Book Promotion Articles | Self-Publishing Review

How Not To Ask For A Free Review – From A Top 1000 Amazon Reviewer

As well as being a professional reviewer at SPR, I am also one of Amazon’s Top 1000 reviewers (no, you can’t have my moniker, sorry!) and I sometimes review books for free, depending on how I am approached. I am not one of the Vine or Top 100, so bear this in mind while I give you my perspective on how it feels to receive a request from an author to review – and imagine how in demand they must be if I am getting so many requests in the Top 1000.

Why so many review request suddenly? It’s because […]

Cate Baum2019-02-03T09:30:40+02:00January 6th, 2016|Categories: Features|Tags: Book Promotion Articles|

New Survey Proves Editorial “Paid” Book Reviews Sell Books

A survey of over 300 indie authors worldwide from Kindlebookreviews.net proves unequivocally that while many self-published authors thrash out the “morals” of paying for a book review, the presence of paid editorial reviews on your Amazon book page will help sell your book – and only a quarter of authors are strongly against the idea of paying for a review.

The vast majority of authors greatly appreciate the value of honest book reviews, and believe they help improve the credibility of their book, and helps generate sales.
The majority of authors approve of paid review services as long as they

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Cate Baum2020-02-21T06:34:11+02:00December 30th, 2015|Categories: Features|Tags: Book Promotion Articles, Book Reviews|

How Paid Reviews Sell Books – Facts and Figures

As one of the most trusted professional review services, and one of the first self-publishing sites around, it’s SPR’s job to make sure we are bringing books to readers with our paid review service, and we’d like to put the “don’t pay for reviews” myth being spread around by certain self-publishing pundits to bed with some hard, analytical, independent facts. The plain truth is, paid reviews do sell more books in the majority of cases.

Distinguishing Experts From Pundits

There are many independent studies available from trustworthy sources that have nothing to gain from approving of paid review services, and […]

Cate Baum2019-02-03T09:30:03+02:00December 15th, 2015|Categories: Features|Tags: Book Promotion Articles|

How Indie Authors Can Make Two Categories Count On Amazon

Amazon made a decision sometime in the last two months or so to cut off new indie books to the five plus two categories allowed to all indie/self-published authors who had both paperback and Kindle formats on Amazon. Why could this decision have been made, and how can authors make the most of the measly two categories now allowed when publishing on Kindle?

Spoiling It For The Rest Of Us

What happened? Maybe the mounting problems for authors who had trad-published, or had genre books in the last couple of years with categories forced a change. Publishing companies and […]

Cate Baum2019-02-03T09:36:19+02:00May 20th, 2015|Categories: Features|Tags: Amazon News and Tips, Book Promotion Articles|

What Should You Charge for an Indie eBook?

The short answer to the question in the title is there’s no set answer. Indie book pricing is a tough matter because each book and each genre will sell differently at different price points. A 10,000-word erotica short can actually get away with charging $3.99. A first (non-erotica) novel by a new author generally can’t.

On Reddit, this was a comment on a post by a new author who was struggling how to set price. I argued that he should lower his book to $.99 from $1.99, as he wasn’t selling any books. This was a response:

99c essentially

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Henry Baum2019-02-03T09:35:00+02:00March 25th, 2015|Categories: Features, Resources|Tags: Book Promotion Articles|

How To Stop Worrying About Google and SEO And Still Sell Your Book

The Internet is throbbing with “SEO Social Media Marketing Specialists” bursting to tell you how you messed up your author website by adding a link! Google penalties are coming to get you! You’ll be excommunicated from the INTERNET if you DO NOT ADHERE TO SEO GUIDELINES! Oh my god, the FTC are coming for you too? Six-figures fines? And don’t get me started on Amazon. If you don’t do the ten thousand things here listed, you will be PENALIZED by Amazon, and your book will become nothing, NOTHING I tell you! You may also find that you are hounded via […]

Cate Baum2019-02-03T09:35:08+02:00March 9th, 2015|Categories: Features|Tags: Amazon News and Tips, Book Promotion Articles|

The Truth About FTC Guidelines For Paid Book Reviews

A flurry of nervous blog posts about “the dangers of paid book reviews!” and “Google Penalties!” drove me to dig deeper into exactly what FTC guidelines mean for sites like SPR. Here’s the upshot of three months of advice and research.

I contacted the FTC, and spoke to an officer about paid book reviews. It is about time we all had it from the horse’s mouth.

Here’s the take-home:

The FTC Guidelines that the doom-n-gloom bloggers have been banging on about (with Matt Cutts of Google quotes akimbo PENALTIES! BOOKS BEING REMOVED! SHOCK! HORROR! SIX-FIGURE FINES! YIKES! END OF THE […]

Cate Baum2019-02-03T09:30:11+02:00February 19th, 2015|Categories: Resources|Tags: Book Promotion Articles|

Six Reasons Why Some Books Will Never Be Bestsellers

Often authors ask, “Why am I not selling any books?” after spending time, and often money, on pushing their books like crazy on self-publishing them. Here, we take a look at why that happens, and what you can do about it if you are in that exact situation.

1. Niche means niche, and if it’s niche…

Issue: A niche subject has a finite market, whatever you do.

Solution: Think of a new angle to market your book to a broader market. But accept that if you wrote a book about a real niche interest, such as coin collecting, corset making, […]

Cate Baum2019-02-03T09:01:26+02:00February 18th, 2015|Categories: Features|Tags: Amazon News and Tips, Book Marketing Advice and Tips, Book Promotion Articles|