Self published authors, how do you market your books? Nothing I've tried has had any success.
So, over the pandemic, I decided to follow a dream and write a novel. I followed all of the best practices I could find, had it beta read by folks so that the finished product would be as polished as possible, posted it on Amazon's kdp site in ebook and paperback/hardcover, and then set out to get the word out, but nothing seems to be attracting any attention to it.
To be fair, I know I'm not going to be the next Stephen king, but at the same time I feel like I should be able to find an audience somewhere. I've tried Facebook ads, i run a blog I post to semi regularly, as well as mirror posts on FB and insta, I've tried a couple of short videos on tiktok, but since its launch a couple years back, I've managed to amass just under 20 bucks Canadian in royalties.
Now, money wasn't a motivator when I began this new trek, but it would be nice to feel like the world I created has reached a few people and given them at least a small amount of entertainment.
If you're an author that's had success with some form of marketing, please share, and if you're someone who reads new stuff on the regular, where do you go to find new stories?
Not an author, but a marketer. Full disclosure: I've never marketed a book before.
Disclaimer: I should be working so I'm going to ramble this in one go, and probably won't come back to proofread and make it more concise. Your mileage may vary.
I think one thing to keep in mind is that your book is going to exist and be owned by you forever. This is a huge advantage. But you're running into, what I imagine, is the most common problem for self-published authors.
I understand the pressure you feel. You wrote a book and you're proud of it. You want other people to love it and appreciate it. Who wouldn't? But, as a Type A personality, I'm going to drop two of my least favorite words in the world on you: Patience and expectations.
You're self-published, you don't have the reach nor the resources that an agent would have were you to publish your book that way, so you're not going to see immediate results. Granted, as demonstrated by your instincts and the actions you've taken already, you DO have way more resources at your disposal than authors in decades past. That means you're not lost in the water yet.
There's two opposing forces at work here: Your reach, that is, your ability to spread your message to the amount of people you want to spread it to, and consumer apathy, that is, the consumer's general tendency to not give a shit about anything anyone is peddling, even you. But SOME people might give a shit SOMEDAY. That's where your reach comes into play. But your audience is at what we call the "tip of the funnel" -> Awareness. The audience you're trying to reach doesn't even know who you are, let alone why they would or should read your book.
We look at influencers and content creators and we think their success came overnight. So if we pay for some ads, guarantee some exposure, it should be easy, right? Unfortunately, no. Because everyone and their mother hates ads. It's double hard for a book, because your audience won't even know what they're getting until they buy. They won't even know if they like it until the buy it. That's a lot different than a t-shirt that says "Big Booty" on it in cursive writing. That's something someone can impulse buy, because they know what they're getting.
I want to make it clear that there is nothing wrong with you or your book. Your instincts are right. Someone out there will love it. It's a numbers game. But that also points out one of the problems you're having: what audience are you targeting? Spend some time thinking about that. Think about the one person in the entire world that would LOVE this book the most. No, not love, they're OBSESSED with it. How old are they? Where do they live? What do they do? What are their sensibilities? You may find you have a lot in common with this person, you wrote the book after all.
Use this information to refine your book's listing on Amazon. Use keywords and tags or whatever Amazon's algorithm prioritizes. This isn't going to get you results innately, but this is super important if you want to get the most out of the rest of your tactics.
Next, stop spending money. Seriously. Maybe you can buy some ads later, but for now, stick with organic reach. Nix all the different social platforms too. We will pick one or two for you to plant your flag on, but not yet. First we need to talk about your blog.
Turn that "semi-regularly" into "regularly." Doesn't matter if you post once a week, once a month, once a quarter, whatever. Just establish a cadence and a schedule. And make sure every topic allows you to end the post with "By the way, if you're interested in this, I wrote a book similar to this topic that you can find here. Fuck it, here's 10% for being a reader on my blog." Maybe save that last part for once you've gotten your posting schedule locked down.
Now that you've got your blog cadence established, you can pick a social platform. Sounds like FB and insta are where you're most established already. I don't really know how FB works anymore, but insta seems like it would be much better for improving your reach. So promote your blog on insta using tags and descriptions (copy these from other writers accounts. In fact, steal pretty much anything you can from other insta authors). The most important thing, though, is that you post every time you have a new blog post go up. EVERY TIME.
