Celebrating Independent Authors
“My sales have flat-lined. Nobody is selling any books.”
“There are no readers left. We’ve swamped them with too many free books.”
“Print is more popular, eBook sales are dead.”
Have we officially entered the season of dread and negativity? Is there no positive energy left in IndieBook Land? I heard variations of the above statements recently and I didn’t like it. And, I don’t agree. Continue reading “eBook Sales Are Dead & Connecting with Readers”
If you’re an author who doesn’t have a ton of money to spend on advertising, but would like to be seen, newsletter swapping is something you might want to consider. The basic principle is simple: Author A and Author B write in similar genres and each one has a newsletter. When Author A sends out his newsletter, he includes Author B’s book and vice versa. With newsletter swapping, each author gets exposure to potential new readers while exposing their own readers to books they might enjoy.
In the past, in order to do this, two authors would tend to have to know each other, have talked about their lists, and then decide they want to swap. The first newsletter swaps I’ve done occurred this way (once I swapped with an author who has a 20k+ list). When a swap goes well, it’s great to see an uptick in sales or free downloads as a result. But the pool of most authors’ knowledge/friendships with other authors is limited.
However, a service I discovered in December is making newsletter swapping easy, providing lists of authors with similar genres and spots available in their newsletters. Continue reading “Newsletter Swapping Service Offers Authors a Free Way to Connect, Advertise”
Last month I talked about using InstaFreebie to build an author mailing list. This month, I thought I’d discuss finding a mailing list service to meet authors’ needs.
While authors could just send newsletters from their personal email addresses, most don’t. Generally, personal email companies frown upon their members sending massive amounts of email to people, and will sometimes suspend the account for being a spammer. So, people tend to go with mailing services. In addition to allowing an author not to be labeled a spammer, mailing services provide a wealth of data about the emails sent. They tell the sender whether the emails were opened, which links were clicked, and who unsubscribed. Continue reading “Authors Should Find a Mailing List Service to Meet Their Needs”
It’s becoming evident that newsletters are a valuable tool for authors to have. Shawn Inmon recently discussed the importance of newsletters, and one of the things he said was, “The reason why is simple: You control how and when you access a mailing list, as opposed to investing everything into working the Amazon or social media algorithms.” That really resonated with me, so I decided it was time for me to take his advice seriously. Continue reading “YouTube and Amazon: Gain Exposure by Using Both”