Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Sarah Paul on June 29, 2012 at 11:46am

Thanks Tracy for your comments on free Ebooks and social media. Yes it is all changing so fast it's digital! The Internet has always been like that. It just moves so fast. I must say it has never really bothered me, the speed of change online--I kind of like it. It lets me grow and it lets me make mistakes that move out of view pretty quickly. Unlike a book! My novel Conversations with the Galaxy Teacher the Novel went on Kindle today and I got to see how many commas I should have omitted! Yikes! But the writing is good. Oh well it's self-publishing. What is your book that you made free today? And tell me about that, please. Do you mean that you made it free permanently? I am in KDP and will make mine free for 5 days. But I can see that making it free for longer might garner some customer reviews. It is possible to make one's book free for a period of time and then later to change the price, is it not? 

I appreciated your comment "Everyone is getting fed up with constantly being sold to." That is so true. I know  I am! I completely cleared my email account today! I am fed up. At FB, I counted four moving ads in my face at once. Fed up! What it will do is to make people completely ignore all ads which is what I already do. But maybe it will being things around to a natural place--what they call "content marketing," which should be the only form of marketing at all. Recently I attended a seminar on book promotion that made me sick almost literally. One author recently put a book together--not wrote a book--with snips from other people, then had those people and others prepay to buy a copy in return for ad space on a page attached to the book, then released the book which went to bestseller in one hour because all those people bought it. Not one of them bought it to read it. And it is not really a book, and not written by a writer. The whole thing was a manipulation of Amazon. And it worked like a charm. And it made me sick. I got out of there and today I cleared my email inbox and got out of marketing beyond anything I have already done or connected to. Like you, I must put my books into the system but to become a part of that system is to no longer be a writer. You know...it's not the marketing. There is need for marketing and advertising. It's the attitude and the way it's being done. It shows our culture to be something rather ugly. Sarah

Permalink Reply by Tracy Johnson on June 29, 2012 at 11:58am

hi Sarah

I agree with you - I love the changes and it's a great journey we have the opp to take now and see where it's going. It just takes a lot of writing time out of the day.

I put "Last Tango in Buenos Aires" on FREE on Kindle for today and tomorrow (Wasnt going to self-promo on here as I figure authors want to hear about things other than other people's books) so as to promote my latest novel "And Then the Magic Began". "Tango" is in Select and I did two days in May for 700 downloads out of which I didnt get a single review, or at least not yet.

Select isn't working now as promo because Amazon changed the algorithms to stop rubbish books being high in the sales rankings. This is what experts are saying although who really knows what Amazon is up to. Still, what option is there? By whatever method you have to get good reviews in.

I am subscribed to various marketing for ebooks services that offer freebies to entice you into buying their teleseminars etc but nothing is terribly effective for fiction - works great for non-fiction though.

Anyway I did two days in may and two days now and 1 day in July - probably better to break it up especially now we are in the summer sales slump

Beso

Permalink Reply by Sarah Paul on June 30, 2012 at 1:21am

Oh Last Tango in Buenos Aires sounds exactly like what I want to go to bed and read in about 10 minutes! So I will download it to my Kindle AND be glad to post a review. What is Select? I am new to kIndle, just had my first book go ontoday, then I changed the price stupidly and they put it on some kind of review for a couple of days so its not on anymore, I guess! Their instructions for putting a book on Kindle seem to me to be lacking. Or could be me. I did choose 5 days consecutive free for this book , from July 1 to 5. I dunno. I am just trying th▼ Replyings to see what happens. I finally successfully created a GoogleAD and that took me forever to get it approved. When I called for assistance, the guy was very rude and seemed drunk or something. A different helper was rude, too. They want you to  spend quite a lot per month or they don't want to deal with you. I guess its understandable, but why can't they simply advise you politely? I don't know why I expected Google employees to be nice but I was sort of shocked! haha

Permalink Reply by Tracy Johnson on July 1, 2012 at 12:34pm

Hi Sarah

Thank you for downloading "Tango" and offering a review - I only hope you enjoy it!

You must be in the KDP Select programme if you are doing 5 free days. While it's on review, it's still available for people to buy so dont worry. You'll get the hang of it and there's always the writers cafe for advice.

I took 2/2/1 rather than the 5 altogether - some take 2/3 - all five together isnt the best use so they say. What made you decide to go Googleads? Did you read something positive? I've only ever heard it's a big waste of money.

Also it's better to have at least a few reviews before going free - although I know the purpose of doing it is to get them - it's a chicken and egg deal. The promo sites won't mention you unless you have 5 or 20 4+.

Here is a good site with how to do Select - hope it works and let me know when you go select

http://www.squidoo.com/going-free-kindle-ebook-promotional-campaign...

Permalink Reply by Sarah Paul on July 1, 2012 at 12:48pm

I searched for your book at Kindle and could not find it! I will look again soon. Sarah

Permalink Reply by Tracy Johnson on July 1, 2012 at 1:13pm

Not sure if this is allowed here

http://www.amazon.com/Last-Tango-Buenos-Aires-ebook/dp/B00570RCPY/r...

Permalink Reply by Karma on July 3, 2012 at 5:20pm

You could always hire a publicist to train you in the ways of social media (hmm, a book publicist would say that). Marketing is inherently social. If you're not social, whether it be social media or some other community, how can you engage people? Truly, the beauty of social media is that it's an easier, lower-commitment way to interact with your peers than keeping up a blog. It's much easier to post 140 characters than to write four paragraphs with links and embedded photos, videos or music, and then tag the whole thing and maximize it for SEO.

That being said, I have promoted authors who don't use social media. Here are some options:

• Write guest posts
• Advertise
• Recreate your book through some other media, like as a web comic or podcast
• Write a column for a local paper
• Offer your book for giveaway contests
• Offer your book to a local book discussion club
• review similar books
• Attend conferences

All of these should include a byline that will link either directly to your Amazon page or to your website. And alas, though they aren't "social networks" they are all social (except advertising...but that's a bit like cheating, isn't it?).

I suspect you are more social than you think... here you are on this site, engaging in a lively discussion. There's no shame in wanting to spend less time promoting and more time writing---after all, you're a writer. But marketing is hard work, and if that work doesn't get done in one form or another how will people find out about your book?

Permalink Reply by Catrina Barton on July 3, 2012 at 5:28pm

Very interesting Karma, thank you. :)

Permalink Reply by Karma on July 3, 2012 at 5:28pm

the inclination to post empty hobnobbing "social" messages that nobody could possibly be interested in anyway. (I have read some writers blogs. Most of them say, "I am going to the dentist this afternoon." Are you kidding? Does that really create a folowing?)

Heh. Those people are doing it wrong. Don't think of it as gaining followers, think of it as building community. You write new age books, so fortunately, that's a huge community with tons of resources. Every day you discover a website, person, product that you love, that's the sort of thing you want to share. I'm not talking about a new dentist, I'm talking about the kinds of things your theoretical ideal reader would be interested in. Ideally, every idea that ends up in your book should have already landed on your social media page at some point. I wrote about this in more detail in a guest post on Opportunities Planet. It's mostly about Twitter but I think the outlook described there may help you out. =)

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