If one of your blog posts performs particularly well, throw it on Medium or a similar platform. Be sure to use whatever tags or other bullshit those platforms use as part of their algorithm too.
If I had a book, I'd be banging that drum night and day until my family and friends hated me. That's where FB comes in. If you don't feel like you're annoying everyone you know, you're not trying hard enough. "By the way, did I mention I wrote a book?" Every chance you get. Every. Chance.
To quote the baboon from Bojack Horseman: "It gets easier. You have to do it every day, that's the hard part, but it gets easier."
Now, you don't need to post every day. Just regularly. Whatever regularly means to you, do that. Take it slow. Don't burn yourself out. Don't try to do all these things at once. Get your blog cooking, when you feel like you can take on more, refine your insta strategy. Once that process is humming, start thinking about promoted posts or whatever. The important thing is consistency, above all else. If you can find a way to ignore and hide all your engagement metrics from yourself for say, 12 months, then do it. Because the important thing is not viewer engagement. It's consistency. The rest will follow.
Remember when we refined your amazon listing? As you funnel more and more people to that listing from your blog or instagram or wherever, Amazon is going to take notice. They're going to use cookies and all other kinds of tracking shit to see what demographic is visiting your listing, and they're going to organically show that to other amazon users that they think its relevant to. Amazon is a retailer, they WANT your book to sell because that's how they make money too.
None of this is a guarantee that your book will become wildly successful. What I can guarantee is that these efforts WILL compound and you will see some results EVENTUALLY. But you have to be patient, and you have to properly set your expectations. There's nothing wrong with your book. There's nothing wrong with you. Consumers. do not. give. a fuck.
But someday they might!
Hope this helps. Sorry if its obnoxious. Good luck with your book! You got this!
That was a really good read, and opened my eyes to a few things I hadn't considered, so thank you for that! As I mentioned, I'm not looking to sell millions of copies, but I do want to get a community going and this roadmap seems like a no nonsense approach that I probably needed to read.
I've recently updated the cover art for the book, and I think that starting this Sunday I'm going to try and make posting an article a weekly thing. I also took the advice of another poster and started a free ebook promo for next week, so that's what my next post will be about.
Thanks to the folks on this amazing little patch of the internet, I'm actually feeling inspired again 😁
No problem, happy to help. Seems like you've got your head on straight so I've got no doubt that you'll figure it out! In my line of work, I don't get as many opportunities to flex my philosophies as I'd like. So I appreciate you giving me the opportunity to do so. Keep fighting the good fight!
This is amazing advice in general, not just for a writer but for an artist in general. Thank you.
What advice do you have for someone that finds marketing themselves cringey? I enjoy writing blogs and making artwork and I want to share this stuff, but there's a fear of rejection that sometimes I can't get over.
Preface: Okay, I feel like I got rambly again. So rambly in fact, that I made it expandable so people don't have to scroll through my bullshit.
Secondly, I want to make it clear that I'm just some jack-ass on the internet. There aren't enough stakes involved to warrant a disclaimer a la "This is not legal/financial/medical advice" but still. Take this all with a grain of salt, and reject anything that offends your sensibilities.
See? Even I'm scared enough of rejection that I can't even anonymously post in a thread without repeatedly apologizing and trying to discredit myself.
TL;DR: Commerce sucks sometimes, especially when selling things personal to you. But you can do it if you can stay confident, be vulnerable, and dab on the haters. But that only works if you do the thing.
Click for full text.
Good questions. I've got bad (maybe good?) news for you, marketing IS cringey. But imo, that has more to do with the way society's relationship with social media has developed than it does with marketing as a concept. There's this constant pressure to look like we've got all the answers, like we're the best, like we can do no wrong. Fuck that noise.
I think being genuine and vulnerable is making a comeback. For some, it never left, they just kept it to themselves. Here's marketing's dirty little secret (and many marketers would slap me for saying this): Marketing isn't a skill, it's a tool.
