book promotion
All the Options to Build Your Email List
Ever wanted to see the big picture? All the options laid out so you can make an informed decision?
As I was coaching an author the other day, I realized that I haven’t written a blog post that covers my full email list building strategy.
So today, we’re going to remedy that!
In any marketing efforts, you want to make sure you’re doing things to reach both your Existing Readers and New Readers. The good news is that if you’re growing your email list effectively, it will be a powerful tool to reach your existing readers, as well as introducing new readers to you and converting them to fans eager to purchase your next book.
Sound too good to be true? I won’t promise it’s easy or completely painless, but once you have your sign-up forms and your automated welcome sequence in place, most of the hard work is done.
Existing Readers:
People who sign up for your email list after reading a piece of your writing tend to be a high “quality” subscriber. Meaning they are likely to open the emails you send and click the links in the email. They are likely your target reader.
The two best methods to capture these readers on your email list are: Read the rest of this entry »
A Few of My Favorite Tools…
For authors today, we have so many fantastic tools to connect with readers – tools not available even a half-century ago. Things like websites, email lists, social media, giveaways, and more!
I thought it might be fun to take a moment to look at some of these helpful tools, and I’ll share what I use and why. Read the rest of this entry »
This year I’m doing something different to promote my books…
One of my goals this year is to be more intentional with each book launch.
A nice part of being an indie author is that you can do a “soft launch,” which means you hit the Publish button on Amazon, then send a note to your email list about the new book and move on to write the next one. It’s nice to have that flexibility, but honestly, it’s effective only in maintaining a ho-hum writing career.
When I did my annual review of book sales for 2017, I noticed a very interesting trend. The books where I did a full launch for the release have sold a significantly higher number of copies per month, even after the launch. Almost 50% more, in some cases. Read the rest of this entry »
Troubleshooting Facebook Ads
Facebook Ads can be finicky things.
Getting an ad to perform well (meaning actually sell books at a cost per click that doesn’t break the bank) can be a complicated formula. In theory, it should be simple:
- One part good ad copy (that’s attractive to your target reader)
- One part finding the right audience (again think about your target reader)
- One part good landing page (your Amazon book page or other sales page)
So if you’ve got all those things right, your FB ad should perform well! 
But what happens if it doesn’t? How do you know which part of the formula isn’t quite right?
Here are a few tips to troubleshoot: Read the rest of this entry »
How to Grow Your Email List with InstaFreebie
I’ve been doing some new things to grow my reader email list recently, and together they’ve been adding between 30 – 50 new emails per day. Over the next few weeks, I’ll share what I’m doing.
For today’s post, let’s start with the simplest to set-up: A Giveaway through InstaFreebie.com.
The last I’d heard of InstaFreebie, it was a site where you could upload an epub file of a book you wanted to give to readers, then share the InstaFreebie link with the person you wanted to receive the free book. They could retrieve the file from InstaFreebie and sideload it onto their eReader. I have a different service I use to share ereader files for giveaways (I use BookFunnel and LOVE them, mostly because of their high level of customer support for my readers), so InstaFreebie hasn’t been on my radar for a while.
But I received a tip from a Facebook friend that InstaFreebie has a great little program to help authors grow their reader email list. That sounded like something to check out! Read the rest of this entry »
The Ambitious Author 