[wjlane1985]

Hello all,

So my first book has been live since the start of the year and the downloads have been trickling along - I've had around 300+ downloads so far with no advertising or marketing whatsoever (although I have used my KDP select free period already). I've got a few early reviews and am on all the necessary social channels, I also have my own website set up on which I blog.

However the sales have now completely dried up to the point where I've had no downloads at all for about a week. Time to think about marketing?

I've done a lot of reading and a lot of research into my options but I want to know what actually works from the people who have been there and done that.

Whats worth investing in and what isn't?
Whats is effective and affordable?
Whats should be avoided?

Any advice on promotion from the experienced will be invaluable to a noob like me.

Thanks All

 

[ireaderreview]

My Recommendations would be

1) Get as many reviews as you can. Honest reviews.

2) Apply to all the sites that do book promotions for free. They are a great and heavily under-utilized resource.

3) If you aren't in all stores, then get into all stores. Competition is MUCH less in other stores and they're creeping up to 35% to 40% market share now.

 

[Lydniz]

Hi, I'm not a marketing expert but I've just had a quick look at your book and I can barely read the Look Inside as the type is so small. I'm not sure why that happens but you might want to take a look at your formatting, in case people are being put off by the small type.

 

[PearlEarringLady]

However the sales have now completely dried up to the point where I've had no downloads at all for about a week. Time to think about marketing?

Do you have another book in the pipeline for the foreseeable future? If so, you might want to wait until that's out. Then promote one book and hope for sell-through to the other.

If not, I'd wait until the next Select cycle (April?) and run a countdown promotion, scheduling as many promo sites as you can afford/find. Stack up several each day. If you trawl through the first few pages of the board, you'll find any number of threads where people detail their promotion campaigns, with numbers, so you can get a feel for what promo sites work well and which ones are less effective.

I'd caution against going wide at this stage. If the book's not selling much on Amazon, it won't sell much elsewhere, either, and you've lost the chance of a few borrows. Select/KU gives you increased visibility. With a promo, adding borrows to the mix will definitely help shift copies and boost rankings. Going wide is great for established career authors, but for beginners, KU is definitely helpful (in my opinion).

And keep writing. It's often said that the best marketing for a book is another book, and it's really true. The more books you have out there, the more they feed off each other.

 

[Justawriter]

I like the premise of your book. A few suggestions, as someone already mentioned, the font on your look inside is tiny....I can't read it at all. You are no doubt losing sales because of this. I'd make the font bigger ASAP.

Secondly, I would rework your blurb.....your hook is buried at the bottom.....and not everyone will see it.  You may want to post for suggestions here...and have multiple people weigh in, that seems to really help from what I've seen on other blurbs.

Taking a quick stab at it....here's your before blurb,

Bill Paxley can see the future.
He can see the future and the vast majority of the time he wishes he didn't.
See, people think the future will be a lot better than current evidence would suggest. People think they will be happier, more successful, richer and more content - people think the future holds all the answers and that their dreams will come true someday. Bill can see the future and this is rarely the case.
He uses this gift to make a modest living as a travelling fairground psychic and for many years he has seen the mundane and uneventful futures of his many clients.
Then one day he sees an unprecedented, unprovoked and savage terrorist attack in the future of an overweight & balding insurance manager. He sees a homemade bomb, piles of bodies and a bloody massacre.
He sees all this but he cant tell anyone because nobody believes you when you claim to be able to see the future.
So Bill sets out to stop this madman before he takes hundreds of lives.....


and one possible way to tweak it....this can still be improved, but just to give you an idea,

Bill Paxley can see the future--and the vast majority of the time that is not a good thing.
He uses this gift to make a modest living as a travelling fairground psychic and for many years sees nothing out of the ordinary.

Until one day he sees an unprecedented, unprovoked and savage terrorist attack while reading the future of an overweight insurance manager. He sees a homemade bomb, piles of bodies and a bloody massacre.

What do you do when you know the future, but no one believes you?

 

[C. Gockel]

I agree with everyone here: fix your formatting postehaste!

It is almost as important as cover for selling books (there was a chart showing that a while back.)

And then improve your blurb. Maybe do a few more giveaways to get reviews?

But THEN I would not do any more promotions until you have another book out.

 

[wjlane1985]

Wow, thanks for the feedback people.

Now that you mention it the font is a tad small - upon uploading it seemed fine and readable to me but it is on the tiny side now I've compared it to others. Am rectifying asap.

I'm also experimenting with different blurbs and have tried a few different ones, but will definitely take your notes on board and persevere. 

The sequel is planned for the summer, and subsequent books after that, so perhaps a more long term outlook is advisable.

Thanks again