At it's core, marketing is just communication. Drill down far enough and you'll see that all of marketing's foundational aspects are really just the things you should do when setting up any business or product. What do I have to offer? Do people want this? How does it compare to competitors? Okay cool, now how do we get it in front of them?
And that last part is really the essence of it all. Marketing doesn't make the sale. It doesn't do anything but present information. The consumer pulls the trigger. They decide if that information is enough to warrant a purchase. THAT'S marketing. The ingredients label on your toothpaste? Marketing. The price tag? Marketing Newsletter? Marketing. Commercials? Marketing. A press release? Marketing. Marketing is literally just the presentation of information.
Well, okay, emotion has a lot to do with it too, it's not like we're all out here making purely logical purchase decisions, but that's a conversation for another time.
Alright I promise I'm going to actually answer your questions, but I hope you're alright starting to see the point I'm trying to make.
Marketing yourself feels cringey because you feel like you're being disingenuous. The solution? Be genuine. Be vulnerable. Write your blog and share it. The people closest to you will support you, the people who don't really care will move on. I'm sure plenty of people read the first sentence or two of my first comment in this thread and thought "Hm, this guy's a tool" and moved on. That's just how it goes.
What's the polite way to say you don't like something? "It's not for me." Now turn that around. The people that don't want what you have to offer? Well, that's fine because it's not for them, it's for these people over here. You can't just put it in front of the people you want, you have to throw it out for the whole world to see. That's what a blog is for, to find the people who enjoy the Turtle42 vibes. When you frame it that way in your mind, rejection will start to feel like success.
I want to address the art aspect as well. You're an artist. I bet all sort of conflicting emotions swell up when you think about selling your art, and I wouldn't blame you. Creativity is a super personal experience, so of course you fear rejection. Thing is, everything you've created up until now has been for you. That's totally okay, but if you want people to buy your art, you have to shift that paradigm.
Are you able to look at your art and say "this isn't for me anymore, it's for them." Are you willing to set aside your artistic integrity and make art that you might not like, but others will?
If you're a photographer, do you want people to buy prints of your work, even if you probably won't make much money that way? What if a frame manufacturer comes to you and says "we want to license your photo so we can sell it in our frames." Would you be okay with that, knowing 99% of the people will buy the frame and throw your photo in the trash and they'll never know you stayed up all night waiting for that damn barn owl to poke its head out of its nest?
When I say consumers don't give a fuck, this is the brutal side of it. I think if you want to sell your art, it's important to ask yourself what you're in it for, and to what end, and what you're willing to compromise to achieve that.
Alright, I feel like I strayed a bit. I hope I didn't come off as too insensitive. Remember, I'm just some schmo on the internet. Follow your gut, and your heart. Be honest with yourself, and if something's not working- change it! You have all the power in the world.
As a creative myself, working in an industry that chews up and spits out creatives, I'll leave you with an axiom that keeps me going:
Goodby and Silverstein, the advertisers who came up with the "got milk?" campaign in the 90's say that advertising is "Art serving capitalism." Selling your art is the same thing. It's in service of commerce. But guess what? It works the other way too, and if you're willing to make some compromises, capitalism can serve your art.
So much good stuff here. Thank you for taking the time to write, a lot of this I've been mulling over for a long time in general. Particularly the idea that social media has made everyone feel like they need to know all the answers. This is especially weighing on me as I navigate a job search where you often times do need to appear to have the answers just to get an interview.
I've started sharing my blog recently and my fiance said what you touched on in that it was more vulnerable than something you'd typically see someone post about. Anytime I try to be something or someone I'm not it shows, so I suppose I'll continue to lean into that and find my voice.
Honestly, even simply getting off social media lately has helped with just simply enjoying media consumption (books, movies, etc.) and the art creation process without any pressure or need to share about it. When I do post, it does feel more genuine.
Your last sentiment really resonates with me. Besides all of the -gestures broadly and social media-, I started to notice it was really hampering my ability to enjoy things. Specifically movies, TV, and video games.
Firstly, because when anything new comes out you get a megaphone nonstop blasting in your face about it (compounded by algorithms thinking you want to see more of it because you watched a single trailer). And secondly, massive community discussions tend to diminish my enjoyment of it. Especially for video games. There's a quote somewhere that goes something like "leave it to gamers to optimize the fun out of a game." Similar sentiment can be said for movies and TV.
