your Dashboard.

If you can’t think of anything to say, there’s even an “Inspire Me!” button that throws up all sorts of quotables. And if you use Twitter.com, you’ll see a little “Add to Buffer” button in everyone else’s tweets, so you can add a retweet to your stack of tweets-in-waiting if you’d like.

Scheduling your tweets is not something I ever really worry about, at least not in the “time zone” sense. Yes, it would be nice if someone outside of GMT was around to see one of my 140-character utterances every now and then, but I’ve never stressed about it. Worrying about things like that sounds too much like work to me. BUT my tweeting has really fallen by the wayside recently, and most days I release a clump of tweets mid-morning and then no one hears from me for the rest of the day. I’m just too busy to stop and think about spreading my tweets evenly throughout the day.

Buffer solves this problem, because with it my five minutes of writing tweets or posting links translates into up to ten tweets spread out during the day.

But it also just makes it easier to post links to Twitter, because all I have to do is click twice. Once on the Buffer button in my browser, and then “Add to Buffer” in the window that appears. So the hours of my day set aside for staring out the window and other procrastination activities are safe for now…

Sign-Up for Buffer! (And Help Me!)

I’m not sure if this link will work (I think they intend for you to tweet this link once or twice, not blog it, but anyway…) but if I refer people to Buffer and they sign up, both they and I get extra space for buffered tweets. Try signing up here and see what happens. If it doesn’t work, just sign-up by yourself; I’ll get over it. But whatever you do, do sign-up!

[UPDATE: It's totally working. Woo-hoo!]

REPLAY 2011: To Launch or Not To Launch?

8 Dec

Between now and the end of the year I’m going to be using Tuesdays and Thursdays to replay some popular posts from 2011, in case some of the people who’ve discovered my blog in the meantime missed it first time round. Think of it as a “year in review” kind of thing. This was first posted back in February and addresses the question of whether or not real world activities, such as a book launch, have any place in self-publishing, which is best done when confined to online. 

We’re coming up on the year anniversary of me taking the self-publishing plunge with Mousetrapped and now with the benefit of almost twelve months worth of hindsight I can see clearly what I did right, what I did wrong and what I did really, really wrong. (That’s selling books through my website, if you were wondering, and Createspace’s shipping charges is why.) But one of the things I’m still on the fence about is my bookstore launch/glorified signing.

As a self-publishing author, should you have a launch?

Initially I wasn’t going to have a launch at all. I’d wanted to be a writer ever since I found out real, live people were behind the books I loved and so that first book launch, be it a signing or a party, was a Very Big Deal. I wanted to “save” it and not “waste” it on my self-published book which, don’t forget, was nothing much of anything at the time. I wanted my first book launch to be a glittery affair, one that had an agent and an editor on the guest list, complimentary wine and the wearing of an expensive designer dress. (And to be skinny for it, but that’s another story…!) I wanted it to be for a novel someone else had published, not a travel memoir about working in Walt Disney World, NASA and the Ebola virus that I had produced myself.

I took a baby step, and informed my mother we would be having a Florida-themed party in our house to celebrate the book’s release. There would be American flag bunting, tropical themed cupcakes and shortbread cut with a Space Shuttle-shaped cutter. (And it would have been so cool.) But we wouldn’t be able to invite anyone but friends and family, and that would nix any publicity opportunities; you can’t invite your local newspaper’s social diarist to a party you’re having in your house, unless you’re Michael Flatley and your house is Castlehyde. So we decided instead on a bookstore.

I was terrified at the thought of approaching my local independent bookstore, Douglas Bookshop, and asking if first, they’d stock a few copies of Mousetrapped and second, let me have my launch there, but they couldn’t have been nicer or more accommodating. And so around lunchtime one Saturday last May, Mousetrapped had its launch-style signing in a brick-and-mortar bookshop. It was great fun, but self-publishing is a business, and with that in mind, was the launch worth having? Did it make financial sense? Did it result in sales, or a loss of profit?

The Arguments For
  • It felt good. I really enjoyed the day and it made me feel like a proper author.
  • It gave my self-publishing operation a sense of professionalism. My books were in a bookstore, I had a well-attended launch and I managed to get some publicity for it.
  • The event got great newspaper coverage locally. There was one piece in my local paper, Cork’s Evening Echo, a couple of days before the launch, another afterwards and then a two-page of photos taking at the launch. It also led to an hour-long radio interview on county radio shortly afterwards.

The Arguments Against
  • It didn’t result in any extra sales, and practically all copies on the day were sold to family and friends, i.e. people who would have bought copies anyway.
  • I made less money from the sales I did make, because instead of selling them to my family and friends directly, I sold them to the bookshop who then sold them to the attendees. The difference in the profit for me was about 30% of the list price.
  • It cost money in other ways. I had to print posters, invites and postcards and order in the stock so I could sell it on (incurring shipping charges).
What Should YOU Do?

I don’t think you should automatically have a launch or signing for your self-published book, but then I don’t think there’s anything self-publishing related that you should do automatically, without any thought. Every single book is different and needs to be treated as such. I think you need to ask yourself, What will I get out of doing this? and when you find the answer ask, Is that what I want?

If all you want is to feel like a proper author for a couple of hours, then go ahead and have whatever sort of launch/party/signing your heart desires. Buy a new outfit, hire a photographer and arrange nibbles. Invite all your friends. It’ll be great fun, but be prepared for it to cost you money.

