Her “Night” series of thriller novels has routinely maxed out the Amazon charts, and now she has put Night Stalker, Night Game and Night Widow together in a boxed set NIGHT TRILOGY and for just two days 27th and 28th April 2013, that boxed set is available for just 99c, a saving of $7. That’s right, three 4*+ rated bestselling novels for just 99c. Here’s what people are saying about the “Night” series…

“From the first page to the last, there is no escape for the reader–this book must be completed before any peace of mind can return; tension increases rapidly. Gripping!

–DROOD REVIEW

“Night Stalker is a spine-tingling thriller with Alex and Justin’s steamy relationship adding spice to the electrifying plot. Tops in thrilling suspense.”

–RAVE REVIEWS

Night Stalker by Carol Davis Luce –Ebook Friendly Staff Pick—BEST OF INDIE

“A juggernaut in the genre of Romantic Suspense. Carol Davis Luce’s Night Game has been a fixture on Amazon’s bestseller lists, scoring rave reviews and earning a reputation as a stunning piece of fiction…the hot sand and high rollers serve as the perfect backdrop for a game of cat and mouse where you either end up in love or dead.

–Kindle Fire Department

“All the characters are fascinating and believable. The villain is evil personified. Luce writes romantic suspense that is just too good to miss.”

–Gothic Journal

Carol has been kind enough to write for Indie Review Tracker before, telling us how she managed to sell 100,000 books on Amazon in just 4 months, so I also asked her tell me a little bit more about herself and about her novels … Take it away, Carol.

What attracted you to writing in the first place?

Writing was my second career in the second half of my life. I began as an artist. What attracted me to writing? I wasn’t satisfied with the ratio of romance to suspense in traditional thrillers, so I decided to write what I loved to read, suspense with a strong element of romance (contemporary Gothic). English in school was not a strong point, but storytelling won out over sketchy language rules. Then a funny thing happened. The longer I worked at writing, the better I got at this thing called grammar.

What genre are you most comfortable writing?

Romantic suspense. Although, after dipping my toe into the ‘coming of age’ women’s fiction genre, I may have found a second love.

How has your upbringing influenced your writing?

I had a quirky and somewhat challenging childhood. My new novel, AWAKENING: Secrets of a Brown Eyed Girl, echoes a large portion of my early childhood in Southern California in the 50s. An era when no one locked their doors and it was safe to let your child roam the streets—in most cases, that is. As a latchkey kid, being on my own a lot helped to fuel my already over stimulated imagination. From the time I was old enough to sit in front of the tube, I became fascinated with things that go bump in the night. TV shows that were grounded in a deep creep factor, and puzzlers. Alfred Hitchcock, Twilight Zone, and Science Fiction Theatre drew me in like maggots to a corpse. When I learned to read, I devoured mysteries, true crime books, and anything scary or twisted. I see the world differently than most people. I see menace in every corner. Always have. I scare myself.

Where do you get your inspiration and ideas from?

In real life, if something odd or unusual happens to click on that light bulb in the creative chamber of my mind, I start to play the “What if…?” game. What if a beautiful model is splashed in the face with acid? What if the suspicious death of a recluse leads to hidden bodies in a small mining town? What if a woman is stalked in her own home? What if a woman with psychic powers sees a brute of man abducting women off the street? See the pattern emerging here? Woman + jeopardy = Women in Jeopardy.

Do you have any writing rituals or listen to “mood music” when you write? Where is your favorite place to write?

My creative brain doesn’t kick in until noon, so anything I try to write in the morning is garbage. I really get going around 4 pm—wine time. I like to think that my best writing comes with a glass of the red stuff (the Hemmingway School of writing). I’m most productive writing in my dining room with the TV’s white noise in the background.

What’s your favorite place in the entire world?

Whatever place gives me peace, makes me think, and accelerates my pulse. That’s usually in the fabulous world of books.

Fame or fortune, which would you prefer?

A little of both. Famous enough to have my name recognized in the literary arena. Enough coin to continue to pursue my writing career full time.

Give your fans three fun facts that they may not already know about you.

1. At birth, I had a collapsed lung and I squeaked like a mouse.
2. I first appeared on TV at the age of ten to give a one-year-old elephant a birthday party.
3. I played at a blackjack table in Reno where comedian Bill Cosby was the dealer. 

What advice would I give to new authors? You’ve heard it before, but it’s worth repeating: Read. Write. Develop a thick skin. Write in a category you love. One book isn’t going to get you far unless you’re another Margaret Mitchell or Harper Lee. So write. Write. Write. Before you put that wonderful book out there for the world to see (and pounce on), enlist several critique and beta readers to make sure it’s market ready. Pay to have it properly edited and formatted. Pay a copyeditor to dot the i’s and cross the t’s. Design a stunning book cover, or hire someone to design it for you. Write a product description that hooks the reader—make it sing. Oh, one more thing: write a damn good book.

About Carol Davis Luce

Amazon bestselling author of the “Night” books, NightWriter Carol Davis Luce writes standalone suspense novels with strong elements of romance. After publishing five books through a traditional publisher, she turned independent author with her 2011 suspense novel, Night Widow, and two short story trilogies. In 2012, her new release Awakening: Secrets of a Brown Eyed Girl branched out into women’s fiction. This tough, coming-of-age novel is a fictionalized memoir, loosely based on her childhood. She lives with her husband Bob, and their psycho cat in Sparks, Nevada.

Check out her work at:

Amazon
Follow her on Facebook
Connect on Twitter
Subscribe to her Author blog
Follow her on Goodreads

Thanks so much Carol for offering readers such a great deal and letting us know a little more about you.

An Indie Prayer

Dearest Digital Gawd, now available as gif, jpeg, or bit map,
Give me this day a couple uninterrupted hours,
As I swore to myself I would have this chapter done Tuesday, and now it is Thursday.
No wait, it’s Friday. How did I lose a whole day and this thing still isn’t done? 

Grant me the serenity to just let that idiotic comment on facebook pass by,
Lo, though it is the stupidest thing anyone has ever said, ever, and it vexes me sorely,
And though I have typed a long, witty rejoinder that no one with half a brain could possibly argue,
Just let me hit delete instead of post this one time, and return to my labors.

Cyber Gawd, grant me the courage to write with honesty,
Even though technically I’m making all this stuff up.
If that’s what the story wants, that’s what the story gets,
And let not me pull my punches.

Oh, Editor Above, please for to make with the grammars and such,
Even when I’m typing really fast, and my verbiage may seem most strange,
And the colons begin to lie down with the semicolons,
Let me sort all that out later, as this is a draft.

Great Reviewer on high, grant me the patience to not check sales every four minutes,
Or look for a new review every seven minutes,
Or see if somebody commented on my blog in the last eleven minutes,
Or, in any other way, to Google myself.

And, Sweet Redeemer, if it’s not too much trouble,
If you could put something edible in my fridge today, apart from ketchup and cocktail olives,
As I’ve been meaning, but only meaning, to get to the store,
That would be swell. But no more beer, thanks. I’m set.

Heavenly Plotter, please touch my characters’ hearts with mercy,
So that they will do what I want them to do just this one time,
Instead of complicating the plot so I’m going to need like two more chapters here…
Actually, strike that, that’s the best part of the book.

Most wholly holy of holies, let me not look haughtily askance at any of your creations,
Even if they end in –ly, or are otherwise misshapen.
For to everything there is a season, and a purpose under heaven,
Even adverbs.

Big Space Pooba, grant me the wisdom to distinguish
The bits I just happen to love, from the bits that actually move the story forward,
And give me the strength to ix-nay the loved bits sometimes,
But not every time, as this is not Paint By Numbers.

Let me write one day at a time,
Enjoying one moment at a time,
Accepting hardship as a pathway to peace,
Taking the world outside as it is,
While having the world in my head and heart as I would have it,
So that I may be reasonably happy in this life,
And supremely happy in the next.

Amen

However, since I released Cruxim, I have been trying to work to a broader marketing plan that recognises that some of my books might occasionally have only okay or average months (or even dismal months), and that hopefully another title will drag me out of the doldrums. This means alternating books in and out of KDP Select, a structured pricing plan, some scheduled and in person social media, and some advertising that takes in a range of different distributors, price points and goals.

