Category: Staff Articles

Writing advice and insights from the staff of Indies Unlimited.

Tracking Kindle Sales with Book Report

book report logoIf you’re selling eBooks through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) process, you most likely check your sales through the KDP interface (kdp.amazon.com). The KDP interface defaults to your book(s) dashboard, but if you click on Reports in the top menu, it’ll take you to your sales dashboard where you can view your units sold, Kindle Edition Normalized Pages Read for KU (Kindle Unlimited) and KOLL (Kindle Lending Library), and your accrued royalties for the month. You can also customize the view by changing the dates, sorting on specific books or on specific marketplaces.

This is all well and good, but I find the interface to be rather lackluster.

Enter Book Report. Continue reading “Tracking Kindle Sales with Book Report”

Thank You, Next – Writers’ Edition

thank-you-362164_1280 (002)Anyone who follows pop music today has heard Ariana Grande’s song, Thank U, Next (not totally safe for work, FYI), an ode to the wisdom she has learned from her past loves. The moral of the song is that even failed relationships teach you important things, so they are valuable.

So, that got me thinking, what would such a song might look like if written by indie writers? These are the failures indie writers can be thankful for and what they’ve taught us. Continue reading “Thank You, Next – Writers’ Edition”

Do You Write Books in a Series? You Need a Series Page!

whale reader books-1841116_640Do you write books in a series? Do your readers know that your book is part of a series? They want to know. They need to know. And, they need to have an easy way to access the other connected books.

Nowadays, there’s such a thing as a “whale reader.” Whale readers gorge themselves on books, and they tend to prefer books that are in a series because, like everyone, their time is valuable, and they want to invest that time wisely. What could be wiser than investing time in a character they will be able to continue to read about?

So it makes sense for writers to be wise as well, and attract whale readers by letting them know you have a series. But how can you do that? When publishing on Amazon’s platform, you’re given a wonderful opportunity to have your own series page, and it’s very easy take advantage of. Here’s what you have to do. Continue reading “Do You Write Books in a Series? You Need a Series Page!”

18 Tips for Authors to Build Relationships with Email Subscribers

Most advice for writers includes the concept of building an email list to forge a relationship with readers and to promote future releases. If you go to most author websites, there is typically some mechanism to join their email list. However, if you’re on the email list of hundreds of novelists (like I am), you’d be shocked at how seldom writers make contact. Most readers would be lucky to get one or two emails a year from an author (at best).

Ironically, it seems as if most novelists just don’t know what to write when it comes to contacting their list. Many resort to writing about writing (yawn) or sharing too much about things unrelated to their work (politics, their kids, their health problems, etc.) — neither of which are of much interest to most readers.

So, what kind of information should you send to your email list in order to nurture those relationships to sell more copies of your next novel and your backlist?

Here are some ideas… Continue reading “18 Tips for Authors to Build Relationships with Email Subscribers”