Tag: advertising

Featured Services: Indicated

IndiCated logo LargeWant to spend more time writing, and less time researching ways to promote your book?

At Indicated, we know your time is precious. We bet you’d much rather be creating fantastic new worlds and kick-ass characters, than sifting through the scattered bits and pieces of information to find solid tips on book promotion. That’s how Louisa Clarkson, Indicated’s creator, felt after spending weeks researching the basics of how to promote her first children’s book.

Armed with new knowledge about blog tours, book review submission, and precise audience building, Clarkson faced a new adventure: scouting bloggers who accepted self-published books for review. That’s when the idea to create an all-in-one resource for indie authors struck.

What is Indicated, and how can the service help me save time searching for information?

As the logo says, Indicated is the ultimate indie author resource for building visibility and exposure. To promote books, you need to find book review bloggers, journals/ magazines and other resources to help spread the word (exposure) and get readers, librarians and book store owners to buy/stock your book. If one promotional technique doesn’t work, you need to try another, and another until it works.

That’s why Louisa created a one-of-a-kind database housing thousands of publication services (editors, proofreaders, cover designers etc) and promotional contacts supporting independent authors (free and paid advertising sites, guest posts & authors interviews, blog tour providers and so much more).

Many authors tackle promotion the wrong way, and shout, “buy my book” all over Facebook and Twitter. Ick! Indicated’s book promotion guides cover topics to build exposure and visibility without turning off potential readers, such as:

• Getting book reviews, endorsements and testimonials

• Speaking at events (conferences, festivals and fairs)

• Doing a book blog tour

• Author interviews (media)

• Giveaways and competitions

• Building an email and newsletter list

• Entering books awards

• And so much more.

How is Indicated different from other services?

For one, Indicated saves you time from wading through blogs to fit all the pieces of information together, and from hunting through lists of potential resources to find those that accept your genre. Indicated’s database allows users to target resources that accept their specific genre, book type (eBook, print, ARC, audiobook, etc), cost, and country.

Furthermore, Indicated features a pay-it-forward book spotlight system, allowing authors to support each other’s projects, and gain some much needed reviews (possibly multiple!). No more asking other authors for reviews, giving them, and not receiving them!

Our forum connects authors to authors, where members can seek reviews, share information, collaborate, and more.

Most importantly, Indicated offers an affordable service with so much added value! An independent author first, Louisa Clarkson designed this resource for her fellow authors, knowing they already pay for every part of the publishing process. This is her investment in the success of your book.

Find out more or join Indicated today to see where things grow!

Indies Unlimited does not endorse or support any specific providers of  products or services.

Advertising on Indies Unlimited

When it comes to paid promotion, we approach things a little differently than most sites.

  • All books, whether submitted for paid or free promotions, must go through a vetting process. Not all books are accepted. This means that if a book appears on Indies Unlimited, it meets and/or exceeds a certain level of quality. You may read more about our vetting process here.
  • We keep our ad rates low since we know most authors are on a tight (or non-existent budget). And, we only run two ads per week, so that paid features are not crowded together.
  • Our ads have permalinks which may be used in an author’s media kit. Most websites run a promotion for a short time, and then those links are gone.
  • Each ad is broadcast in a daily digest email to our subscribers, to our Facebook fans, on Tumblr, StumbleUpon, Google+, and to our Twitter followers. Our admins often also share posts, and our staff writers, if they see a book which interests them, will do the same on multiple platforms.
  • We don’t track visitors, per se. What we do follow is our Alexa ranking, which is more valuable since they allow a comparison to other web sites, and tell us how long people stay, and how many articles they view on average while they’re here. If you’re not familiar with Alexa, this very short article explains it. Our current rankings are at http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/indiesunlimited.com

Some of the effectiveness of the ad also depends on the author. If the author is disinterested and unresponsive to comments (if there are any), then the ad will not pack the punch it could. We provide all authors with a link to an article called “Putting Your Indies Unlimited Features to Work for You” which we recommend everyone read. ENT, KB&T, PeopleReads, and many others always suggest authors spread the word about their promotions, so this is no different.

If you are interested in purchasing an ad or pursuing any of our free features, please use the contact form on the advertising page. Tell us what feature or promo package you’d like and include an Amazon link to your book so we can begin the vetting process on your book. If your book is approved, we will send you the link to our PayPal page so you can make the purchase.

Once PayPal has notified us of your purchase, we will contact you using your PayPal e-mail address. If you use a different e-mail account or name than you used to make the query, we may ask for verification. If additional material is needed from you to prepare your promo, we will advise you of any remaining information we may need. Since promos comprise only a portion of overall site content, it may be a couple of weeks before your ad can be scheduled.

Purchasing an ad on any platform isn’t just about selling books (although we do have many happy and repeat customers). It is also about effective frequency. With a book in the sidebar of our high traffic site, that means a lot of people will be seeing it no matter which article they are reading.

Thanks for supporting Indies Unlimited.

Facebook Limiting Your Organic Post Reach

This past weekend, I fell into a somewhat troubling conversation with a friend on Facebook. First, I guess, a little background would be helpful: Like a lot of authors, I have an author page, to which I tend to confine posts about my writing. For one thing, I don’t want my friends and family to feel like I’m spamming them with stuff about the writing gig. For another, I have been known to post political items on my timeline, and I don’t want to take a chance on alienating readers needlessly.

Makes sense, right? But then I had this conversation on my personal timeline. “Is Crosswind out?” my friend asked. I told her it was, and in fact, it had been out since November 20th – a good two-and-a-half weeks. And then she said that she had missed the news, which surprised her, given that we’re Facebook friends, she’s a fan of my page, and she knows me from Message Board X where nothing was posted about the book.

Okay, Message Board X is my fault. But I’ve had numerous posts on my fan page about the new book. I’ve posted links to my blog – where I ran a post about the new series every week last month – on both my fan page and my personal timeline. And yet, she hadn’t seen any of them. And this is a person who is online a lot. So what the heck, Facebook? Continue reading “Facebook Limiting Your Organic Post Reach”

Ed’s Casual Friday: My TGI(‘m)I(ndie) moment of the day.

Warning: I’m going to talk a little bit about my own writing in this post, which I usually try to avoid on Casual Friday in favor of topics that are of more general interest to people who are not, well, me. But I’ve got a point, I promise.

I am presently in the midst of writing the fifth book in an epic fantasy series, and quite suddenly, the wonderful absurdity of that statement hit me. Continue reading “Ed’s Casual Friday: My TGI(‘m)I(ndie) moment of the day.”