When I first started advertising my books, my approach was largely “suck it and see.” I tried banner ads, paying for promotion from author promotion sites, signing up to free promotional sites, fiverr, Goodreads and Facebook advertising, my own social media efforts, and several of the more well-established advertising or free book listing sites, Of these, the latter have shown the most immediate return on investment, although I wouldn’t rule out the rest, simply for top of mind awareness.

For me, banner advertising has proven the least effective method on a cost vs results basis, and a recent survey of online advertising and its effect on viewers has suggested I’m not alone in that, with as many as 72% of people ignoring banner advertising. I paid a high traffic site $50 to advertise and the impact was minimal. But I have had success on another site that was more targeted to my genre and readership (and also much cheaper), and the best-selling author has also helped me out with tweeting and linking, which was great because we have the same readership. If you decide to invest in banner advertising, I’d suggest you make sure it is on sites where your core audience might hang out—for instance, popular teen sites if your book is YA, rather than more general booklovers or authors sites. Go straight to your demographic.

A good guide to assessing the likely outcome of banner advertising on another author’s site is to first consider how many pageviews per month the blog or page gets. Most sites either advertise this on their “About us” or “Advertising” pages, or should willingly provide you with this information. When they do, you can check whether they are being honest by using a site such as www.alexa.com where you plug in the URL and it will tell you how many pageviews the site receives. Alexa is by no means entirely accurate. But if they’re telling you they’re getting thousands of views a month and Alexa is telling you it is more like hundreds a month, then they’re probably stretching the truth). Also consider:

• Whether the site can make available information about its demographic (the age of visitors, the language spoken, where they are from).
• How long the average visitor stays on the site?
• Is your ad on a rotation, or is it live for the entire period of your paid advertising?
• How does the site enable you to measure click-throughs (e.g. does the advertising email you a weekly link, as Indie Review Tracker does) showing you how many people clicked on your ad?
• How many books would you have to sell over the duration of the ad to break even?

Advertising across a range of different media will help you to spread the word and garner “Top of Mind Awareness”—after all, most people will need to see your book three times before they commit to buying. However, if you have a limited budget and you really just want to see every advertising dollar result in sales and rank jumps, then your best bet will be to advertise to a list-based advertiser, such as Bookbub, Bookblast, BookBasset, or Today’s eReader Buzz.
If you decide to do so, the information you should investigate is:

• How many readers are on the list for that particular genre?
• How many books would you have to sell, and at what price, to break even?
• What is a likely estimated number of books sold for other authors in that genre?
• About what time does the email go out? (So you can get an idea of when to start your own promoting too and when to sit with bated breath watching your meteoric climb towards the top 100 free).

Because for so long I only had poetry, short stories or children’s ebooks on the market, I had been unable to run a personal test on some of those sites. With the release of Cruxim, I paid for a Bookbub ad for the book’s free days as part of Select. Many other authors had already shared their amazing success using Bookbub with me, and it was great to see that my own experience reflected the incredible power of Bookbub as an advertising tool. Featuring on Freebooksy, Ereader News Today, Kindle Fire Department, and Kindle Nation Daily  as well, catapulted Cruxim to #8 free in the Kindle Store, and the follow on sales and borrows have been very encouraging and resulted in my best month so far.

For the $90 I invested, it was far and away the best return on my advertising dollars. Having said that, it is not easy to get a listing. I had to try several times, all the time garnering more reviews, before Cruxim was accepted. So if you submit and are turned away, make sure you get onto the Indie Review Tracker, find established bloggers or book bloggers who will review in a timely manner, and start gathering “critical acclaim.” Bookbub won’t necessarily tell you why you’ve been rejected, but keep trying. If you’re repeatedly being turned away, also revisit your cover (is it professional and engaging?—they don’t take books that haven’t been professionally edited or that don’t have a pro-designed cover), and your blurb and sample to make sure they’re enticing and error-free.

Other advertising sites that promote your book deal or freebie (or sometimes free books only) primarily to a website that gets high traffic, but also sometimes to a smaller newsletter or email list are:

Kindle Nation Daily
Ebook Deal of the Day
Freebooksy
Kindle Fire Department
Pixel of Ink 
Ereader News Today
FK Books and Tips
Ebook Junkie

I’ve had the best results with Pixel of Ink, FK Books and Tips and Kindle Fire Department. Mixed bags tend to be Kindle Nation Daily (some of their offerings are worth the money but the high-end prices for others reduce potential RoI) and Book Gorilla, with some authors finding Book Gorilla to be a little expensive for its returns. Getting your free or paid book on any of these is likely to see corresponding small jump sales or downloads and a little bit of a rank bump too, but “how much?” is the question. Most also offer a guaranteed placement for very little, anywhere from $5 to $50.  If you are going free, ideally you should submit to all and any sites that will list your freebie or your deal. I’ve complied a list of sites that advertise free books on my post  Making Your Ebook Free?: Read this First.

On the whole, I now feel I’ve reached a point where, rather than flinging poop at walls and seeing what sticks, I have a good idea of what works for me and my books, and how to rotate them all through these sites to ensure that each month I am turning a profit on my work. With a quarterly advertising budget of $250, I now think I can generate ongoing sales and rank rise. And as I release more books, the promotion is becoming easier, because each book acts as a business card for the others; when one is selling well, it gives the others a slight nudge too.

I think for most indies who are newly published, the trick is to pour early capital back into the business. So while my books are not paying my mortgage just yet, the more of the income they generate that I put back into advertising and promoting them, the closer I get to my goal of surviving on books alone. Happy days!

I’d also wager that the number of sites that operate in a similar way to Bookbub is set to skyrocket, so keep your eyes out for others that can provide a substantial sales increase for a medium-sized investment. And if you know of any not listed here, be a doll and share the site in the comments. We’re all in this together and because each book is unique, we really have no competition. Let’s all find ways to help each other make a living from our words. As a way to help out other authors, I’m also offering free advertising on Indie Review Tracker for May. All you have to do is email me indiereviewtracker@hotmail.com  the link to your book and the cover art resized to 120 px wide by 180 px wide and I will advertise the book for the month of May until all slots are filled. Ads operate on a rotation basis, so first in first served. There is absolutely no ongoing cost or obligation to you in doing so. It is an entirely free effort to help promote your book, so happy advertising!

He is tired of running…

Simeon Magus has been alive… undead nearly two millennia. He has watched the undead go from myth to adored celebrity and he exists, hiding from a determined and lethal group of hunters who do not listen to reason and won’t stop until he’s destroyed.

Simeon witnessed and lived history and he doesn’t know if he wants any more of it. He wants to connect with someone again, to feel close to another, but when he meets somebody on a train who knows too much about him, Simeon cannot trust that he isn’t another of the Slayers. Is his new friend sent to eliminate him or the hoped for salvation from the tedium of eternity.

I Am Eternal‘s author, Athanasio Galanis, is not just an author but is also a skilled cover designer. Today, he has graced us with his presence for a quick chat about his Predatory Ethics series.

• How would you describe your book/s?

The larger storyline is Predatory Ethics, a perversion of Do Onto Others As You Would Have Them Do Onto You. It follows a man who decides to thwart destiny and change how the world is set to destroy itself.  He kidnaps the Antichrist of Revelation and raises him to not follow what was written and decide for himself whether he’ll do what Fate has decreed.

• What inspired you to write your book/s?

There was no single inspiration for the books. They evolved from watching the Omen when I was a child to immersing myself in histories and conspiracy theories all over the web.  I still get inspired when I come across a particularly implausible website that cites a connection between Alistair Crowley and former US president George W Bush, or that his father was a CIA opperative that shot JFK.  The idea is fantastic, impossible but still sounds like wild fiction.

• Are your characters based on real people? People you may know or TV/Movie stars?

They are based on family, friends, acquaintances and anyone or anything that I remember to make them feel real.  It’s weird what you remember but there are details to how someone stood or walked or spoke that will make it to characters in my work and I can disctinctly remember these details as a part of specific people that they may not have even been aware of.

• If your book/s had a theme song, what would it be and why?