I've really started to find the value of findings things I enjoy, and then keeping it mostly to myself. It can still feel lonely at times, because I wouldn't mind discussing fan theories or whatever in a more intimate setting, but my friends don't have the same relationship with social media as me. So if I bring something up, they'll immediately bombard me with everything I would have seen on reddit or whatever anyway. Its a weird problem to have, and one I don't really have a solution to, because of course their entitled to enjoy things they way they want to, its just at odds with the way I want to enjoy things.
This is pure gold. Thank you. Do you have a blog?
Funny you ask, I quit my job and started freelancing earlier this year. Part of my plan was to market myself with a blog or a content series, but I haven't pulled the trigger. I have a document with about 40-50 different topics and maybe four or five drafts, I just haven't published anything yet.
I feel like I'm still finding my voice. Sure, there's probably some toxic perfectionism and insecurity nestled in there too, but I'm a strategist at heart, and I want to make sure my writings all ladder up to the same core principles. I've also been lucky enough that I've been pretty busy with work opportunities, so the blog has kind of gone on the backburner. Then again, maybe that's just a copout.
I will say, this thread has me feeling motivated to pick it back up again. Maybe I'll look through my drafts and do some rewrites and post straight to tildes. That can be a nice middle ground between refining my writing style while still putting my stuff out into the aether.
Anyways, thanks for you kind words and for giving me something to chew on over the weekend!
Your comments are not only factually interesting but IMO exceptionally well written.
Great, I will make sure not to miss them here then.
I self-published over 30 pulp fiction novels and I never found success with traditional marketing. In my experience, the best marketing for your books is your next book. And then your next book. And on and on and on. I did this full-time for 7 years.
If this is something you want to try to make a career out of, you have to write and publish a lot. The best advice I can give is to 1) write what people want to read, 2) make sure your covers hit the tropes that are most successful in your genre, and 3) write and publish like an insane person. If you want to just self-publish one book as a nobody, you’re not going to get any traction. Loads of books are published every second on Amazon.
Once you have a handful of books in your back catalog, you can start running freebie promotions on your older titles. Make sure the backmatter of these books advertises your newer books. Update backmatter frequently as you publish, cycle through freebies of old books, and keep publishing. This cycle works even better if you write in a series. Which, if I could do it all over again, I would have written one long series. Series readers just gobble it up and are always excited for new books in the series. If you’ve got a series going, it’s best to make the first book in the series permafree so the lead in to get readers hooked costs them nothing.
You don’t need to pay a ton for advertising. You just need to write a ton, hit the tropes, make the cover look professional (readers most definitely judge a book by its cover), and get readers into the funnel of your series. Easy peasy, right? It’s not hard to see success fast on Amazon if you follow this method. But it’s a recipe for burnout. That’s why I gave it up. I was fried from all the writing I had to do. I was also in a smaller niche, which limited my income and I wouldn’t do that again.
I wish you luck!
I’ve been self publishing for 20 years now, before there were even platforms to do so. I’ve made very little money and found only small audiences, but I’m quite happy with it. I really only need a handful of people to be touched or moved or changed by each of my projects. Anything else is an abstraction.
My latest project is a series of four books. I am releasing them one chapter at a time every week in both text and audio formats. I am as much an actor and narrator as I am a writer so the audio version is an essential component for me. Last week, on chapter 17, I got five new subscribers for the first time. What others have said about consistency is exactly right in regards to building a community.
If you would like an audiobook version of your work, let’s talk. I can help you figure out if that is a good move for you next and if I’m the right person for the job or not. Good luck!
This. Honestly, this is what I want. Both of the communities I started in the past were small, tight knit ones and I really enjoyed them. That's really all I'm looking for with my writing now, someone who will read it and think, "wow, that's pretty cool, I want to know more about this universe!"
Thank you for offering to work with me, and yes, I'd appreciate any help that you care to offer!
Although the audiobook market has many of the same problems of self promotion and over saturation as the print market, it is a much more enthusiastic and engaged audience, which continues to grow.
