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The quest for ebook sales, by Meredith Greene
February 11, 2011 | 12:09 pm
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By a TeleRead Contributor
“As an indie author, how do I get my eBooks to sell?”
This question–or variations thereof–seems to pop up often in the Book & Authors section of Yahoo Answers, as well as upon the digital face of a bevvy of other websites.
Simple answer: no one knows for certain.
A few folks have made certain methods work for them in tremendously successful ways, but the majority of indie eBook authors/publishers live on word-of-text referrals and the sheer happenstance of new readers tumbling across their title landing pages or live-linked posting signature. The good news is that indie authors can get sales on a very limited monetary budget; the bad news is that this method has an unseen cost: your time. Happenstance customers usually lay down good money to purchase an unheard-of indie writer’s book because of all the rather unrelated posts said author has taken the time to research and write, along with a host of complimentary articles, columns, reviews, short stories and other Freebie Flags staked along the heavily-trodden beaches of eSales Island.
Writing is relatively easy work–compared to ditch-digging–but the time consuming aspect of being one’s own publicist cannot be shrugged off that terrible list penned in naught but red ink. In spite of the demands on an indie eWriter’s time it behooves them to stick it out, so to speak. Constant content creation appears to be the common thread linking all the best-selling eAuthors together, and such a thing makes logical sense: the more a name remains active, the more new posts are made and new pieces created the more a given writer’s name becomes more recognizable by a wider audience. A certain good report is built up among eBook buyers–and freelance employers alike–simply for the act of not giving up and providing “fresh” samples to peruse.
There is a glut of advice available online, but this vast well of information is easy to sift through: free advice from successful indie writers is the most likely place to procure the kind of results that actually lead to sales. On the other hand, if you buy an eBook on ‘the seven secrets to selling ebooks’ then you’ve just become a blimp on some other writer’s monthly sales graph.
Stay the course; keep writing; add to your repertoire of eTitles and above all continue to spend minutes posting replies on popular eBook websites, as often as you can spare them.
Via Meredith Greene’s Greene Ink blog
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Comments:
Simple answer: Write good books.
Longer answer Write 10 good books.
Even longer answer: Keep writing. Then write some more. Amanda Hocking didn’t blow up until she had written 17 novels, 9 of which are published. Follow her lead.
I am not sure I would agree with Christian entirely about just keep writing. That is important but I would add some thoughts that come from a prolific reader (not an author) – take as you will, they are just thoughts:
1. Produce a series with either characters that return/connected to characters from earlier books or a plot that spans more than one book. This world building and linking of books has brought me back to indie/unknown authors more times than just a single book has.
2. Word of mouth rules the net. Reviews on Amazon and your genre websites (ie all about romance, dear author, baen) all work as word of mouth. Forums are particularly helpful. All you need is one person to recommend your book and you will usually get several people to try it. If it’s good, the word will spread. A note of caution – never, never stir controversy about readers in those forums, that will never help you no matter what the topic is about (ie – don’t go off the rocker emotionally about DRM or fanfic stuff even though it is an important and emotional topic. keep your cool and vent to your support network quietly – I have seen many authors loose readers this way)
3. Try and produce a “great” excerpt for your book. This can be hard. You want to give a reader enough info to understand the excerpt and also enough interest to get them to commit to buying the book. Not an easy task. The excerpt also needs to be long enough – 4 paragraphs won’t cut it. I suggest about 10% of the book, but this can vary on book length.
4. Make sure your website is designed properly – this means that it works on IE, Firefox, Safari (and even on Chrome maybe). Also, forget the fancy flutter fill stuff. Make it easy to navigate and clear for the reader. If you have ever had to give talks with powerpoint, or taken a powerpoint class, the ideas given or learned there about producing a good powerpoint presentation are applicable to making a good website. I can’t tell you how many author websites I have been to that are so poorly designed that they often have broken links, script errors, or look so convoluted and are almost trashy. Even though you aren’t the web designer, visitors will likely judge you on how good your website is – just like how they would judge you based on how you dressed or the cover of your book – you want it to look great and get them to dig through your website to where you can send them off to buy your books.
This is a question I get asked a lot! A good start is applying best practices from ecommerce disciplines, some of the stuff MarkChan has touched on. Particularly #4.
Writers (and many publishers) often seem to have the idea that selling content on the web is different, somehow, from selling anything else on the web. Guess what? It’s not. And once you get over that, the amount of helpful information that is free on the internet to help you with best practices is enormous.