Authors, Don't Forget Libraries

Independent authors sometimes forget the library market. Libraries have made a largely successful transition to the era of the Internet, becoming multi-use spaces, offering ebooks and audio books and maintaining their print collections. Many libraries are quite supportive of independent authors. Joanne Penn has posted about getting books into American libraries, but similar principles also apply in Australia. Apart from contacting individual library corporations, try reading this kindle book on the Australian market. URLs for Australian library distributors below. And don’t forget to register for Public Lending Rights!

ALS
https://www.alslib.com.au/

James Bennet
https://www.bennett.com.au/

Peter Pal
www.peterpal.com.au

Bookbub Speaks, Advises

An author client recently got in touch with ebook promotional giant Bookbub to discuss the disappointing performance of a paid ad posted on that platform. He received the following interesting response, worth reading in full for anyone considering using the service or applying for the oly grail of a featured deal (as with so many areas of the Internet, Bookbub is overwhelmingly dominant in its space):

Thanks for reaching out! I'm sorry to hear your recent ad campaign didn't produce the results you were hoping for. I'll note that it does require quite a bit of testing and tweaking to develop ad campaigns that get the results you're looking for. When getting started with ads, we recommend that partners spend some time committed to testing ads with small budgets of $5-$10. Generally, you're unlikely to see a positive return immediately out of the gate with no testing.

I'd encourage you to read through some of our blog posts to get more familiar with BookBub Ads. I've gone ahead and listed a few that I think you'll find helpful below:

- First, you can find a blog post on increasing your click-through rate here: https://insights.bookbub.com/increase-click-through-rate-bookbub-ads-campaign/
- Next, you can read about how marketing goals affect BookBub ad campaigns here: https://insights.bookbub.com/how-marketing-goals-affect-bookbub-ad-campaigns-infographic/
- Finally, you can view our ultimate guide to BookBub Ads here: https://insights.bookbub.com/ultimate-guide-bookbub-ads/#getting-started

If you want to learn more about BookBub Ads, I'd suggest that you read through some other posts in the BookBub Ads section of our blog here for more tutorials, campaign ideas, and best practices.

I'm happy to answer any questions your have around Featured Deals:
1.) Currently, we rarely feature new releases in our daily emails. We’ve found that books that have had a chance to build up their platform perform best and, therefore, make for the most successful promotions for our partners.
2.) Your promotion's length is completely up to you and your marketing goals. You're welcome to discount your book for just a day, or a whole week or more if you'd like. We happen to have a blog post that discusses what promotion lengths work best for different marketing goals here. I hope you find that post helpful!
3.) Critical reviews play a role in our editor's selection process, so it would certainly be helpful for your title to have some reviews associated with it. You're absolutely welcome to submit this book for consideration, but please note that, as mentioned above, we tend to feature books that have built up their platform. If you're interested, you can learn more about the editorial team's selection process here.

Writing Blog with Solid Tips

Inkitt, the “The World’s #1 Reader-Powered Book Publisher” has quite decent blog on the writer’s life and craft. Well worth a visit. And perhaps you could upload one of your pieces and generate some constructive reader feedback…

Social Proof Sells Books

Author advice guru David Gaughran has posted a very interesting column on the most powerful selling tool for books — personal recommendations and reviews, or “social proof”. If a potential reader receives a strong social signal via reviews or a personal recommendation from a friend, they are much more likely to purchase. It therefore follows that independent authors need to do all they can to foster and amplify such signalling for their own work.

“The phenomenon is only different today in the surface details: that trusted source can be an algorithm at Amazon or Goodreads, a book blogger who taste maps your own, bestseller charts at various online retailers, daily emails from BookBub, or a million other things in today’s fragmented recommendation ecosystem.”

Independent Publishing Tips and Very Useful Resources

An interesting view from 30,000 feet of the challlenges confronting and opportunities available to independent authors, as posted at The Verge. They have spoken to a few successful authors and author advocates and provide several useful links. One of the best is here with a real trove of resources and advice, especially regarding predatory vanity publisher outfits.