Go to acx.com and look at the side of the site for rights holders. This is the pipeline that Amazon, Audible, and Apple put together. You will notice that there are opportunities to work with narrators with no money upfront under a royalty share agreement.
Most of the narrators who work for those rates are just starting out or not having much success. But I don’t mind, if I believe in the project.
One of the best parts of having a narrator record your work is that nobody will ever know that book, almost as well as you. They will find the ideas and themes that are most important to the author and bring those elements to life. It can be a really wonderful collaboration.
I've been thinking about exactly this. I finished my book last year, it's ready to publish, but I'm wondering if it's not better to turn it into an easily digestible podcast series.
It's a self help book about my horror stories being a landlord for 35 years and after each story the chapter ends with 2 to 5 tips to help other landlords not make the same mistake.
Just researching ideas now... and money's not my motivation, I just want to help prevent the pain of making big mistakes.
Yeah I started a literary podcast few years ago and the convenience of it, having hundreds of hours of my stories and novels that I’ve narrated as a simple link I can send to anyone anywhere in the world, is just a dream come true. I don’t add advertising or anything. Just the pure stories.
What I’ve learned is that the best way I navigate the entertainment industry myself is to generally keep money out of it and focus on the ideas. Every once in a while something pops and I have a hit on YouTube or I sell a script to Hollywood. But I’ve never found myself able to chase those goals for their own sake. It remains about the story.
Out of curiosity, where and how are you releasing the text versions? I've felt for a while now that I work best writing in a "serialized" format rather than trying to finish an entire novel at once. I love writing complex and intricate plots, and thrive on people reacting to reveals or speculating on hints I've left. I've been writing and publishing fan fiction for years, but struggling to publish original works for that reason.
Do you use an existing platforms or sites? Publish to your own site? Directly send the text to subscribers? Do people pay for each chapter?
For Lisica, I decided to purchase my own website (https://dwdraff.in/) and post the weekly episodes there. I had done the same in the past with a free podcast service called Anchor but they were bought by Spotify and I no longer trust that they have my long term interests at heart.
No ads, no money paywall. especially for this project, which is my description of utopia and a years-long escape from the increasing terrors of the 2020s. This project was initially conceived of as a TV series and the only path forward I’m interested in is the one that makes it an unlikely hit that comes to Hollywood’s notice.
I am curious about the tools you use to record and edit your audiobooks. Lots of good audio editing tools, but I can see something that synchronizes chunks of audio against chunks of text being really valuable for editing.
I keep my workflow as simple as possible, with a condenser mic in a small studio and a VO-specific DAW called Twisted Wave that is perfect for longform audio tracks.
There was someone on Tildes here a couple months ago who had invented a combined text/audio process that sounds like what you describe. I’m always eager for new tech assistance because the production process is so intensive.
Neat. I watched a YT video about it, it looks pretty nice and simple. Superficially, it looks pretty similar to Tenacity (which is free), but maybe there advanced features that help you out that I'm not seeing. I will have to do some hunting for the synchronized tool you mentioned.
Not an author but I read a lot and I used to be really really active on /r/fantasy, not so much since the api changes but this past month I've been posting again. I also wrote reviews for about 9 months but I was finding it stressful so I stopped. My answer depends a bit on the genre, but I'm gonna assume it's some sort of genre fiction (SFF/romance/mystery/etc). And mostly I'll talk about spec fic cos that's what I read.
There are a few places you want to be active, and I mean active not just talking about your own book but also reviewing other books, making recommendations, etc:
Which subreddit(s) specifically depend on the genre. I'm mainly on /r/fantasy but other ones are /r/printsf, /r/romancenovels, etc, there's also a lot for REALLY specific subgenres like /r/cozyfantasy, /r/litrpg, etc. Different subreddits will have different self-promo rules so promote according to those. DO NOT overpromote yourself even within the rules like e.g. in the case of /r/fantasy there's a self-promo thread once a week, and sometimes authors will post about themselves every single week for months on end (which is allowed by the rules!) and the community will start to get very tired of this.