It would be the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy For the Devil” because in many ways all of Predatory Ethics is an exploration of evil, the Devil and the Antichrist who is reputed to be the Devil’s son.

• What’s up next for you?

I’ve taken Simeon Magus, a secondary character of Predatory Ethics and have begun writing his story in I Am Eternal.  I wanted to explore the supernatural through the eyes of a vampire who is trying to live out his existence as quietly as possible.

I’ve chosen to put down my primary writing in Predatory Ethics because it is much more complex than I Am Eternal and I needed to do something that would be more accessible and easier to digest.

• What inspired you to be a writer? Is there anything in particular that spurred you on?

No single inspiration except I like seeing where the stories I like to imagine with my What If’s will go.  I enjoy the story in the writing as much as someone would reading it.

 Do you have any other Talents or hobbies other than your literary wand?

I’m creative in many ways, I can draw, put a graphic composition together very well and work with pixels in a very pleasing manner. I work as a graphic artist in my day to day job and also have been creating covers for indie writers as a side-line.  My work can be seen at: www.mad-gods.com/CoverHIRE

• Are you working on anything else besides this?

Yes I’m working on the next installments in both Predatory Ethics and I Am Eternal.

The Predatory Ethics book 3 is “In Whom To Trust” and it follows Adam as he grows older and still rejects his believed destiny but discovers that this rejection has evolved him from Antichrist and is slowly turning him into the Redeemer of other religions.

I Am Eternal book 2 is “Vampires and Indians” and it continues Simeon’s recollection of the old west and his facing his oldest enemies, the Vatican Slayers.

Could you give us a few words to people who haven’t yet read your book/s?

Predatory Ethics and I Am Eternal are not just horror, or alternate history.  They both show underlying motives to how we live our lives, from love to ambition, and social acceptance to demanding individuality.  They’re both complex, Predatory Ethics more so than I Am Eternal but they make you ponder deeper points than usually found in traditional or indie literature.

Grab your copy of I Am Eternal today from:
Amazon US
Amazon UK

Or add it to your To Be Read list on Goodreads.

Just having success with a few of her titles didn’t guarantee her success with the others, and having hit the bestseller charts on Amazon for her genre provided no guarantee that she would stay there. In fact, everything from Amazon algorithms to the indie author review scandal seemed designed to tear her ranking down again. So with each book released, it was a matter of starting at the bottom.

Her words made me think of JK Rowling, whose recently released novel for adults A Casual Vacancy has been largely panned by critics and readers (even if it has sold a truckload). How difficult it must be to follow on from a successful novel with something that is equally successful. I realized how true my friend’s words were: each book represents another mountain to climb. We can’t just sit back and hope that luck, our good name, or the success of a former novel propels our books up the charts—at least not until we have a lot of books out and a lot of media representation behind us. Not until we’re a household name.

As indies, we have to work hard to keep every book afloat. It can be just as exhausting trying to hang on to a position in the charts as it is to climb up to those rankings in the first place. Now, I know that some of you who aren’t selling anywhere near several thousands of books a year, or a month! (and I count myself among you), probably think “boo-hoo for your friend,” but I have no doubt that those authors who routinely hang out somewhere in the top 200 ranked books on Amazon aren’t just letting promotion slide. I’m sure that they’re watching every plummet in ranking too, and coming up with ways to counteract flagging sales.

Sure, word of mouth helps. Having a lot of positive reviews helps. Certainly having a large base of fans who picked up your first book helps too, but I still think that to maintain a position on Amazon’s charts, now more than ever marketing, advertising, and publicity are necessary.

I’ve known several authors who have come out guns blazing with one title and managed to do really well with it. But the follow-on from their next book hasn’t been half as phenomenal. Why? I think partly because they didn’t bother to promote, thinking their former success would see them through, and partly because they didn’t necessarily build on their earlier fan base. Some then switched horses mid-stride and wrote the second book in a different genre, rather than giving fans what they had enjoyed in the past (and I am guilty of this too). Sure, plenty of people might have read my friend’s first book and enjoyed it, many reviewed it, most loved it, but there was nothing else there for them to go on with at the time (and I noticed this myself when I only had Cage Life out).  The author hadn’t converted them into fans on a Facebook page, mailing list (you can subscribe to mine in the right-hand menu), on Twitter, or on another more personal site where they would receive updates about the author’s new books as they were released. So, of those fans, most were left to their own devices to hopefully, one day, find the author’s next novel when it hit the virtual shelves. That represents a lost opportunity for marketing to a core market: readers who read and liked that author’s work in the past.

Establishing direct author-to-reader relationships

The authors who seem to have consistently strongs sales across their titles are those who have a thriving Facebook page or fanpage for their books, a lot of Twitter followers, and an easy to find “subscribe” section to their websites or in the back of their books, so that fans can receive email updates from the author hot off the press. This kind of direct-to-reader relationship is very important. Of course, having several novels in a series, usually with the first “permafree” (permanently priced at $0) also helps. Authors of a series are drawing fans in with the freebie, and then have plenty of other novels in the same series for eager, satisfied readers to go on with immediately. This is partly why I’m keen to get the sequel to Cruxim out before Easter.

So, if you haven’t already, I’d urge you to start thinking about developing a subscription list, either via your blog, or using MailChimp or a similar program, and adding a link to it to the back of your novel. David Gaughran has written a wonderful blog post about why mailing lists are so important and how to get started, so check it out too. I’m starting to think about how to do this for my novel Cruxim, and I’m hoping the novel will help keep readers interested long enough for me to finish the second book. In the meantime, I’ll keep on enjoying little successes, and I’ll keep on writing to get the sequel out as soon as possible, and I’ll keep dreaming of hitting the bigtime, myth or no myth.

What has been the most successful method you’ve found of enticing readers or fans to read your “library” of books rather than make ad hoc single sales? I’d love to hear about your marketing successes, or your struggles to gain sales traction in the ever-changing writing marketplace, so let me know how you’re getting on in the comments.  

 Featured image  Some rights reserved by JeepersMedia

Bear in mind that I first self-published via Smashwords and Kindle Direct Publishing in mid-2011, and short stories and kids’ books rather than full-length novels, so compared to some other indies, I don’t have a lot of personal results to draw on. I can say that in the year and a half I’ve been indie published, the playing field has changed considerably. In the heady days of July 2011, sales were a lot healthier, Amazon’s Select program was a twinkle in Jeff Bezos’s eyes, and indies were alive with enthusiasm. Since then, things have calmed considerably.

Sales have largely plateaued, and not just for me it seems, but for a lot of authors I know. Word of mouth is still vital. Free runs still shift books, although questions are being asked about for how much longer and about plummeting ranks post free runs. Reviews are useful (although some are questionable in the light of the Ellory and Locke scandal and Amazon’s subsequent author review witch-hunt). Some reviewers have turned their backs on indies, claiming rudeness, aggression or the oft-repeated lack of professional presentation. Some paid advertisers have become “must-have” elements in any indies promotional strategy, and other promotional activities, such as blog tours, now seem to flag in comparison when it comes to shifting copies, even if they’re great for exposure.

Few of the main players have changed, although, like indie authors, each is trying to shore up their business by diversifying, trying new things and still testing what remains rather an uncertain and changing marketplace.

Select: still worth it?

I’m trying to hit as many markets as possible for Cruxim after an initial Select run.

Amazon, with around 60% of the book marketshare, is still far and away the Big Daddy of eBook sales. Its exclusive Select program, which was

introduced in 2012, offers authors lucrative per copy dollars on borrows and enables authors to easily price their book free to increase exposure for five days out of a 90-day period. Select saw many indie authors flock exclusively to Amazon, myself among them. However, some of the gloss seems to have worn off Select in recent months. Amazon’s own algorithms, which at first rewarded books for “going free” by counting downloads as sales, have increasingly minimised the percent at which downloads count towards sales rank. There has also been talk that Amazon is trying to limit the number of free books advertised on sites such as Digital Book Today and Ereader News Daily, and that the Popularity charts are rated to favour higher-priced books (which casts doubt on the 99c price-point strategy now too).I have found that Select gave my sales a real bump in the early days, but even free runs now seem to give my books little lasting propulsion. With several other companies attempting to branch out and expand their marketplace into other areas of the globe, following an initial Select run, diversity has become my goal for 2013 for my newly released novel Cruxim.

