In the part 2 of this series we examine what is actually working in the world of book marketing. Are there ideas that we can adopt to grow our own book sales?

• Jesus Marketing: How I Sold 5000 Books in Four Weeks As a First Time Author (With Less Than 700 Email Subscribers): I was drawn to Taylor Pearson’s story as it highlighted that you don’t need millions or even thousands of email subscribers or YouTube followers to sell your books.
• Amazon Pays $450,000 A Year To This Self-Published Writer: As the author Dawson explains, he takes care to respond to all fan messages nurture their loyalty. He holds in-person and virtual seminars to give writing advice to author – and through all these interactions, he collects names and email addresses building a list of 15,000+ email addresses of loyal followers to whom he disseminates his new works.
• HOW I SOLD 80,000 BOOKS: Book Marketing for Authors (Self Publishing through Amazon and Other Retailers) I haven’t actually read this book by Alinka Rutkowska but the title seems promising.
• Famous Authors Who Have Self Published: All these books have had enormous commercial success such as the The Shack by William Young which has sold 15M+ copies since it got out in 2007.
• My self-publishing experience: Gianluca Malato has been writing for the last 16 years and alternates between traditional and self-publishing. Typically, Gianluca, says that he chooses self-publishing for short stories. Regarding book promotion strategies, Gianluca writes: “I set up a website in which I published one chapter a week, then I published the complete novel on many online stores…,” and “did a lot of promotion contacting many literary bloggers.”
• 7 Self-publishing Stories You Haven’t Heard: Writing multiple books in a series was one takeaway from this post. Many of the writers featured in this post mentioned how their books had miserable sales, till they wrote their third book in the series and then the readers suddenly and mysteriously woke up and decided to start buying. One of the authors, Melissa Leong mentions how dropping the price helped her skyrocket sales: “with the price set at $2.99, nothing did happen… But when she dropped the price to under a dollar, at $0.99, she rocketed up to Amazon’s bestseller list …”.
• 8 Self-Publishing Success Stories Every Author Should Know: These success stories are largely inspirational rather than marketing ideas. However, Howard of Warwick does share a great success story on how he was able to retire early with his author income. Howard mentions how the Reedsy digital advertising service helped him to reach a large number of readers.
• 9 Inspiring Self-Publishing Success Stories: This is a very motivational collection of self-publishing success stories, but it doesn’t contain information on how these authors marketed their books. However the story inspired me to click on link to Amanda Hocking’s website and blog. The hard work that Amanda puts in is obviously the reason why her debut self-publishing novel sold “nine copies a day” as the story mentions. Each post has a YouTube video book trailor embedded in it inviting you to enjoy the content. Visit Amanda’s website if you want to see an example of a stellar author platform, and awesome book trailers.
• Dissecting the Bestsellers of Self-Publishing: This has some great analysis of what works in self-publishing book marketing. Writing multiple books or a series of books is recurrent theme in the stories of all successful writers. Instead of spreading yourself thin, focusing on promoting your books where your readers actually hang out is another great advice.As an example, Abby McDonald writes romance novels and exclusively focused her efforts in promoting her books on romance blogs.
• A Self-Publishing Success Story: One of the most insightful self-publishing stories I have ever read. I love how Captain Bill Collier keeps a stack of bookmarks and sticks them in car’s windshield wipers of fellow veterans.
• Self Publishing Success Story: Christopher Paolini and Eragon: Sitting behind a desk for 8 hours in full costume is not easy but Paolini was willing to work hard and that’s the reason for his success.
• Self-Publishing Success Stories: What’s the secret of success for James? The article explains: “She marketed the heck out of it…Engaging readers … posting personal photos, inspiration for the books (such as photos of Christian Grey’s apartment)…James invited readers into her world along with the world of her characters…”
• Kindle Self Publishing Success Stories – $0 to 6-Figures A Year: I really couldn’t get what made Alex Kaplo successful but I guess the fact that I discovered him on Google itself gives credit to his marketing skills.

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Other Related Stories about Selling Books

• Flipping Books for Profit: How to Make $4000 a Month Selling Used Books: Charlie William is not, strictly speaking, a self-published author selling his books; nevertheless it is an interesting story anything to do with book sales is a fascinating topic.
• Only 40 Self-Published Authors are a Success, says Amazon: While the title of this blog post is provocatively disappointing, the news is actually not that bad. The definition of “Success” in this post is selling more than 1M copies. As one visitor observed in her comment, “I would be content if I sold 100K copies.”

Reflections

• Start collecting email addresses on your website – you don’t need a million subscribers – even 50 emails collected in a a year is better than zero. Use the honey pot using gated content strategy as explained in this post: How You Can Actually Make Money Online: The Complete Guide for Blog Monetization

References

How to Market a Book: Personal Experiences from Self-Published Authors – Part 1

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