I would recommend trying to participate in indie sales; there are several indie charity sales every year in the SFF space and I'm sure there are some in other genres too. And put your book on sale for $0 for a weekend when you post it to reddit - that's one of the best ways you can get people to at least put it on their kindle, and then maybe they'll read it when they are bored sometime, and if they like it, they might start talking about it.
Oh also let me add that it sounds to me like you are using KU, and from what I've heard, some authors are leaving this as it pays really badly now and also some readers are very anti-amazon and will only buy your book if it's available on other platforms. So you may want to consider that too.
Thank-you for the super informative reply!
I'm curious about the free sales you mention... Would those end up.costing me, or is there a special type of sale you've seen where it doesn't cost anything as a promo?
I'd like to be more active in the communities mentioned, but my real job has made free time to refocus my efforts much more rare. I suppose that if I really want to reach folks though, I should just buckle down and figure it out.
Most eplatforms (Amazon and Smashwords are the ones I'm primarily thinking of) make "free" an option that's free for the author. So it doesn't cost you anything to give away e-copies.
The most reliable way for any one person to decide they might read a book is a personal recommendation from someone they know. However, one of the most reliable ways after that is for the author to write more books.
Each book in the catalog (and it doesn't matter that they're all not in a series; they can all be standalone from one another) is an entry into that catalog. What's one of the first things a lot of readers do after they finish a book they liked? They look for more from that author.
I'm not accusing you of this, but I'm saying it's a very common expectation and conclusion from new authors. Namely, that the book will lead to wealth and fame and perfection. Short answer: no. There are authors who are extremely well known in their genres, with dozens of books, multiple series ... and they're not only unknown outside their genre, but are not rich. They don't have fuck you money. They don't have "time to retire" money. They're cranking books out because they need to.
I mention all that because I've repeatedly run into newer authors who struggled so hard to get "their book" finished. Their book meaning the one, the only. They ran that marathon (in their view) at great personal effort and now it's time to cash in. It's a super common expectation from new authors. They feel they've done a ton of work, and should be rewarded. Because writing their book was hard for them.
The reader doesn't care. Not only are there no points for second place, there are no participation trophies either. Everyone on this planet has dozens of things they could chose to do for fun right now. Only one of them is reading, and only one of the reading choices is to read your book. Most readers know this, and are mostly looking for a reason to read a particular book, rather than a reason not to read it. They'll toss it aside pretty quick if it doesn't catch them, and move on to the next from their list.
Marketing is a whole thing. It's distasteful and slimy and manipulative down to its very core, but it's the only way other than genuine viral sensation to spread the word. And as greedy and evil as marketing often is (unless the marketers involved take specific effortful steps to not be greedy or evil, which is rare), it's also a mysterious and murky skillset. To do it successfully, parts of it are effort, parts are skill, parts are knowledge and foresight, and parts are luck.
For years Traditional Publishing has been trotting out this party line that they're good at it. They're not. They pay for a review from Publisher's Weekly, add it to their list of titles they email off to bookstores, and that's it. They don't specialize in marketing. They often don't even have marketing departments, and they certainly don't have skilled marketers working for them.
When you think of skilled marketing, PR, you think of Hollywood or Political Operatives. Compared to those, trad pubs are grade school t-ball game level, so when a trad says "we bring value" to a budding author, they're fucking lying. They don't even really bring marketing of any kind to bear for their "big names"; they just call newspapers, and TV/radio stations asking if an interview is wanted.
The only authors mainstream media will give time to are the authors who already don't need that time. Meaning, they're already successful; that's why mainstream wants them on the show or in the article. John Grisham gets a bit of a bump when Good Morning America or whoever the fuck gives him six minutes to try to be amusing and talk up his latest release, but Grisham was already going to sell many, many copies anyway.
Trads don't see the irony in this. They don't see how they could build a marketing department that specializes in helping their authors be discovered, and don't do the first thing that would accomplish that discoverability. Since indie authors don't even have the myth of "help from your publisher" to lull them into a false sense of confidence, they've started looking for options. But, as you might have already started to find, marketing is as divorced from writing as ballroom dancing is from a tractor pull.
And everyone wants free marketing. Which doesn't exist unless the book goes viral and all those mouths start talking up words about it to other ears in range. That's free, but that's also super rare.