If what you want is publicity, stick with a signing or “appearance” where maybe you give a little book-related talk and then scribble your name in a few copies. Get in no more stock than you think you can sell and avoid any glossy and expensive extras, such as posters or even invites. Send an e-mail to every editor, radio show producer, social diarist, etc. that you can find and get your mug in the paper, preferably with a hand holding your book up just below it. Take plenty of pictures to put on your website or blog afterwards, and maybe even rope a special guest, such as another writer or a local celebrity connected with your book or your book’s subject matter, into attending and saying a few words.

If it’s sales you after, you’re going to need to do a lot of work. Start with everything above. Then calculate all your costs and work out how many books you’re going to need to sell to recoup that money. Then, get out and sell them. This means hand-selling them at the launch, forbidding anyone you know from buying a copy beforehand (so they buy it on the night instead) and getting as many people you don’t know to attend as people you do. It won’t be easy but it’ll all be worth it if it works.

Good luck!


To Launch or Not To Launch?

4 Mar

We’re coming up on the year anniversary of me taking the self-publishing plunge with Mousetrapped and now with the benefit of almost twelve months worth of hindsight I can see clearly what I did right, what I did wrong and what I did really, really wrong. (That’s selling books through my website, if you were wondering, and Createspace’s shipping charges is why.) But one of the things I’m still on the fence about is my bookstore launch/glorified signing.

As a self-publishing author, should you have a launch?

Initially I wasn’t going to have a launch at all. I’d wanted to be a writer ever since I found out real, live people were behind the books I loved and so that first book launch, be it a signing or a party, was a Very Big Deal. I wanted to “save” it and not “waste” it on my self-published book which, don’t forget, was nothing much of anything at the time. I wanted my first book launch to be a glittery affair, one that had an agent and an editor on the guest list, complimentary wine and the wearing of an expensive designer dress. (And to be skinny for it, but that’s another story…!) I wanted it to be for a novel someone else had published, not a travel memoir about working in Walt Disney World, NASA and the Ebola virus that I had produced myself.

I took a baby step, and informed my mother we would be having a Florida-themed party in our house to celebrate the book’s release. There would be American flag bunting, tropical themed cupcakes and shortbread cut with a Space Shuttle-shaped cutter. (And it would have been so cool.) But we wouldn’t be able to invite anyone but friends and family, and that would nix any publicity opportunities; you can’t invite your local newspaper’s social diarist to a party you’re having in your house, unless you’re Michael Flatley and your house is Castlehyde. So we decided instead on a bookstore.

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I was terrified at the thought of approaching my local independent bookstore, Douglas Bookshop, and asking if first, they’d stock a few copies of Mousetrapped and second, let me have my launch there, but they couldn’t have been nicer or more accommodating. And so around lunchtime one Saturday last May, Mousetrapped had its launch-style signing in a brick-and-mortar bookshop. It was great fun, but self-publishing is a business, and with that in mind, was the launch worth having? Did it make financial sense? Did it result in sales, or a loss of profit?

The Arguments For
  • It felt good. I really enjoyed the day and it made me feel like a proper author.
  • It gave my self-publishing operation a sense of professionalism. My books were in a bookstore, I had a well-attended launch and I managed to get some publicity for it.
  • The event got great newspaper coverage locally. There was one piece in my local paper, Cork’s Evening Echo, a couple of days before the launch, another afterwards and then a two-page of photos taking at the launch. It also led to an hour-long radio interview on county radio shortly afterwards.

The Arguments Against
  • It didn’t result in any extra sales, and practically all copies on the day were sold to family and friends, i.e. people who would have bought copies anyway.
  • I made less money from the sales I did make, because instead of selling them to my family and friends directly, I sold them to the bookshop who then sold them to the attendees. The difference in the profit for me was about 30% of the list price.
  • It cost money in other ways. I had to print posters, invites and postcards and order in the stock so I could sell it on (incurring shipping charges).
What Should YOU Do?

I don’t think you should automatically have a launch or signing for your self-published book, but then I don’t think there’s anything self-publishing related that you should do automatically, without any thought. Every single book is different and needs to be treated as such. I think you need to ask yourself, What will I get out of doing this? and when you find the answer ask, Is that what I want?

If all you want is to feel like a proper author for a couple of hours, then go ahead and have whatever sort of launch/party/signing your heart desires. Buy a new outfit, hire a photographer and arrange nibbles. Invite all your friends. It’ll be great fun, but be prepared for it to cost you money.

If what you want is publicity, stick with a signing or “appearance” where maybe you give a little book-related talk and then scribble your name in a few copies. Get in no more stock than you think you can sell and avoid any glossy and expensive extras, such as posters or even invites. Send an e-mail to every editor, radio show producer, social diarist, etc. that you can find and get your mug in the paper, preferably with a hand holding your book up just below it. Take plenty of pictures to put on your website or blog afterwards, and maybe even rope a special guest, such as another writer or a local celebrity connected with your book or your book’s subject matter, into attending and saying a few words.

If it’s sales you after, you’re going to need to do a lot of work. Start with everything above. Then calculate all your costs and work out how many books you’re going to need to sell to recoup that money. Then, get out and sell them. This means hand-selling them at the launch, forbidding anyone you know from buying a copy beforehand (so they buy it on the night instead) and getting as many people you don’t know to attend as people you do. It won’t be easy but it’ll all be worth it if it works.

Good luck!

Click here to read all my self-printing posts.

Click here to read more about Mousetrapped, the book I self-printed.