Kobo: making friends and influencing peopleMany predicted that Japanese-owned company Kobo might be the international ereader company to break Amazon’s stranglehold on the market, particularly after July 2012 when Kobo Writing Life provided a means for authors to upload directly to Kobo, and to make their books free whenever they want. The jury is still out on whether Kobo Writing Life is worth the added hassle of dealing with yet another upload program and reporting system, but many authors on Kindleboards have lauded the interface while complaining about the ranking and reporting. In December, news was

released that Kobo was partnering with a popular German IT company to make Kobo ereaders available to a German market, and Kobo has also capitalised on the library ebook market in the UK. Earlier in 2012, Kobo also set up deals with the American Booksellers Association and the UK Booksellers Association, and announced that Kobo ereaders would be distributed by Ingram in the US. It seems Kobo is the one to watch in terms of ereader marketshare in 2013.

A cash injection for Barnes & Noble

The clunky interface and poor search functionality of the Barnes and Noble bookstore, coupled with B&N’s poor customer service and diminishing consumer interest in the Nook eReader, has seen some indies suggest the B&N will struggle to maintain its reputation as one of the world’s largest

distributors. Indeed, B&N reported a 10.9% decrease in Nook sales this holiday season compared to the last. However, in late December 2012, Pearson, one of the world’s largest publishers agreed to invest more than 900 million in NOOK media to improve “discovery of available digital content and services” and to (hopefully) provide Nook customers with better and more seamless access to content. Will this make a difference to Barnes & Noble? That remains to be seen, but like most indies, I have done my best to ignore B&N (publishing with them via Smashwords) even when I’m not in the Select program, and I can’t quite think why that shouldn’t continue unless something changes dramatically, but I will keep an eye on how Pearson’s cash injection affects B&N.

Do we still need our words “smashed”?

Ah, smashwords. What to say about Smashwords? For indie authors who are just starting out or don’t have or the know-how to the time to go direct to other channels, Smashwords is an excellent alternative to having to go through the palaver of uploading to all of the other sites individually.I believe Mark Coker is one of the good guys and that Smashwords is a very useful site for indie authors who are just starting out, and for me, it worked just fine until I decided to go Select. However, it is also the publisher of a ton of rather eye-popping smut and some very poorly produced books, and even though Smashwords has expanded on its upload options, so you can “potentially” avoid the “meatgrinder” this time around by uploading an ePub, there are still issues. Reporting is slow, uploading is often slow too, and the time taken to remove books from the extended distribution channels after the author has unpublished (and to report sales) is woefully inadequate, and it is annoying plenty of indies at present who are trying to price free the “hard” way or to leave Smashwords entirely. Short of getting you into that tricksy Applestore and not having to deal direct with B&N, as well as the nifty coupon functionality, Smashwords offers little in the way of professional-looking online bookstores or even exposure. But, under the leadership of Mark Coker, Smashwords continues to grow. Profits were up, employees increased, the number of authors using Smashwords increased and they signed deals for distribution with  Baker & Taylor, 3M Cloud Library, and another “yet to be announced” major player. I wouldn’t rule Smashwords out just yet, although it is clear that there is still some work to be done until its as smooth an operation as some of the other distributors on offer.

Take a bite of the Apple in 2013

Despite Apple’s enormous success with the digital music revolution, the clunky Apple iStore is still struggling to be a major player in the movement of ebooks. Part of this is no doubt due to the sheer single-mindedness of Apple as a brand and a platform—it seems almost determined to weed out those who don’t buy those cunningly packaged little devices (said the girl who was thrilled with her iPad Christmas gift and is typing this on her Macbook). Unlike Amazon, whose Kindle app is almost universally available on Android, Apple, PC , Kobo and Sony devices, publishing direct to Apple involves jumping through several extra hoops, and even the release of Apple iBooks Author in January 2012 hasn’t made things too much easier. You need an Apple to publish, and even my Mac with Snow Leopard installed needs an operating system upgrade to use it. Nevertheless, it is on my lists of things to do for 2013, and I have heard that the ease of adding interactive features is worth the effort. Considering that Digital Book World’s predictions suggest that 2013 will be the year of the enhanced eBook, with “an increased appetite for illustrated and nonfiction books that did not sit well on e-readers,” it just might be worth exploring.Perhaps an even greater incentive for taking a munch of the Apple in 2013 is that Apple, too, is aggressively pushing into the Japanese eBook market. For ages, Konrath, Dean Wesley Smith, David Gaughran, Ed Robertson, Digital Book World and the other big thinkers in indie ebook publishing have been suggesting that the real money will come when densely populated nations such as India, China, Russia and Japan really embrace e-reader technology, but Japan already has an extremely healthy technology sector and Japanese routinely read on smart phones and tablets, so Apple’s move might introduce authors to wide audience (especially for those who are able to negotiate a Japanese edition) and rival Kobo’s Japanese dominance.

Big publishers come to the party (and then sit in the corner)2012 can be said to be the year that most of the big publishers finally sat up and began to take real notice of e-publishing. They started to convert their backlists, they examined their pricing strategy (largely as a result of the DoJ’s case against price-fixing and anti-consumerism policies instigated b

y the Agency Model), and, toward the end of year, some even began to price on par with indies, causing some indies to go into a tailspin and others to argue that a level playing field on price would make indie books even less distinguishable from legacy-published titles. Some even began to streamline their warehouses and printing costs, looking towards PoD or eBook only editions as a viable option, and to cut book lines and strictly control new authors’ digital rights. Two of the biggest, Penguin and Random House, have even merged, although such conglomerations are no surprise in the history of publishing.Have they got a way to go? Sure. And I think the cogs of change grind so slowly inhouse that it will be some time before they can rival the agile

ubiquity of an entrepreneurial indie author … so make the most of the knowledge that you’re light on your feet. You can change the price and you can promote yourself. Seize any opportunity to get the word out.

Indies vs big-publishing: the gap closes somewhat

In December 2012, Forbes reported that the New York Times published a glowing review of an indie title.  Gasp! Had the last bastion of publishing been breached? Sadly, other statistics don’t suggest that the playing field is quite yet that “level.” On 26 December, Digital Book World reported that

the best-selling ebooks of 2012 were all in the Hunger Games or Fifty Shades series and that close to two-thirds of the bestselling titles of 2012—comprising 17 out of the 25 titles—fell under the Random House or Penguin stables. Clearly, indies still have a way to go to rival the blockbuster legacy authors when it comes to promotion, publicity and shifting billions of books (especially in light of the news of Random House and Penguin’s merger). Having said that, hundreds of indies are reporting great sales and I know of at least four indies I interact with online who were able to quit their day job in 2012 to write fulltime. I think that number will continue to increase in 2013 as we all keep on publishing ever more titles.And remember, the ereader market is far from saturated. Ereader use continues to increase, especially on tablets. A recent study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project shows that as many as 33% of Americans own an ereader or tablet (and the US is easily the biggest ebook market, with Britain, Europe, Australia, Canada and Asia still lagging behind). Library borrowing of eBooks was also up 2% on last year in the US. There are still plenty more eager minds of all ages who are yet to pick up an ereader and realize its benefits.

Some early adopters of indie publishing, at first buoyed by the seemingly easy cash to be made and now disappointed with how things have turned out, will have turned their back on indie ebook publishing now that the game is a little harder to fix. Those who are in it for the long haul look set to reap the rewards of increasing numbers of foreigners going digital.

Where will the big sales come from?