You give a book away because it's an entry into your catalog. You give it away to remove the "yeah, but it's X dollars to get it" barrier. If it's free, they're more likely to download it. And after that, they're more likely to read it. At that point, first line and first paragraph and first chapter equations all come into play, along with genre and character and plot, giving you a chance to keep them reading.
Short version, if your firsts can get them to the second chapter, and get them interested enough to decide they want to keep turning pages, you might get them to finish. If the book can keep them reading through to the end, there's a chance they'll buy another of your books. There's even a chance they'll become a fan, and would not just be very likely to get your catalog, but also be looking for your next new release.
The cheapest marketing you can get as an indie is placement on the Hot Lists at Amazon, who sells one out of every two books purchased in America. Their lists are very granular, starting with "best seller" as tabulated across the entire platform, and then dialing down into the genres from broad to very narrow (think SciFi vs SciFi/Apocalypse vs SciFi/Apocalypse/Zombie, for example). Sales are what rank books on those lists, and that's where a good portion of readers will scroll at least sometimes when they're looking to buy.
The release is the easiest and most likely period in a book's life where sales can be concentrated. The more fans who exist, who are eagerly awaiting the release of a title, the more purchases can get condensed down into that period of time. If you have a thousand purchases spread over a year, that does very little for a book's sales visibility. If eight hundred of those thousand purchases happen within a week (hopefully within a day or two), that can place a book on one of those lists.
There's no magic free marketing sauce. Well, unless you're just not only that charming, but also that popular and know that many people personally. Then you have access to some free marketing. If you know a thousand people who love you, and have managed to write something that's not a piece of shit, you probably can use your charm to talk most of them into buying a copy.
You see this constantly in the way not just trads, but a lot of creative industries operate now. Hollywood operates this way, for example; even though Hollywood rarely makes a movie they're not going to then invest millions (sometimes hundreds of millions) of dollars more in to market after it's finished. But they still want personalities who have "personal platforms."
One of the reasons The Rock, for example, continues to command huge paychecks is he has tens of millions of social media followers (which he has because he is that charming). The same calculus applies to smaller actors, and authors too. Maybe an up-and-coming actor or director or writer doesn't have nine or ten digit follower counts, but even thousands of followers has value and companies are more willing to collaborate with someone who has such a platform than they are to a pure artiste' who only does the work.
Which is why you see a lot of successful indie authors with social media platforms. Which is why you see so many podcasts and authors and everyone under the sun who's online begging for you to join their mailing lists and Discords and Twitters and whatever.
Some of them are good at social media building, but some of them have hired people to do it for them. It's a marketing skillset, and when done correctly can build a nobody (or a struggling author) into a somebody whose followers can show up and buy a book, boosting it on The Lists, which makes it more discoverable to unsuspecting readers.
Few people are that charming though, or know that many other people. And few know, or want to, know how to boost their social media presence to something that can be relevant. Or want to pay for it.
This is what the power of social media can do. Turns lemons into a fucking empire, not a single forgotten pitcher of lemonade.
The rest of the author community relies on trying to figure out marketing. Most give up and just keep writing. Some manage to find workman success as they continue to crank out books in a genre where fans are hungry. A lot of genres that exist today didn't really so much even a decade ago, because trads thought "there was no market." Turns out, if you feed the beast, the beast will eat. Readers who want their particular flavor of jam will show up with tongues out, eager for a taste of something they have a hard time finding anywhere else.
Look, it sucks. Okay. It just does. I know it does. Most people will agree that it does. Even as most readers still look for the exact results that only come from marketing, they hate it and think it's complicated and expensive and manipulative. But few authors are going to go viral. The ones who have, you know their names already. They went viral. Grisham, Child, Rowling, Sanderson, King, Steele, among others.
Nothing about those big names means they're great authors. It just means they went viral, and popularity feeds into itself. Once you're known, it's much easier to stay known and pick up newcomers to add to the "who knows me" array. It's not writing skill that goes viral, or that finds success. Something else that pisses people off, but it's true.
Popularity with creativity is fickle, elusive, and almost random at times. You can never figure out what's going to catch on and rocket up to the top of consciousness. Your choices are to dig into marketing, which takes time and money (usually money, and the less money you're spending the more time it'll cost).
