Book Marketing Show Podcast with Dave Chesson – Details, episodes & analysis

You’ve written your book and the hard work is done, right? Nope! As an author, you’re not just looking to write a book, but you’re hoping to sell that book, too. Our guest today talks about what she did for her launch and how it set her on the path to great book sales, as well as opportunities.

Amy Lyle is an author, comedienne, actor and screenwriter whose book launch kicked off with a party that set her book up for consistent sales and lots of publicity opportunities that followed.

For more information, visit the show notes at https://kindlepreneur.com/e64 

Back in Episode 61, we talked about what it’s like to work with publishers and the differences between legitimate, illegitimate, and vanity presses. But in today’s episode, we talk with an author who has gone the traditional publishing route and self-published. She has also set up her own publishing company.

Anna David became well-known as a freelance writer for magazines and newspapers. When her first novel was picked up, her publisher, unfortunately, ended up in the midst of a scandal, and the book was published under a fake imprint.

Although she received plenty of press, the book did not sell well. This was back in the early 2000s, before everyone, it seems, was on social media. But Anna also realized that unless you are a major celebrity, publishing houses will only do so much for your book.

She found even if the publisher is paying you upfront for the book, you still have to know how to market yourself. She also says it’s important to focus on owning your audience and making sure it’s not an audience you’ll lose should you decide to switch to another publisher or self-publish in the future.

Anna has now become a publisher for others with her friend Kristen McGuiness. She helps new authors establish a writing presence, and she also helps authors with their writing and marketing.

One of the most important lessons to take from this episode is just because you’re able to land a contract with a publishing company, it doesn’t necessarily mean success. Even with traditional publishers, it’s still important you know how to market your book yourself.

For more information about Anna, or any of the resources mentioned, visit the show notes at https://kindlepreneur.com/e63 

One of the most important things you’ll be tasked with as an author is to come up with a title for your book. Many authors think it’ll just come to them. However, after sitting in meetings with publishing companies, I know that doesn’t just happen. Publishers have a process because they know book titles can make all the difference in the sales of that book.

In this solo episode, I talk about using data from the market and how to do research to make sure you come up with a title that grabs the attention of potential readers, how to use similar books as inspiration, and how to test your title.

For more information, visit the show notes at https://kindlepreneur.com/e54

Derek Murphy continues our discussion on book cover design.

We’ve both tried to make our book covers stand out, but many designers will tell you a cliche book cover may do really well because it’s what the audience wants

Derek has spent plenty of time reviewing what kinds of covers work better to convey what the book is about. This translates into more clicks on an ad with a cover that is intriguing to them.

For more information, visit the show notes at https://kindlepreneur.com/e53

It’s important to understand which links Amazon prefers you use for your book and how trying to game the system with a different URL won’t work.

Jesse Lakes, co-founder of Geniuslink, is today’s guest. His service helps authors create links for users to click, which then opens the Amazon store for their country. He talks about the URL Amazon prefers to market your book and why it’s important not to try tweak the link.

For more information, visit the show notes at http://kindlepreneur.com/e52

For new authors without much of a following, the idea of a book marketing service may seem appealing, but you should be wary of them. I’ll be going over some of the things you should think about when it comes to book marketing services, as well as listing some red flags to be aware of if you do decide to use one.

Not all book marketing services are bad, in fact there are some out there that may be able to help with your marketing just fine. Although any good book marketing service will most likely put authors through a submission process to make sure they have the capability to be able to market your book; in fact, many act similarly to a publishing company.

However, nobody is going to better than you at marketing and selling your book because nobody has as much skin in the game. 

For more information, visit the show notes at https://kindlepreneur.com/e51

My response to a recent guest post on Kindlepreneur from John Pinedo about creating a hardcover version of your book and having it sold on Amazon. John used Lulu to create a hardcover version of his book and wrote about it in his guest post, but there are other options for doing this.

There are two guests for this week’s episode, John and Eevi Jones. Eevi, who has also written a guest post on Kindlepreneur, used IngramSpark to create hardcover versions of her children’s books. In the two interviews, we compare the pros and cons of using each platform so you can decide, as an author, which one would work better for you.

For more information, visit the show notes at http://kindlepreneur.com/e50

Fiverr may not be the first place you think of when it comes to where to go to find someone to design a book cover for you, but if you’re on a limited budget it’s not a bad option to look at.

For those who may not know, Fiverr is an online marketplace where people will post jobs they can do that cost as little as $5. There is also a lot listed that is more than $5, but the name comes from the idea that you can find people willing to do the work for little money.

Finding someone to design a book cover on Fiverr can be tricky, but in this episode, I’ll talk about three ways to approach finding an artist in order to get you the book cover you not only want, but is also good quality.

For more information, visit the show notes at https://kindlepreneur.com/e49

Author conferences might seem downright scary to those who have never been. But I can tell you from personal experience that the ones I’ve gone to have had a prolific change in not only the way I write, but also the way I work with others.

In this session of Marketers & Coffee, I’m bringing on my friend Craig Martelle who runs the 20Booksto5k Facebook Group. He’s created a community where authors can share ideas, learn from one another, and grow. But today, we’re talking about author conferences.

Craig is also putting on the 20BookstoVegas Conference in November so he’s a great person to have a chat with about how authors can get the most from these conferences.

For more information, visit the show notes at http://kindlepreneur.com/e48

When Ethan Jones first published his book, he sold five copies the first month. As the years went on, he improved his marketing skills and improved as a writer. He decided after six years to do a complete rewrite, cutting almost 15,000 words, editing chapters, and added a better ending. He also added a cliffhanger so readers would want to move on to the next book in the series.

One thing Ethan did was instead of putting up a new version of the old book and keeping the reviews, he republished the book. Even though the reviews weren't awful, they were at about 3.8 stars, and many of the reviews reflected the old version. When he republished the book, he wanted to start fresh without any of the old reviews.

There are two ways of uploading a new book to Amazon:

• If you decide to make it a new book, you can do what Ethan decided to do and republish it without any of the old reviews.
• The other option is to publish the new book, but contact Amazon to transfer the reviews over.

We’ve talked in past episodes about authors republishing their books with new covers, but Ethan had already changed the cover a few months prior to the new release. He had also changed the description for the book.

Ethan used a three-pronged approach for pre-launch:

• He worked with his list.
• He used paid promotions.
• He contacted author friends for help with promotion.

By the time Ethan was ready to launch his book again, he had about 10,000 readers in his email list, which was incredibly important for him. He asked them to either put a review of the new book if they read the older one and he offered to send them the new version so they could read it and consider leaving a review. He also lowered the price to $0.99, which is a lowest a book can launch at.

In the years of being an author, he had made friends with other authors and reached out to them to add his book to their email newsletter, which helped market the book. He also used AMS ads and Facebook ads, and book promotion sites to help him with his launch.

After all his efforts, the final comparison is his first edition of the book went from 10,000 sales over the course of six years at $2.99 to 1,000 copies during the first two weeks of the new version’s release at $0.99.

Ethan Jones is an Amazon bestselling author of the Justin Hall spy thriller series; The Carrie Chronicles, which features Justin Hall’s partner; the Javin Pierce spy thriller series, and the Jennifer Morgan suspense thriller series.

Ethan is a lawyer and lives in Canada with his wife and son.

Find links to resources in the show notes at http://kindlepreneur.com/e47