As always, it’s a mug’s game trying to guess that! However, many are suggesting that children’s ebooks and illustrated books will be the next big thing in the eBook market. A study by PlayScience and Digital Book World suggests that a staggering number of US children between two to thirteen read ebooks and that 40% of the parents of children who do, planned to buy them a new ereader over the holiday season.My feeling is that the young adult and tween market is where it is really at right now, as youngsters snap up increasingly more affordable ereaders, and I can’t see why that shouldn’t continue throughout 2013. Illustrated picture books, non-fiction and enhanced ebooks will definitely follow the technology, but I still think fiction will continue to shine, and kids’ fiction especially in 2013. Some have also suggested that 2013 will se

e the world’s first $0 ereader—a lure to sell product. If that is the case, watch out for India, China and Africa to suddenly enter the market in a big way.It seems clear, too, that several advertising sites are still driving big sales for indie authors. Among them are Bookbub, Kindle Nation Daily, Ereader News Today, Pixel of Ink and (for free books) Freebooksy and Free Kindle Books and Tips. But don’t rule out courting the help of rising newcomers to the world of promoting to reader lists, such as Today’s Ereader Buzz and Bookblast. I predict that plenty more of these advertising sites will be needed to meet readers’ demand for deals, and authors demand for advertising that results in a direct climb up the ranks.

So, what does all this mean for the average indie author?

Ways to capitalise

• Consider diversifying. Many authors are doing an initial 3-month KDP Select run and then branching out into the other sales channels with aggressive promotion to increase exposure in those other channels as well as on Amazon. My strategy for the release of my new novel Cruximis to trial a 3-month stint in Select, followed by making Cruxim available directly to as many platforms as possible and using Smashwords only for distributors such as Sony, Diesel, and Barnes and Noble, which make it difficult for Australian or international authors to go direct. I also plan to check out AllRomance and Omnilit, two other sales channels I’ve heard good reports about but haven’t yet used.
• Create a print edition. Only 25% of the books sold worldwide are ebooks. The remaining 75% are print books.Even if you shift few copies, having a tangible printed book in your hands is something to be proud of. Whether you use Lightning Source, Lulu or CreateSpace, a print edition doesn’t have to cost the bank.
• Sell direct from your website, but remember that while this increases your take-home $$$ it does nothing for your sales rank for online distributors.
• Write for kids, YA and teen markets if that interests you, and consider enhanced ebook formats for markets that might support more bells and whistles.
• Rethink your promotional strategies. Rather than target each new release and then move on, try to focus on the market and peddle all of your books appropriate to a single market in groups or on sites that market frequents. I’m currently in the process of updating my other books to include an excerpt of my new novel and link to it on Amazon. It’s a big job, but every little sale helps. And if you have the money to advertise, then check out those listed above as well as doing smaller promotions on book blogs and reader sites such as Goodreads, or targeted advertising on Facebook.
• And keep on keep on with getting reviews. It’s time consuming and sometimes heart-breaking, but it will help sell your book to readers who might have no clue yet who you are, and they just might become permanent fans.

Most of all, keep on writing, reading and growing as an indie author and I wish you success and sales in 2013.

Featured image by  Some rights reserved by JasonLangheine

For most writers, anonymity is the biggest hurdle they face. The open nature of digital distribution can be a double-edged sword; there are 1.1 million titles in the Kindle Store after all.

While the virtual shelves are endless, and while readers have demonstrated an increased appetite for reading (and hoarding) once they switch to e-books, the spotlight is limited. There can only ever be 100 books in the Top 100. The major sites (like Ereader News Today or Pixel of Ink) will only feature a limited amount of books per day. There is only one Kindle Daily Deal.

Visibility is a continual challenge, and, when we look at that problem a little closer, it’s not radically different to the challenges faced by a new print release in bricks-and-mortar stores. Let me explain.

A new print release will only get a sales window of a few weeks to prove itself. If it falls flat, it will be yanked from the shelves and replaced with something else. At that point it will be warehoused, or returned to the publisher. Even if it’s the former, the sales potential of the title will be greatly curtailed and it will likely be returned in due course anyway.

How is this phenomenon replicated with e-books and online bookselling? Curtailed visibility. When you publish an e-book on Amazon, for example, your title is eligible for something called the Hot New Releases list.

The HNR list is a function of the Best Seller List, limited to books that have been release in the last 30 days (as well as pre-orders). Like the Best Seller List, readers can drill down by genre and sub-genre. This, for example, is the HNR list for Historical Romance.

Getting on the HNR list (especially the first page or two) is a real driver of sales and should be part of any launch strategy. As it is limited to books released in the last 30 days (and pre-orders), it’s much easier to qualify for than the Best Seller list. Taking the above example, to hit the Best Seller list for Historical Romance, you need a rank of around #2000 (which translated to selling roughly 50 books a day), but to hit the back of the HNR list, you only need a rank of #13,000 or so (roughly 10 books a day).

Naturally, once your book has been out longer than 30 days, and you no longer qualify for the HNR list, your sales will drop as you’re no longer benefiting from that visibility; if readers don’t see your book, they can’t buy it.

Amazon’s HNR list (and there are similar lists on the other retailers) is just one way that it regulates churn – the frequency with which lists will be “refreshed” with alternative titles. Retailers always want some level of churn so that readers won’t be faced with the same books ad nauseum. They particularly want heavy readers to be tempted by new titles each time they log in.

Get in the good books on the popularity list

Another way that Amazon manage visibility and churn is with the much-misunderstood Popularity list. If you click on that link, you will notice it looks quite similar to the Best Seller list but the order of books is different.

The Best Seller list is ordered by Sales Rank and the only thing that affects ranking is sales (despite popular beliefs to the contrary surrounding reviews, free downloads, price etc.). It’s a weighted average, with more recent sales being given most value, and historical sales counting for very little. It’s supposed to be updated hourly, but there’s often a lag. Sales normally take a few hours to affect your ranking, but, again, that depends on the current glitchiness of the system.

The Popularity list is very different. Ranking is (currently) calculated using a rolling 30-day average of your sales, with no greater weight given to more recent sales. This is a radical difference that rewards consistent sellers over those who spike and fade. Other crucial factors are free downloads (which are worth one tenth of a paid sale), and price (more expensive books are given a greater weighting and 99c books are now actively discriminated against).

Why does the Popularity list matter? Amazon pushes readers towards it. On the homepage of the Kindle Store (pictured right), the lists you see take you to the Popularity list rather than the Best Seller list. On top of that, if you are browsing the Kindle Store from a device – rather than a computer – you tend to get pushed to the Popularity List instead. Finally, for readers using the search box, results are displayed in order of Popularity.

The net result is that a huge amount of readers browse the Popularity lists (which are broken down into the same categories as the Best Seller lists), and appearing high in your category has a really noticeable effect on sales. Conversely, dropping down the Popularity lists is like attaching weights to your book, and it will, in turn, plummet down the Best Seller lists.

If you had a sales spike in the last six months (e.g. after a big free run or being featured by Ereader News Today or Pixel of Ink) you will know what effect a sudden surge of visibility can have on your sales. However, you might have also noticed a huge drop-off in sales about a month after your spike.

Because of the rolling 30-day average that’s used to calculate the lists, once that sales spike is more than a month old, your book will “cliff” and plummet down the Popularity lists. That decreased visibility leads to less people buying your book, which in turn affects Sales Rank, and pretty quickly your book gets sucked back into the primordial ranking ooze.

Let’s return to our putative new e-book release. In its second month, it faces the double whammy of losing HNR visibility, and gets further oxygen removed by being pushed down the Popularity list (because of the lost sales from not qualifying for the HNR list anymore, and the launch-week sales no longer being part of the rolling 30-day average).

The effect is not too dissimilar to the limited window a print release has in bricks-and-mortar stores. However, there is one crucial difference: e-books don’t get warehoused, and they don’t get returned to the publisher.

In other words, you have the opportunity to reverse that trend.

How to get from the bottom back to the top

There are many ways to skin this particular cat. A new release is best of all, but even the most prodigious writers won’t be publishing something every 30 days. As such, if self-publishers want to regularly breathe new life into old releases, they must engage in some form of promotion.

There are many options here, but much of them are either a waste of time, or money, or both. Having tried pretty much everything at this point, the most effective forms of promotion (for me) involve a limited time sale, a group promo (like this one I’m currently involved in), a free run, an ad on sites like Ereader News Today or Pixel of Ink, or some combination of same.

Promotion gets a bad name among writers because it’s considered a time suck – something that cuts into (precious) writing time. But none of the above strategies require much time, and most (aside from an ad spot) don’t require any money (and the right ad spot will make you money). I tend to avoid any promotional activity which has a significant time cost (and those that do tend to have negligible results anyway).

