E-Book Authors, How do you get your book out there.

We have a number of great authors on ATS and a number of great story tellers that may take the plunge.

Now, authors know that it is not about making money! It is never likely going to make a living. At best, it may make some pocket money, if you are lucky.

Consider how many rich authors you know and divide that by the population of your country and you will get the general idea.

Oh, yes, a very few 'make it' usually by someone coming along and making a movie out of the book and then it will make you a living.

So to those already out there, how have you spread the word.

Any sites you have found useful? Resources? Hints even?

What works for you!

P

Ia reply to: pheonix358. I used createspace and had great success....completely free too

a reply to: rockpaperhammock

Great! That is one.

Createspace

P

I would like to know, too. I'll be back checking things out.

How do you get 'out there'? That's an extremely good question. In fact, it's probably the only real question for an author after they've finished creating their book, screenplay, story, etc.

Though most free publishing sites (Amazon, Smashwords, Nook, etc.) will put your work out there, that only lasts as long as the book continues to sell. Have a couple of bad weeks, and poof! You're no longer a viable entity to them. They'll push your work, and hope people bite, but if they don't, see ya. It's unfortunate, but the concept of making money is an essential ingredient to marketing yourself, or, having others help you do so. No money, no easy advertising.

What do authors do then?

Well, as much as it may be frowned upon (specifically on sites such as this), social media is one means of exposing your work to the masses. Word-of-mouth is going to have to be a very close friend of yours, and social media sites are the kings of making that happen.

For the authors, it's not all about the money, but for the publishers, it most certainly is.

Just my two cents.

Yes, I used CreateSpace as well for my printed book. And since they are a subsidiary of Amazon, your book will be automatically placed on Amazon once you've got the book all done and accepted on CreateSpace.

The digital version I filed direct with Amazon/Kindle publishing:
kdp.amazon.com...

But both of these are just the mediums to get the book available to read.

Getting readers is a whole other ballgame. In my case, my book started as a short story here on ATS- which I later developed into a book after I saw some people here were liking it:

www.abovetopsecret.com...

So I imagine a good portion of my sales so far have been from ATS members that were waiting on me to finish the story- but I am not sure. So that is one resource- right here- ATS. Be aware though that to do any such thing and promote your book on here, you have to secure permission first from one of the owners- Bill or Mark or Simon. Also I should mention with that, that once you do get permission, putting a link in your signature helps. Several people commented that they got attracted to the original thread from the link in my signature. And this came about because I have contributed many unrelated threads that have made it to the front page of ATS. It's all a small percentage of visibility it seems.

One problem with going the Amazon route is you don't know who your customers are- except the few that actually state in a thread here that they bought the book. And even then I still have no names or addresses.

That's why for a larger scale approach, and to retain more of the sales money with fewer middle men, a website where you can buy the book direct might be in order. And in my case, I have the domain already- just have to put up the site.

Aside from that- one thing I learned in formal sales training is that your sales equal the total summation of ALL your marketing and advertising efforts, everywhere. That means word of mouth, internet, reviews, ads, blogs, you name it. So each little thing you do affects the bottom line- even if just a tiny bit. I tried a post at reddit, but that got nowhere. The twitter account pretty much the same, although I haven't really worked that a lot yet. I am still recovering from just writing the thing. And needless to say, you got to at least get a few good reviews, and the book needs to be good enough to keep the reader interested.

None of this is easy, that's for sure.

Due to the internet everyones story is "out there". Problem now is digging through all that to find the gems.

Like rifling through everyones garbage at the dump to find the diamond ring someone threw away.

What a waste.

originally posted by: intrptr
Due to the internet everyones story is "out there". Problem now is digging through all that to find the gems.

Like rifling through everyones garbage at the dump to find the diamond ring someone threw away.

What a waste.

"One man's trash, is another man's treasure" seems more than appropriate in that scenario, eh?

a reply to: ProfessorChaos

"One man's trash, is another man's treasure" seems more than appropriate in that scenario, eh?

Not in literature.

And the dump is off limits now. They've corporatized it like every other damn thing. If you want to publish a book, good luck.

a reply to: intrptr

Please,

We are looking for suggestions.

Not your views on rubbish dumps in literature.

Please stay on topic.

