Paid Promos

Results will vary depending on genre, time of the year, if you're marketing a standalone vs series or full price, discounted, or freebie. I've covered some of my favorite resources for finding paid promos like this post by Kindlepreneur about sites to use to promote your free Amazon books. https://kindlepreneur.com/list-sites-promote-free-amazon-books/ The options listed there are…

Pirating Sites—The Rampant Rash of Writers

From small fries to world renown authors, pirating and plagiarism go hand in hand. Some "writers" take snippets and weave it into a story while others just straight up copy an entire book and claim they wrote it. Thousands of readers flock to pirating sites that remind us of Napster or LimeWire (for those too…

Rapid Release

Rapid release is the idea of releasing books in a series in a short time frame. It comes with a host of myths, pros and cons. What's the purpose? This capitalizes on readers attention spans and market trends. Don't think this works? Look at Netflix. They drop all the episodes of a season at one…

ARC Team File Management

ARC (Advanced Reader Copy) teams are some authors bread and butter. It helps expands word of mouth, gives loyal readers the chance to be part of the "me first" movement, and can stack your release week with reviews. Building a solid team can be hard: finding people, handling the files, making sure they adhere to…

Refining Marketing

There are lots of ways to market books. Paid ads, newsletter swaps, social media blasts … the list is long. When I first started publishing, I didn’t understand the correlation between genre, ad, cover, blurb, and 10% preview. I thought it was all about the reviews. Most readers won’t know your name. What you want/think…

Updating Your Files on Amazon

I think there's a misconception with Amazon and updating ebooks. Yes, it is rather easy to update the file through the KDP dashboard, but that doesn't send out a corrected version to the countless buyers who bought it until that newest version went "live." When you update an eBook on Amazon, only the buyers who…

Free On Amazon

Whatever the path led you here, there's only 2 ways to get a book listed as free on Amazon. Your Book Is In Kindle Select (KU) If your story is in Kindle Unlimited, you'll have access to the Promote and Advertise option for the story. Click it and you'll see the time you have left…

Magical Number of Reviews

We’ve seen posts like this circulating on Facebook and Twitter. Authors holding hard to the line that there is a magical number of reviews when Amazon does these magical things. “Also Bought” and “You Might Like” lists These aren’t determined by a magical review count. When your book has enough sales, Amazon’s AI determines, based…

Approaching Book Bloggers

Book Bloggers can be your best friend or a headache that you tackle because you don’t know where else to turn for reviews. Some authors find the whole process intimidating and others find it a time-consuming sinkhole. Other authors find working with bloggers the magic that gains them new readers and valid/credible reviews. I hope…

Why Do Stores Tear Off Book Covers?

If you've never worked in a bookstore or for a retailer and noticed what happens to magazines and books, then this might come as a shock. When they are "returned" to the publisher, the covers removed from the books/magazines and shipped in place of shipping the whole book. Stores don't do this for all books.…