Applying these strategies will prevent your books from withering on the vine, giving them crucial bursts of visibility which will increase sales and keep your titles high on the Popularity lists (and, in turn, the Best Seller lists).

(EDIT: Prompted by the comments, I should note that I’m not saying that authors must come up with a promotional wheeze for each title every 30 days. Pretend we are talking about fuel efficiency, and I’m saying the optimum speed you should drive at is, say, 47 miles per hour. It doesn’t mean you should (or could) always drive at that speed, but that’s the optimum for saving fuel.)

My sales and earnings have increased month-by-month this year, and I finally broke the 1,000 books barrier in August, then pulled in even more money in September. Let’s Get Digital (currently on sale at 99c) regularly appears at the top of its category, and A Storm Hits Valparaiso (currently free) has hit the Top 20 in the much more competitive Historical Fiction category.

However, for both titles, their time at top is usually short-lived. Even when I’ve been at top of the Best Seller list for my genre, I’ve been nowhere on the respective Popularity list. This is partly because I’m competing against books who have recently been on a free run.

As I explained above, those free downloads are worth one-tenth of a sale on the Popularity list. Every day, books coming off a successful KDP Select free run (i.e. those that garnered thousands of downloads), would appear above me on the Popularity list, pushing me down.

It became pretty clear that without regularly garnering thousands of free downloads myself, the sales potential of my books would be limited – as I wasn’t able to maximize any hard-won visibility.

First, I attempted to mimic KDP Select free runs by getting Amazon to price-match a book that was free elsewhere. I made my short stories If You Go Into The Woods and Transfection free and they got over 20,000 downloads between them in a matter of days. So far so good. The only problem was getting them to return to the paid listings, which, in the case of Transfection, took weeks.

A few months later, I tried again with Let’s Get Digital which got over 25,000 downloads in a few days, but was a little sluggish in returning to the paid listings. As such its bounce was muted – whereas a book written by a friend with identical download numbers ended up shifting hundreds of copies the following week.

When KDP Select was announced, I was dead against it. I objected to the limited-pot model of compensation, and, particularly, the exclusivity requirement. I’m more of a pragmatist than an idealist, and while I’m still against a limited-pot model on principle, in practical terms it has worked out quite well.

In any event, that wasn’t a deciding factor in staying out. The exclusivity requirement was. At the time, between 15% and 20% of my e-book sales were from Smashwords, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo – so it made sense to stay out. At the time.

More recently, e-book sales outside of Amazon have been in the low single digits. While sales on Amazon grew at an excellent rate, sales elsewhere dropped to near-nothing – despite my best efforts. (I wrote about why the environment is so challenging outside of Amazon here.)

As I gained a greater understanding of the algorithms that feed into things like Sales Rank, Best Seller lists, Hot New Releases lists, and the Popularity lists, it was clear that the best way to maximize my sales would be to enroll in KDP Select – particularly now that sales elsewhere have dried up, and I don’t seem to be able to resuscitate them.

A couple of weeks ago, I enrolled two shorts in KDP Select and tried out my first free run. While shorts are a harder sell (particularly in terms of getting featured on the big sites that really drive download numbers), the results were positive enough to convince me to enroll a full-length book.

A Storm Hits Valparaiso went on its first free run recently, and almost cracked the Top 100. For now, Let’s Get Digital is staying out – as that still sells moderately outside of Amazon. And I’ll consider each title for enrollment (and removal) on a case-by-case basis.

Ultimately, I don’t want my books to be exclusive to Amazon. I view this as a short-term arrangement. Quite frankly, the deficiencies at the other retailers (in terms of search, lists, categories etc.) make it incredibly difficult for self-publishers to gain traction (either by accident or design). I expect that to change, but it will likely take some time.

Until then, I’m going to maximize my sales on Amazon.

Note: Dave is currently working on the follow-up to Let’s Get Digital (working title: Let’s Get Visible) which will go into a lot more detail on things like visibility, Amazon algorithms, and the Popularity lists. The aim of the book is to give experienced self-publishers a selection of promotional tools that are genuinely effective, and don’t eat into writing time. Sign up to Dave’s mailing list to be the first to hear of the book’s release,  here. Your email will never be shared, and you will only receive messages about new releases.

Featured imageSome rights reserved by chrismar

By now, we all know that we have to write great content to begin with, and then go over it carefully, submit it to betas and then have it edited and formatted. We know that hiring a skilled, professional cover artist will make our book visually appealing. Most of us know that we have several publishing options, from Kindle Direct Publishing, Select, Smashwords, Apple iBooks Author, print copies using Create Space and their extended distribution option, to Lulu to Lightning Source, to another Print on Demand company or a short offset print run. But what I am seeing is that some people don’t know what to do once the book is finished, has been through the mill of editors and formatters (and through the Meatgrinder for Smashwords’ indies), and is available either online or in stores.

Many of us have a Field of Dreams mentality about our books: just publish it and the readers will come. So once our book has been out for a few days and it has sold only a handful of copies, we rightly  panic and ask what more we need to do. The bad news is that the game is still so new that few can say with any certainty what will definitely help you increase sales. But the good news is that in 8 easy steps, you can at least start putting your book in front of readers. .

1. Let everyone know you have published a book.

This seems self-explanatory, right? Well duh, Karin. I’m sure even those pups on planet Pluto know that by now. I’m so proud I’ve been shouting it to the universe. Great! But how have you gone about that?
Did you tell them HOW to get hold of your book and include a link to all of your book’s many formats?
Did you say, “Don’t have a Kindle, no problem, here’s a link to Amazon’s app download site, which lets you easily download FREE apps so you can read my new book on your phone or on your laptop, PC or iPod?”
Did you let them know that they can order a print copy from Book Depository  (if you’re listed there via Create Space’s Extended Distribution) and pay no postage? Or that you’re on B&N or iTunes? Did you post it to your Facebook page? Twitter? Google+? LinkedIn or Pinterest?
Did you gift it to your besties via Amazon gifting? (If you don’t know how to do this, go to your book’s page and click on the “Give as a Gift” button over near the “Buy this Book” button. Then enter your friend’s email address. It couldn’t be simpler. It will cost you the retail price, but you will get your royalty and it will increase your book’s rank once your friend accepts the gift.)

If you haven’t done those things, you need to. If you are able to (if you’re selling print books from your own home or website too), give people a discount for being earlybird buyers, or for buying in bulk, but be aware that you really want to drive traffic to Amazon in the early days so that you can get on a hot new release list.

2. Join Amazon’s Author Central and update your bio and RSS feed

You will need to complete different author central profiles for Amazon.com, Amazon.uk, Amazon.fr etc. Also, quicksmart, pop on over and sign up for Goodreads, LibraryThing and Shelfari.Will you use them all? Probably not. You might stop by occasionally, unless you’ve figured out how to generate more hours in the day than us mere mortals. But it can’t hurt to be there. These are just other venues for you to showcase your wares.

You will need to sign up for the Author program for these sites (usually a process of emailing them) so you can add your own books and covers. Whatever you do, when you add your book, don’t review it yourself or give it a star rating. We’ve all been there—I did it myself and so did several other authors I know when first starting out— but it is bad form and will not win you fans, and you’ll only have to remove it later at the risk of scorn and public shaming. You can then join discussion groups about books in your genre.

Remember these are reader sites. Put on your reader face. Talk about books you love and interact with people who are in your core demographic. If people like you, they’ll notice that your bio says you’re an author and, because people are naturally curious and want to know if you’re any good, they’ll read your book. They might even review it and add it to a list, such as Amazing Indie Authors.

Author Central can also link to your blog, Twitter and Facebook feeds.

