Organize your ebook promotion and maximize your sales – part 2
Here’s the second part of the topic that, I think, will be useful for all indie authors. Even if you’ve been doing it for years, you never know where you’ll find new book promotion ideas or tips. So, for everybody who’s serious about indie publishing, four more things that will make it simpler:
5. Prepare the data you’ll need for submitting your book
You don’t really fill all the fields they require on different ebook promotion sites with your fingers, do you? Because that will result in hours of lost time and tons of typos. Make a document in advance that will have: your name, book title, Amazon link, ASIN, genre, email, author bio, your usual blurb, a shorter blurb (often required, not easy to come up with, about 300 symbols), another blurb (some sites only accept unique texts), your Goodreads, Facebook links, and Twitter handle. I didn’t have it all prepared when I did my first promo, and I spent 5 hours on submitting my book to 50 sites and forums. Even if you're slow with the computer, if you follow these steps, you'll do it all faster.
6. Install TweetDeck and use it
I have a detailed post about it, Twitter promotion: 7 quick tips for beginners. In a few words, you can use TweetDeck to set up all your tweets once and forget about it for a week. I find it much easier than spreading myself thin between Twitter, Tumblr, G+, Goodreads, etc. Super-multi-tasking every day can result in a neurosis, I checked. Don’t avoid learning new tools that will help you for years.
7. Make a schedule and set up alarm reminders
You can post on some sites every day of your ebook promotion. Set up an alarm to remind you to post on forums, Reddit, Facebook, and G+ in the morning (on PST). Statistics say, people mostly browse social websites on their lunch break, and another wave comes in the evening when they come home from work/school. Don’t miss the chance to reach new potential buyers in the beginning of the day.
8. And finally, save your results
Keep track of the time and money you spend and the amount of downloads you have every day. Though downloads are also affected by a lot of other factors, and you may use a few paid book promotions so you won’t be able to tell for sure how many sales each of them brought – still, save all useful sites for the future. You can experiment with them the next time or find a few other similar ones that you know will be good for your book. Next time, you’ll be able to know for sure how much time you’ll need for submitting and posting about your book. If a paid promo brought poor results – try to find out why. Did they send out an email with your book? What audience do they send it to? There are a lot of factors that you can consider and have bigger sales.
For those who only plan to try indie publishing and are serious about it, read another useful topic: 15 things you should know before starting your KDP ebook promotion
