Hi everyone,
I just thought I'd seek out your help as I've seen lots of good advice given in this forum. I know the majority of advice is for fiction writers, but you could probably help a non-fiction writer like me get started!
A little background: I released a book under a pen name on KDP, and it immediately gained a reasonable amount of traction. I have since followed up by publishing more books under this pen name, and each book has done alright (combined sales probably amount to $6-700 for month, which isn't bad with minimal marketing).
I decided to write another book on a different topic, so I didn't want to use my original pen name. Unfortunately, I think I hit lucky with the immediate traction from my first books, and I expected similar results for the second one. This just hasn't happened, and my second book has sold 2 Kindle copies in 2 months, and 6 paperbacks (I'm not sure why paperbacks has sold more!).
I've given it a bit of time to see if anything happened organically, as before, but it hasn't so I want to start actively marketing. In my humble opinion, my book is good, it's at the very least on a par with the top selling self-published book in my genre. I just can't work out why one book does incredibly well, while another completely flops. I've put more effort into my sales description and cover (every other cover is generic, and hard to differentiate) but still no sales.
Could anyone give me tips for gaining traction for a new author? I really have no idea where to start.
On a slightly different topic, can anyone tell me how some of the awful 25 page books on Kindle manage to sell so well at $2.99? The content is usually awful, with little value in such short books (not that length is an indicator of quality!). However some do incredibly well, and I have no idea how! If these authors are so good at marketing garbage, I just think how well they could do if they put the time and effort into producing a decent book! Anyway, rant over!!
Thanks in advance for any help kboarders!
I just thought I'd seek out your help as I've seen lots of good advice given in this forum. I know the majority of advice is for fiction writers, but you could probably help a non-fiction writer like me get started!
A little background: I released a book under a pen name on KDP, and it immediately gained a reasonable amount of traction. I have since followed up by publishing more books under this pen name, and each book has done alright (combined sales probably amount to $6-700 for month, which isn't bad with minimal marketing).
I decided to write another book on a different topic, so I didn't want to use my original pen name. Unfortunately, I think I hit lucky with the immediate traction from my first books, and I expected similar results for the second one. This just hasn't happened, and my second book has sold 2 Kindle copies in 2 months, and 6 paperbacks (I'm not sure why paperbacks has sold more!).
I've given it a bit of time to see if anything happened organically, as before, but it hasn't so I want to start actively marketing. In my humble opinion, my book is good, it's at the very least on a par with the top selling self-published book in my genre. I just can't work out why one book does incredibly well, while another completely flops. I've put more effort into my sales description and cover (every other cover is generic, and hard to differentiate) but still no sales.
Could anyone give me tips for gaining traction for a new author? I really have no idea where to start.
On a slightly different topic, can anyone tell me how some of the awful 25 page books on Kindle manage to sell so well at $2.99? The content is usually awful, with little value in such short books (not that length is an indicator of quality!). However some do incredibly well, and I have no idea how! If these authors are so good at marketing garbage, I just think how well they could do if they put the time and effort into producing a decent book! Anyway, rant over!!
Thanks in advance for any help kboarders!