3. Create an overview of your perfect customer

This outlines your perfect reader’s demographic: their age, occupation, favorite authors, favorite bands, favorite pastimes, disposable income. Who are the people who will read your book and love it? I know this sounds like an exercise in WTF? But it is the best way to make sure that your later marketing efforts are going to be targeting the right people: potential readers. To make it super easy, here’s a prepared form for discovering your demographic (Form -Demographic). Now, think about where your readers hang out online. Are they on Wattpad? Are they commenting on Huffington Post articles, are they in the “I Like Big Butts and I Cannot Lie” forum waxing lyrical over their fascination with Kim Kardashian’s booty? Are they crime freaks who are visiting blogs about high-profile murder cases. Where are they loitering and lurking? You need to know this, because you need to  go to these places and interact there or advertise there (without being creepy about it) and because you need to …

4. Blog about whatever interests your audience!

Karin, really! I just wrote a book.  A whole book. And now you want me to write more. And write regularly, and write randomly? Where do you get off?
Well, I get off at stop: “Are you a writer, or what?” Because if you are, then write, goshdarnit. Write more books, but also write blog posts that will attract your audience. You don’t have to blog every day, or even every other day, or even every week when (and especially not when you’re trying to hold down a novel and a job). When you blog, think about SEO (search engine optimization, which is a fancy name for using words your readers are likely to google). Don’t be sneaky about it, but blog about subjects that your fans are likely to be interested in.

A case in point: A successful indie author I know from several online groups  (*cough* Sarah Woodbury  *cough*) writes historical fiction with a Welsh flavor, and is very good at it too. In the course of writing her books and indulging her own passions, she naturally became very knowledgeable about ancient Wales, and even though not all of that research fitted in her books, she began to blog about the topic over at her blog. How do you think that went for her?

It went awesome! It drove enthusiasts to her blog, which in turn drove them to her books on Amazon. She blogs. Often. (And yes, I don’t blog often. One point I would make is that you shouldn’t blog at the expense of writing. If you’ve got a half-finished book, finish it).

5. Establish a marketing/advertising budget and devise a marketing plan

Your plan should include advertising opportunities, ongoing review opportunities, radio and television opportunities (or times to generate press releases seeking such), guest blogs on other people’s sites, and any other promotional ideas you can convince someone to let you do (book signings, talks at your local library etc). Just like any business venture—and if you’ve invested money in the creation of your book and you expect to make a return on that, then a business venture is exactly what this is—you need to put in some capital right up front. Sure there are plenty of free marketing activities, such as adding your name to posts that enable self-promotion on sites such as a Kindle Boards, Mobilereads, Goodreads or writers’ forums. There are great sites that will post tweets for you if you’re a member and there are plenty of writer-friendly sites that have some promotional scope, but most of these attract other authors, not readers.

When it comes to talking to your core demographic—readers of your genre—you’re best off advertising. Advertising doesn’t have to be expensive, although them most popular sites (those with the biggest return) will set you back a few hundred dollars. Some books earn that out; others don’t, but it is difficult to  measure exposure.

At Indie Review Tracker, we are currently running a special on ads and will advertise your book for as little as ten dollars a month. I know plenty of other sites (in fact there are a stack in the Tracker for registered members) that advertise for less than $30 a month. You might also like to join a paid author blog or hire an online author’s assistant to take care of some promotional tasks for you. I would suggest that you set aside  a minimum of $150 for your first year for advertising, but if you want to use some of the really powerful advertising tools, such as Pixel of Ink or Kindle Nation Daily, expect to have a marketing budget of around $300+ for your first year.

6. Ask for reviews and send interested reviewers a free copy of your book in the format they request

It is wise to do this before you think of advertising or doing a free run on your book, because books with at least three reviews seem to get higher free downloads. Don’t ask your mum or your sister or your spouse or your kids. Readers can see right through the nepotism and they won’t believe them anyway. You need some credible, independent reviews that will help impress potential readers.

There is a lot of hoo-ha about the number of reviews you have and the star-rating. Many advertising sites will only accept books with a certain review rating (say 4 stars or more). There is some talk that Amazon will also start to actively promote your book once you reach a certain (read high—more than 50 or 100) number of reviews that are highly rated. I’m not sure about this. It makes sense that Amazon wants to promote product a lot of other people like, but I think quality of reviews is as important as quantity. You want reviews that are thoughtful and considered and from people who are trusted. For this, you need to find reviewers. That’s were Indie Review Tracker is an invaluable resource. Register to access a slew of reviewers with minimal fuss and searching. Currently, we have more than 230 review sites, advertisers, indie service providers and collaborative authors listed on the tracker, and they’re all searchable by genre and a number of other parameters so you can easily find and contact reviewers. We’re adding more all the time. You then make a To-do List (using the feature on the site) to keep track of where you’re submitted and when they will review. Ideally, your goal is to get at least 6 good reviews in the first month or so of your book’s release.

7. Once you’ve got reviews, consider doing a giveaway

Not all authors agree with giving away their books as a marketing strategy, but few would dispute that it gives your book a little kick up the charts and temporarily increases your book’s visibility. If you’re in Kindle Direct Publishing’s Select program, which means your book is exclusive to Kindle, you can run 5 days of free promotions in a three-month period, so go can ahead and start scheduling your free days using the “manage promotions” button in the dropdown menu on your Author Central “bookshelf”. Choose a time at least 3 weeks in advance, because once you have a freebie scheduled, you’ll need to follow this list of sites to submit your freebie to, to ensure you maximize your free book’s potential and get it listed on some awesome free books sites that will skyrocket your downloads (if you’re lucky).

If you’re not in Select, you need to do things the old-fashioned way. This way, you reduce your price on Smashwords, which will push your book out to its distributors. OR reduce your price on Barnes and Noble (if you’re not with Smashwords) and then alert Amazon of the cheaper price using the “Tell us about a lower price” function on your book’s Amazon page. This method can take time and is unreliable. It might take weeks for Amazon to price match the free  price elsewhere, or they might decide not to. Once you want to go off free again, it might take weeks again for that to happen. Be prepared for unpredictability.

Assuming you’re not in the Select program, you can also run giveaways on your blog, or via Goodreads. When you do giveaways, mention that you’d love reviews … but don’t be a kiss-ass! The aim is to give something for nothing. If you get a good review here or there, that’s great. If you get a bad review out of a giveaway (and these reviews sting the most) suck it up and curse in the privacy of your own private “What are they TALKING about! I’m the best author in the world” echo chamber.

8. Have at it. Keep writing your next book and keep promoting.

Follow your marketing plan and keep coming back to the Indie Review Tracker frequently to check for more review sites as we add them or to look for new advertising opportunities. To show how important it is. I did no advertising or promotion at all for my latest release Pancakes on Sunday. I didn’t even send it to reviewers. The reason: I was busy with this website, writing some commissioned jobs, as well catching up with relatives,  running a household and trying to finish a novel. I wondered what sort of difference I might see in sales. And let me tell you: it shows. My sales for that book are in the toilet and it is way down in the 800,000s somewhere. Promotion matters. It is time-consuming, but necessary.

If you have the time to write guest articles, why not visit our page on writing for Indie Review Tracker too, or consider our book review showcase if you have a five-star review and will ask the reviewer if they’ll allow it to be used on this site. Above all, stay positive. Self-publishing can take a lot of time and energy, and it is rare that success arrives overnight. Be proud of your achievement. You finished a book, you published it, and you’re selling it. Not everybody can say that.

Sometimes, authors approach me with perfectly “fine” writing. Grammatically, it’s all good. Words are correctly spelled, and there’s nothing overtly wrong with the writer’s voice except that it lacks a certain vigor and vim. Usually, that is because the writer has failed to employ all of the tools available to make their writing sparkle, leaving their writing bland and perfunctory. Below are some useful literary devices that can add another layer to your work and create subtext, foreshadowing, allusion, and depth.

How to spice up your writing

Allegory: A device whereby a story or example is used to represent wider human themes, truths, or behavior. Fables are allegorical, so are parables. Sometimes your subplot may have allegorical elements that reflect the wider theme or outcome of your plot.

Analogy: A kind of extended metaphor in which one thing is compared to a similar object, often several times in different ways. For instance, you might compare a relationship to a sinking ship in a series of interwoven metaphors.

Alliteration: Similar sounds at the start of word (like the repeated S sounds that begin this sentence) create alliteration. It can be used to poetic effect, but be careful not to overdo it. Unintentional alliteration can make writing sound childish because children’s books often make good use of this device. E.g. The westerly wind whistled through the willows as Walter walked toward the wily wombat.

