Rejected by BookBub? You and over 80% of authors
[…]
Kindle Promotion Tips to Maximize Your Newsletter Marketing Campaign
The window for marketing is pretty small. Certainly, you should never give up on a book once it’s had its major marketing push, but Amazon only gives a 3-month window to end up in the Hot New Releases section, or to benefit from other ranking factors that fade over time the older a book gets. So it can make sense to put all your eggs in one basket and try to make a giant push all at once.
Think of movie marketing – there are a few weeks of heavy advertising leading up to a release, there’s an opening weekend, […]
20 Book Marketing Strategies for New and Experienced Authors
At SPR, we see a lot of books come our way, and we see some of the same mistakes being repeated over and over again. This is not just the case for a novice author, but for authors who have 10+ books out. Obviously, new authors should take heed most of all, so follow this book promotion checklist to make sure you’re doing everything you can – potentially for no cost at all.
Sign Up for Amazon Author Central
This is one that seemingly a lot of authors haven’t heard of because too often it’s not used. Amazon’s Author Central[…]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]