Many thanks

P

Writing the book is the first hurdle. Getting it properly edited and a cover created that will attract and hold a potential reader, is the next. But perhaps the biggest (and highest) hurdle of them all, is finding your audience.

With traditional publishing, they already have their platforms in place and an ad campaign to get their new work to an already established fan base. With Indie authors...well, good luck wading in the pool of literally hundreds of thousands of other self-published work.

Amazon is the giant now, and likely the best way to go. (CreateSpace and KDP are subsidiaries) How do Amazons patrons find their books to purchase? They look in the best seller lists for the genre of their choice. How does a book make it there? Sales. How does that book get sales? Advertising/reviews and an established fan base. How does a self-published author get their work even looked at?

Your initial rush of friends and family purchases will QUICKLY run out. How many of them will actually write a review? VERY FEW. (Most, because they don't know how to, are afraid to give you anything other than 5 stars are just don't want to take the five minutes to do it) Then what? Well...you will watch your Amazon rank quickly plummet until it surpasses the 1,000,000 standing and then keep clicking on that darn sales chart to see if someone....anyone...bought a copy. PLEASE!!!!

So. The initial thrill passes, your roller coaster of emotions levels out and you finally begin to realize that you are missing a HUGE piece of the puzzle: social media. It is a MUST. You WILL NOT SUCCEED in self-publishing unless you find your audience and you have to do this by taking your book TO them. This is what you need:

Facebook page. Both for the book and for the author.
Website for the books
Blog for the author
GOODREADS account. (this is a must and an amazing resource)
REVIEWS, REVIEWS, REVIEWS. It's all about the reviews. Want someone to even LOOK at your book on Amazon? First, you must get reviews. You will do this by giving away more books than you sell, for a very long time. which is what you also need.
Patience. It takes time. lots of time, to build an audience.
Author interviews on other blogs.
Reviews on blog site. You achieve this by doing a whole lot of soliciting.
Google account
twitter
Message boards....lots of message boards.
If and when you get the chance, make an audiobook
HONEST reviews. Don't pay someone. If your book has issues, than deal with them. Avoiding any bad feedback will only hurt you in the end.


Now...having said all of this, I am still not selling many books. I have my Forgotten Origins Trilogy Amazon link to my books , the first book in my Middle Grade mystery series and a photography book. I have two audiobooks (the one for Bloodline just came out.

My body of work has not been out for long, however. Bloodline (book #1 in the trilogy) came out less than two years ago and I just finished the third book a couple of months ago. I was slow to learn what I really needed to do. I thought that If I just put them out there...people would buy them. Mwahahahahahahaha

I didn't start in with the social media until this summer and it has slowly been building. I finally have 29 reviews on Bloodline on Amazon and over 60 for the trilogy on Goodreads. I've managed to keep a 4.5/5 star on Amazon (4.8 for the trilogy). The positive feedback has been extremely encouraging and kept me going.

I happen to know two self published authors that have made it. One of them is a NYT best selling author (My photograph of her will appear on her books coming out this next year. The one in February likely debuting as #1. I am also a photographer and won't it be ironic if I can say I made it onto the NYT best selling list...for my picture?! )

Anyways, the other author makes more in a month than most people do working one or two full-time jobs. These are exceptions to the rule, but they DO happen.

So, while all of this might sound depressing, I just want to be honest. I also want to be encouraging.

NEVER GIVE UP

a reply to: westcoast

Thanks.

I find writing is the easy part. I have a full series out and a book about to be published.

Right or wrong, I am of the view that many will not read Part 1 of a series unless the whole series is up.

Too many authors writing a part 1, getting disillusioned and never finishing a series. So I have waited until I have a complete series.

The Keeper of Balance

As far as I am concerned, that was the easy part. Now i have to do a whole lot of things like create a web page (Lol, I have no idea and all of the other nice stuff you outlined.

It is daunting. I use bookbaby, it gets my books in many virtual stores all over the planet.

But yes, having it available does not = sales.

Thanks for the input.

P

Self publishing is a disaster, it's brought mountains of crud to the market, and no way of telling what is good.

Other than, the assumption that the good stuff will get picked up by an agent, and a publisher, thus, the good stuff is sorted out of the dross via the process of getting published properly rather than self-published.

