This is the sixth and last installment in the book promotion series. Other topics in the series are Getting noticed, Getting book reviews, Book trailers, Word of mouth, and The book cover.
Note: For the next six months as I hike and bicycle around Europe, I will publish only one post per week on this site. I hope you will continue to follow my musing on indie publishing and also follow my adventures on my trail journal.
If you are like me, you are probably wondering if the effort to promote your book is time well spent. Would you be better off writing your next book? While people with multiple books have a following and, consequently, sell more books, not promoting the first book may keep you from developing followers—and selling books. It’s sort of a chicken-egg conundrum.
Here is data from the 2012 Taliest Self-Publishing survey:
- Only one in ten self-publishers are newbies.
- 60% of self-published authors have been writing for five years or more.
- Authors who get help (paid or unpaid) with story editing, copy editing, proofreading, and cover design make 34% more than the average.
- 10% of authors earn 75% of royalties.
- Romance writers average royalties are more than double those of their peers.
- Romance writers write 2,030 words/day…that’s is more words per day than average.
From this data, I conclude that if you are a newbie, you are competing with well-established indie authors who have several books and a following. Book promotion is the only way to get noticed and to build an audience. Even Amanda Hocking, the first self-published author to earn over two million dollars, did so by promoting her book. She also had more than one book. With the first book of the trilogy, she captured the readers’ attention, and then continued to satisfied their need with the rest of the series.
For me, being an author is similar to being a start-up entrepreneur: with limited funds, I am doing everything—the writing, the publishing, and the promoting. I have stretched beyond my comfort zone to learn the skills it takes to pursue my dream. I learned to create a web page, to blog, to tweet, and to talk about my book. I used all the tricks for promoting books: an attractive cover, a well-written book, a book trailer, book reviews internet marketing, and, hopefully, word-of-mouth. All this effort is paying off; I am selling hundreds of books each month.
I spent almost a year honing my book-promotions skills. Now it takes me only about an hour a day (aside from writing the blog) to market the book, leaving plenty of time to write. With several books, I could have a comfortable income. Since the majority of self-published authors have been writing for five years or more, I can only imagine where I will be in four more years, I dream about being in the top 10% of indie-earners; but, since I am not a romance writer, attaining that dream will be difficult.
From my experience, book promotion really does work, especially for newbie indie authors. The question for you is whether to self-promote or hire an agency to do this.
How do you promote your book? Are you book-promotion tactics working for you? Please comment.
Resources
- The Key to Marketing Your Book: Time Well Spent
- The Entrepreneurial Author: Achieving Success and Balance as a Writer in the 21st Century