“You are accountable for the success of the publishing process. By taking on the kind of freedom and flexibility of self-publishing, you’re also taking on the accountability.”

The Tip of the Tip of the Tip of the Iceberg

An excellent explanation from the consistently great Veritasium channel examining the way algorithms shape content and vice versa. The sheer volume of posted YouTube videos requires algorithm settings that encourage sensational/clickbait content, and make it difficult for serious content providers to maintain their audience. Some of the principles at play here also show up in surfacing material on other algorithm driven services such as Amazon, Audible, Google and Facebook. A balanced and fascinating examination of a key online issue, presented by Canadian Australian Derek Muller.

Selling Your Book Online — An Expert Speaks

Irish writer David Gaughran has plenty to say about maintaining an online “author platform” and driving online sales. Some of his pithier quotes:

“As well as promoting my own books, I’ve run giant campaigns for huge authors over the last couple of years, launching multiple books into the Top 100, running major backlist promotions that generated tens of thousands of sales during their foray into the charts, and million and millions of page reads, as well as multiple Kindle Unlimited awards. Some of these campaigns can generate extraordinary profits.”

“BookBub is the most famous, obviously, and is significantly larger than all the other sites combined with millions of genuine book buyers on its lists. There are no sure things in marketing, but a BookBub Featured Deal is the closest you’ll get. Authors typically report making the cost back in twenty-four hours or less, and then enjoying a significant increase in visibility and sellthrough and email sign-ups and reviews. ”

“Before the “do you not VALUE books?” crowd get warmed up, let me say this: those cheap deals are used to pole-vault us into position to shift even more books at full price. A springboard, if you like. I don’t focus so much on prices anyway, these things are all tools to me. I prefer to look at monthly income. Running price promotions increases it greatly. ”

He goes into quite generous detail about the various aspects of his online selling strategy here.

Mr Gaughran runs a mailing list here. Subscribers will receive useful hints re. online promotion and a 50 page booklet on selling with Amazon Kindle.

Custom Calligraphic Lettering and Illustrations

Wanissa Somsuphangsri is an extremely talented calligrapher and illustrator based in Melbourne. If you need some highly individualised and polished work, she might be the person for you. We’re currently putting together a cover for an author client who engaged Wanissa and the results are amazing — will post the full cover in due course. Wanissa is also a member of the Letterettes.

Concepts for a Cover — Parenting in the Digital Era

A few versions on the theme of ‘digital parenting’ — a thoughtful attempt to promote a rational balance between time on and off screen in a family context, and summarise the latest research on the topic. Published by Hybrid Publishers.

Bookbub's Effectiveness — A Report from an Author

In the latest news from the independent author front , Kathryn Gauci reports back on her recent Bookbub promotion:

“Bookbub was OK but didn't set the world on fire. I think some of that had to do with it being for the UK, AUS, NZ, Canada and India and NOT the US. The US is generally the biggest market. It also adds more to the deal in the first place. The real difference has come with it lifting my profile and follow on orders plus the page reads have more than doubled per day. So hopefully the momentum keeps up. I also put it up on a few other sites for a couple of days at the same time — Fussy Librarian etc, which I think helped. My friend, Barbara had one the week before and spent more on extra promo. Same Bookbub deal as me. She just recovered her cost but the follow-on has improved. Another friend had the US market as well and doubled her money.
It was worth it though. And the extra reviews and ratings are starting to come through also.”

Book Reviews and Amazon — a battle royale

Reviews are a key signal used in the ranking of online books. The more reviews, the higher the book ranks and the more books are sold. Of course, given this logic, reviews have been widely gamed by authors and publishers, to the point when they are sometimes not reliable guides as to a book’s quality and popularity. Authors round up their friends to review their books, or pay other services to generate reviews, or review other authors’ books in the hope of reciprocal reviews. Amazon has been fighting back against this degradation of the reviewing signal — the outlines of said epic struggle are described here, along with the latest strategies for independent authors.