Assonance: A pattern of repeated sounds (especially similar vowel sounds) that enhances euphony. E.g. “The woodland owls hooted ominously” or “A will-o-the-wisp slips listlessly through the glade” (actually, the last example demonstrates both assonance—in the repetition of the “i “sound—and consonance—in the recurring “w” and “l” sounds).

Conceit: When metaphor or figurative language compares one object or event to another that is very different or far more grandiose. A good example comes from Emily Dickinson: “There is no frigate like a book.” Be careful using conceit in your writing; sometimes it can just make readers go “huh?”

Connotation: When choosing words, be mindful of whether they have positive or negative connotation. Connotation is a hidden or underlying meaning or bias. For instance, scent, smell, odor, fragrance, perfume, and stench all refer to the olfactory senses, but some (odor, smell, stench) are negative, while others (fragrance, perfume, scent) are positive. Word choice and connotation can determine mood.

Consonance: Repeated similar sounds of consonants. Consonance is often used to add poesy to the end of sentences with “eye rhymes,” e.g. The time was past; the life was lost.” This could be considered an example of assonance and consonance, with the repetition of the “i” vowel sound and the “st” consonant pairing, and also of parallelism.

Echoes: These are words (often unusual ones) that are used several times at key intervals to refer to an earlier situation or to create an “echo” in the reader’s mind. They are often used in foreshadowing. G.R.R Martin echoes “Winter is coming” throughout A Game of Thrones to foreshadow and also to portend danger, as well as to infer the cynical realism of the Stark family, which uses this phrase as its motto.

Euphony: A harmonious arrangement of words to make them pleasing to the ear. When you read your work aloud, you will notice either euphony (it reads well and sounds good with pleasing meter/rhythm) or discordance—it sounds awkward or jarring.

Foreshadowing: When language, analogy, or events hint at, or speculate about, later events, you have foreshadowing. For instance, some danger may befall a character and although tragedy is avoided in that instance, the incident will hint at a greater danger yet to come. Foreshadowing is best used sparingly and with subtlety, rather than being too overt. Motif is also often used in foreshadowing. The sight of a crow, for instance, may portend danger to come.

Inference: Inference is present when a word or object is used to suggest a deeper underlying meaning. Character names often infer more about the character themselves. For instance, the surname Stark in G.R.R Martin’s Sing of Ice and Fire novels infers much about the family’s mindset, lifestyle, and beliefs.

Literary Allusion: When a text makes reference to another literary text or suggests that a character is akin to another fictional character, you are seeing literary allusion in action. A book I recently edited, written by a best-selling indie author who was picked up by Amazon’s Thomas & Mercer imprint, describes one character as “Iago with a buzzcut”—a clever reference to the scheming character from Shakespeare’s Othello, but with a modern twist.

Metaphor: This is substituting one object for another (but, unlike conceit, usually one with similar properties). E.g. “She was always crying—a leaky vase filled with dead flowers.” Metaphor figuratively implies that an object IS something else. Its sister is simile, in which something is said to be “like” something else. E.g. “I’m like a dog with a bone. I never can let go of anything.”

Meter: This term usually relates to poetry but is also relevant to prose. Meter is the rhythm created by the number of stressed and unstressed syllables in a passage of writing.

Metonymy: When one word is used to represent another word or concept it is closely related to, it is known as Metonymy. The word is derived from the Greek meta (after) and onymia (name) and translates as “a change of name.” For example: The Crown is used to represent the British Monarchy and the Queen; Broadway is sometimes used to refer to the theater industry as a whole; and the White House is often used synonymously to mean US government.

Mood: Mood helps define genre and can also emphasize theme. Word choice is the biggest contributor to mood. Compare  “The girl ambled through the shady forest” with “The girl hurried through the dim woods.” The second sounds ominous; the first as if she is almost skipping along oblivious—even though both say almost the same thing.

Motif: A recurring idea or event woven into a story is a motif. Although separate to theme, a motif can infer aspects of theme. If the theme is freedom, a recurring motif throughout might be flying birds. If the theme is revenge, the color green might operate as a motif.

Oxymoron: When two contrasting words or concepts are fused into one, E.g. A false truth, or a loud silence.

Paradox: A statement that contradicts itself but is nevertheless true. E.g. “Everything changes; everything stays the same,” or “The child is father to the man.”

Parallelism: Parallelism occurs when syntax, phrases, clauses, or even sentences, take a similar sequence or format in order to express similarity. E.g. All wisdom comes from lovers, leaders, and learners. All dissent comes from cowards, critics, and cynics.

Personification: Inanimate objects bestowed with human traits or qualities are said to be personified. E.g. “Spring wears her many-flowered gown” or “The house smiled; its broken railings like gappy teeth.” (There’s both personification and simile in the last). A point to note is that spring would not normally be capitalized if you’re talking about the season, but when you use personification, you would capitalize it. Similarly, “Mother Nature groaned.”

Synecdoche: Closely related to Metonymy, Synecdoche is when one element of an object is used to refer to the entire associated object and concept. Substituting a heart for an entire person, for instance. Sonnets often use synecdoche, and metaphysical poet John Donne was particularly fond of it. Another example would be where a character becomes defined by a single action, such as the Smoking Man from X-files. The saying, “All hands on deck!”—whereby “hands” are substituting for the actual workers themselves—is another example of synecdoche. Using “steel” for sword, “wheels” for car, or “threads” for clothes are other examples.

Of course, this is just a selection of the most commonly deployed literary devices. By all means, share  your favorites in the comments and stop by to tell me about the best examples of such devices you’ve witnessed in indie books.

CURED by Donna Huston Murray

This month’s featured NEW RELEASE is Cured by Donna Huston Murray.

Cancer survivor and ex-cop, Lauren Beck, is surrounded by hostility. Her friends, phone, home, credit and credibility are all gone, severed with surgical precision by an enemy intent on framing her for murder. Is it one of the insureds she was hired to investigate? The fellow employee she upstaged? Does the daughter of her landlady and dear friend, Corinne Wilder, hate her even more than she thought?  Whoever targeted Lauren Beck–beware! She knows how to fight for her life.

Donna saw that I was thinking about offering this service and gave me a nudge into starting it a little earlier than I had planned, which just goes to show that it pays to be proactive! She sent me her cover, designed by Daniel Middleton at Scribe Freelance, which grabbed my attention, and she included some early reviews. I could immediately see that this was an author with the skills and  the promotional chops to take her novels far. Here’s what some of her early readers have said about an advance review copy of Cured:

“[Murray] handles loss and death’s unfairness with aplomb, rendering it moving without being depressing. Combined with a tightly woven and believable plot, the story moves at a great pace … Beck’s toughness and humanity are so well drawn that when she was without a place to stay, I ached to take her in.” Judith Skillings, author of the Rebecca Moore series

“Beck is a genuine and complex character with just enough humor and vulnerability to make her immediately likeable. This is an intriguing mystery with no drag in pace or suspense. Beck faces one obstacle after another, and just as one seems to be overcome, another takes its place. But she perseveres until she uncovers a crime so heinous that it shocks even her jaded sensibilities. CURED is a wonderful start to a new series by Donna Huston Murray. I am already hooked on Lauren Beck and cannot wait for the next installment.” Kathleen Anne Barrett, President of the Delaware Valley Sisters in Crime, is the author of the Milwaukee Mystery Series

“Lauren Beck is a welcome addition to the female investigator circuit and readers of Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum and Sue Grafton’s Kelsey Milhorne series will love her – she is funny, smart, creative and thoughtful.   As both a cancer survivor and a prosecutor involved in law enforcement, I already love Beck’s straightforward, no-nonsense, funny strong voice –  and I can’t wait to see what she does next.”   Nancy Beam Winter, Prosecutor and former Asst. District Attorney

So be sure to grab a copy of Donna’s book Cured today from: 
Amazon
Amazon UK
Smashwords ebook
B&N Nook
B&N print book

If you would like to feature your new release on Indie Review Tracker showcase, keep your eyes peeled for a release on the site next week that will include a form for New Release requests. The books chosen are entirely at my discretion, based on my assessment of the cover, the sample and the blurb. I’m a one-person band here at Indie Review Tracker, so sometimes even celebrating one new release a month will be a stretch, so please be patient and understanding if I can’t feature your title.