Or ... you write the next book.
Hi! Unsuccessful author here. ;) the free ebook sales don't cost anything, but they don't get you any money either. They might get you goodwill, but that only goes so far if you're struggling and the people who might have bought your book snagged it for free. You can also do promo sales for low $ amounts which will get you something, but not a lot.
Once there's a series it can help get people into it if you gave a free offer or a 99 cent sale for the first one
I don't think it should cost you anything? But I've never seen this from the author side, just the reader side. To be clear though, I am talking about the ebook, not a paper copy.
I mean I guess I'd ask what you want out of this. If you want to get more out of the time investment you put in previously, imo you are falling for the sunk cost fallacy & I might suggest moving on. If you think some time spent marketing can make you some returns now, then that's probably true if your book is good (or at least not bad lol), but you will have to put some regular time in. Marketing is a ton of work, if you aren't enjoying making the content it might not be worth it.
To be honest, my main goal in creating the book, and the next one's, was to hopefully build a small community of fans that actually like the stories. I've just run into the issue of trying to start that community without looking like I'm trying to sell sell sell. I will look into the free sale, and if I can do it I will for sure.
The funny thing is, that back in 98 or 99, then again in 2003 I managed to start communities that flourished for a while with 3d assets created for games. I seem to have lost the acumen to do that in today's landscape. I feel old lol.
I'm a little hesitant to recommend this but one option is of course to give away your books for free permanently on a website you host (just let people download epubs). The biggest downside of this (I mean other than that you make no money lol) is that a lot of people will assume your books are bad if they are free. But if you have some short fiction too, people might take a chance on your short fiction and then give your novel a go if they like it. Especially if it's in the same universe. But in this case quality is waaaaaaay more important than quantity because you need to make sure that everyone's first experience is positive.
Some folks make it work in a serialized way, too-- a couple of my current favorites are He Who Fights With Monsters and The Wandering Inn. I dabbled in the first bit, got hooked, and now I'm waiting impatiently for book 11 of the former and expect to be doing the same with the latter (only just finishing up book 1 right now, but definitely continuing). (And the audiobook versions of both are excellent.)
I know HWFWM started free on Royal Road and is now on Patreon as well. Either of those might be an option.
I actually purchased a book because an author on r/fantasy was witty and friendly in the comments. I think he had author flair. After a positive interaction, I asked him what he had written and what would be good to start with and I bought a couple of books. The book I started I didn't finish, so that wasn't great for me but he is fun to chat about fantasy with.
As someone who reads a lot, I have a long list I want to read already. The hardest part of marketing is finding the people looking for brand new books and getting positive reviews. A lot of people like me go for books that have many favorable reviews already as a book is a big investment of time.
But if you message me with a link to your amazon page or other source, I'll take a look and see if it's a topic that interests me.
Thanks for that! I've messaged you as requested, and I'm looking forward to your thoughts 😊
Lots of extensive answers in here already, but coincidentally I've watched a qna from Sanderson yesterday (it's from 2022, though), where he answers a very similar question: https://youtu.be/1ejUQz1QG2o?t=1550
I hope this helps (a bit)!
Any chance you'll share a link to the book? Fine to DM me if you don't want to out yourself publicly
Everyone else here has wonderful input, so I can't add a lot of value.
I'd just like to say to stick with it. My mother-in-law wrote a really nice book a few years ago, a bit Yellowstone kind of vibes because she's obsessed with that way of life (she's British and lives in the South East corner, a far throw from Texas and the likes of where her novel is based).
She even paid to have it proofed, published on Amazon and has made about £25. She's tried FB groups, she's tried pushing all over the web, and it's just simply not gone anywhere. It's a shame, but I think it's one of those things where unless an "Influencer" (urgh, spit!) or someone with a fair following actually gives it a shout-out, it will simply sit.
100 years from now though, someone might have read it, and it becomes a world bestseller overnight. That's the joys of being an author, especially self-published.
I'm going to link it, I may as well, and you should link yours too: https://www.amazon.co.uk/French-Liaison-L-J-Paine-ebook/dp/B074VGSFNW