Book Promotion Articles | Self-Publishing Review

Six Tips To Win A Book Contest

How do authors win book competitions, and what is it that judges are looking for? Here, Naka Jackson, a creative writing teacher from NYC and one of the judges for SPR for the last five contests, gives authors six tips to win.

Presentation

No contest wants a book with a poor quality cover as the winning book for their competition, because usually they will also promote their own brand with the contest. We play fair at the SPR Awards by grading each book out of twenty-five on many areas, including cover design and formatting, and we don’t see each other’s […]

Naka Jackson2019-04-29T04:24:33+02:00April 29th, 2019|Categories: Features|Tags: Book Promotion Articles|

Self-Publishing: What Not to Do

There is some degree of impatience that goes along with self-publishing. Why wait around for a publisher when you can have a book now? That’s one of the bigger fallacies of the industry, because if you choose to do everything yourself it can (and should) be more work. Writers are still driven to cut corners because it can be so difficult to handle every side of the business. So long as you understand there’s difficulty every step of the way, you will hopefully give each step in the process the attention it deserves.

Here’s a primer on the common […]

SPR2020-02-21T03:47:02+02:00April 18th, 2019|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Book Cover Design Tips, Book Editing Tips, Book Formatting Tips, Book Promotion Articles, Writing Tips|

When is the Best Time of Year to Release a Book?

In Hollywood, there’s a pretty set calendar for when movies are released: horror movies are usually released around Halloween, high-concept blockbusters in the summer, Oscar movies start in November, movies that aren’t blockbusters or Oscar contenders in February. Does the book trade follow the same release schedule? The answer is, more or less, yes.

Peak reading and buying season is very much tied to the weather. February and March are generally good times to release a book because the weather’s not great, so people will be stuck inside, browsing the web and looking for something to read. Generally, people won’t […]

SPR2019-03-22T07:04:00+02:00March 22nd, 2019|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Book Promotion Articles|

Book Promotion Services: What Works for Immediate Sales?

A lot of the advice you’ll find about book marketing is frustratingly vague. You’ll find a lot of blog posts touting “Top Ten Book Promotion Strategies” with advice like:

Be Active on Social Media
Blog Regularly
Build an Email List of Readers

While these things may help build a readership, they won’t sell books in the short term…or even the long term. A lot of social media is tweeting into the wind, and blogging can sometimes gain a following of five loyal followers, three of whom live in your house. The same goes for email lists: you can only run […]

SPR2019-03-01T13:40:21+02:00March 1st, 2019|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Book Promotion Articles|

Six Reasons Why Amazon is Not Banning Indie Authors

There has been a lot of panic recently with horror stories about Amazon banning indie authors en masse for promoting their books. Here’s why that’s fake news.

1. Amazon is a business that wants to make money.

There are millions of books on Kindle, something like 7 million. Around 10% of Amazon’s total book stock. There’s no way Amazon wants to ban indie authors from Amazon, who must account for at least a quarter of those books, just by pure common sense.

2. Getting reviews and promotion for your book is not going to get you banned.

If you do […]

Cate Baum2020-02-20T13:31:33+02:00October 18th, 2018|Categories: Features|Tags: Amazon News and Tips, Book Promotion Articles, Book Reviews|

Mythbusting The Amazon Algorithm Part V: Amazon Categories and Keywords

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Cate Baum2019-12-16T08:36:19+02:00October 2nd, 2018|Categories: Features|Tags: Amazon Algorithm Tips for Authors, Amazon News and Tips, Book Promotion Articles, Mythbusting Amazon For Authors|

How to Get Book Reviews in 2018 (Without Going Crazy)

So you want to know the best ways of getting book reviews for your book now it is finally written? Here are some ideas for those glowing reviews to come flooding in, updated for what works in 2018.

What Works in 2018

Use a Reader eMailing Service – Success Rate – 100% + 1- 5% quota met as advertised + high ranking and exposure on Amazon

It’s getting harder to get Verified Customer Reviews, which are the reviews that have most weight for ranking high on Amazon. The only true way to do this is to have access to lists […]

Cate Baum2019-07-01T16:21:20+02:00April 25th, 2018|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Book Promotion Articles, Book Reviews|

Mythbusting The Amazon Algorithm Part IV – Is Amazon Ranking Broken?

Cate Baum examines the latest author outrage that Amazon is Broken.

Many blogs have been shouting about how Amazon has a loophole that means authors are scamming the system and stealing mountains of cash from the KDP Global Fund. Some authors are being strung up and called out. These shady goings-on must be examined! Welcome to the notorious Mythbusting, Part IV.

MYTH: Amazon’s Ranking is Broken.

Truth: Amazon Ranking is not ‘broken’, but there’s a front-facing issue with how ranking is displayed when switching from Free to Paid that is confusing people.

After reading about several authors that seem to […]