Which isn't to say self-publishers can't see some success, but they are the tiny tiny minority.

I'd be amazed if the average self-published work sells more than a dozen copies in its lifetime?

This is a great thread so far. There is a way to edit your book quickly and for free. That is using a website named "Grammarly."

Grammarly

In addition to this, my mom recommends selling the books on Kindle for 99 cents each at first, because people go there specifically looking for deals. That is one way to give away books - by setting their e-book price low for a while (I'm not sure if you can change it later or not).

a reply to: pheonix358

I am published by a large publisher worldwide, and Im self-published on some other things. Always...at least every week or two...GOOGLE searches turn up something of mine on some sites...literary and blogs and other types...without me even knowing its on them.

Just getting your stuff out there...any number of good suggestions from ATS''rs here how and where to do that...will get it popping up in web searches. It did for me...with no other effort or input from me.

I think you'd be in a good spot putting it out any-and-every-where you can online. (For free-don't pay to have it out there)....and of course...do what you can to do it in as many places as possible.

Good luck

originally posted by: Painterz
Self publishing is a disaster, it's brought mountains of crud to the market, and no way of telling what is good.

Other than, the assumption that the good stuff will get picked up by an agent, and a publisher, thus, the good stuff is sorted out of the dross via the process of getting published properly rather than self-published.

Which isn't to say self-publishers can't see some success, but they are the tiny tiny minority.

I'd be amazed if the average self-published work sells more than a dozen copies in its lifetime?

While I agree that there is most definitely a mountain of crud, I wouldn't call it a disaster. You just have to know how to wade through it...hence the reviews. BUT...the people who do a lot of reading know how to spot 'fake' or paid reviews, which is why you should never go that route. The books that DO pay for them..check out the one and two star ratings, it's not hard to find them. The lowest rating I have is a 3 star, but it's still a positive review. Any book with more than 20 or so reviews and still above a 4 star without a bunch of one or two star ratings is probably at least average.

Please don't try and discourage people. There are a lot of good, self-published books out there, and most of them are from 2.99-4.99 for the ebook, vs the 5.99-11.99 for traditionally published work, so they're much more affordable.

Also, authors who get several books under the belt and avoid any negative reviews (*cough *cough) are usually a safe bet.

How do you measure success? I have sold many, many more than a dozen copies. I wouldn't call my series a success so far, as far as sales go, yet I have sold around 100 paperback copies (in person...only a few on-line) and around a dozen ebooks a month. This is still increasing, but that is only because of my refusal to give up.

However, when I read the many reviews from total strangers about how much they love my trilogy and connect with the characters/story and were actually entertained for a few hours....I feel very successful.

originally posted by: darkbake
This is a great thread so far. There is a way to edit your book quickly and for free. That is using a website named "Grammarly."

Grammarly

In addition to this, my mom recommends selling the books on Kindle for 99 cents each at first, because people go there specifically looking for deals. That is one way to give away books - by setting their e-book price low for a while (I'm not sure if you can change it later or not).

While grammarly might be okay for checking something you're stuck on, I would NEVER recommend using a program to actually edit your work. It, like any other computer generated platform, missing many things and gets others totally wrong. If you can't afford a professional editor, then get as many beta readers as possible. If you are forced to edit it yourself, step away from it for at least a month first, and go through it several times. Read it out loud.

Selling your book for .99 is no guarantee. In fact, I dropped the first book in my trilogy down to .99 this past week as a promo...and have zero increase in sales. ZERO.

It's all about marketing. A good cover. Lots of reviews and SOCIAL MEDIA.

a reply to: Painterz

I'd be amazed if the average self-published work sells more than a dozen copies in its lifetime?

I am way above that now with no advertising at all.

A good story is a good story.

So .... be amazed!

P

a reply to: westcoast

I agree, no computer program can edit a book.

That said, I have never been able to afford a professional editor and I also have no idea how to separate out professionals from the wannabes or the rip off merchants. It can get problematic.

You need several things including someone who is good at editing the language but you also need someone who is very familiar with the genre.

I use three people and they are all doing so out of the goodness in their hearts. Yes, the more the merrier.

P

I haven't used this site purely because I'm too lazy - but it seems simple enough.

There may be drawbacks - but here is the information anyway, in case it benefits someone:

www.lulu.com...