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Aug 15
Love3

Marketing self-published books: There is no magic bullet

By Blog, Industry

A Lifehacker reader commenting on my recent How to Self-Publish a Book article had an interesting question: How do you advertise self-published books?

I believe his/her question actually had more to do with the entire spectrum of marketing, rather than just advertising. It’s a valid question, considering it will be nearly impossible to attract readers to a self-published work without a marketing plan in place.

Facebook ads books

However, there is no magic bullet for marketing self-published books. I have experimented with low-cost advertising, such as Facebook ads and Google AdWords. The results have been poor. Relatively few people click on the ads, and still fewer actually end up making a purchase. As for traditional advertising, I would never throw away money on expensive broadcast or print advertising — it’s simply not worth it, considering my sales channels are restricted to Amazon and other online stores, and the results are so hard to quantify.

There are other marketing activities that do not involve paid advertising, including social media, community websites (such as Goodreads), blogging, and media/press appearances. None will instantly transform a new title into a breakaway hit, but they can help build awareness of the value offered by your book, which can lead to additional sales or other positive results, such as user reviews and recommendations.

My own marketing efforts center around the following activities:

  1. Ensuring that the online product pages for IN 30 MINUTES titles have attractive, compelling copy that lets people know what information the titles contain.
  2. Creating websites that not only make it easy for potential readers to buy the titles, but also provides helpful “how-to” information for free that demonstrates the expertise of the authors. This can lead to additional sales.
  3. Encouraging existing readers to buy other IN 30 MINUTES titles, and leave honest reviews online.

I don’t waste a lot of time on activities that fail to generate results. For instance, I could spend many hours per week searching out and participating in media opportunities — interviews, guest blog posts, podcasts, “expert” quotes, etc. However, I’ve found the success rate is low and not all media appearances, interviews, and mentions lead to sales.

A corollary: I don’t do things that risk alienating readers. For instance, I see way too many new authors stuffing their twitter feeds with non-stop plugs. This is low-value content that is not authentic, has the potential to scare away new followers as well as existing followers/readers, and at the end of the day doesn’t deliver much in the way of sales. While social media can certainly help a marketing effort for a new book, there has to be more than links to Amazon product pages.

What do you think about marketing for self-published books? What works, and what doesn’t? Leave your comments below.

Jul 20
Love3

Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited subscription plan screws self-published authors

By Blog, Industry

Amazon just announced its Kindle Unlimited subscription plan for ebooks, and boy, does it look great for readers and traditionally published authors. Readers get access to hundreds of thousands of titles for a low monthly price of $10. If you’re a big-name publisher, traditionally published author, or an author published through an Amazon imprint, the terms are great for you, too, according to Publisher’s Marketplace. As long as a reader reads just 10% of your book, you get 100% of what you would get as if the book were a standalone download . Competing subscription plans, such as the one offered by Scribd, don’t come close.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

Wait a minute. What’s the payout for authors and publishers who are using Amazon’s exclusive self-publishing platform, KDP Select?

Well, you are out of luck, because Amazon’s terms aren’t nearly as generous. I quote from the email Amazon out to KDP members last week:

KDP authors and publishers who enroll their books with U.S. rights in KDP Select are automatically enrolled in Kindle Unlimited. Inclusion in Kindle Unlimited can help drive discovery of your book, and when your book is accessed and read past 10% you will earn a share of the KDP Select global fund. For the month of July we have added $800,000 to the KDP Select global fund bringing the total to $2 million.

In other words, self-published authors in KDP Select are getting paid … who knows? It’s certainly not the 100% enjoyed by traditional publishers and authors on Amazon imprints. It can’t even come close to the 70% that all KDP authors (including those who are not in KDP Select) normally get for a single digital purchase of their book, because the “global fund” simply isn’t big enough to cover subscription reads and the free reads that are part of other KDP Select promotions.

So we have a situation in which one group of authors is getting the gold standard — 100% of what they would get as if they sold the book individually. And then there are the self-published authors in KDP Select, who are providing the bulk of the current Kindle Unlimited catalogue. They are getting some lesser fraction and cannibalizing full-priced digital downloads to boot. On Kboards, some of them have begun to mildly object to this unfair treatment, which surprises me. Self-published authors are getting screwed and they should be vociferously protesting the second-class treatment and terrible terms offered by Amazon.

KDP Select has other issues, too. As described in “Is KDP Select worth it?”, I dropped out of KDP Select after running some experiments and finding paltry sales and reimbursements, and a negligible rankings boost. I also object to the monopolistic exclusivity requirements — authors in KDP Select cannot publish their book on any other platform thereby limiting the ability of their books to reach audiences on those other platforms. The new subscription plan and its lopsided reimbursement plan gives me another reason to steer clear of the plan — and warn other self-published authors to consider doing the same.

Image: The email I received from Amazon about the Kindle Unlimited subscription program:

Kindle Unlimited terms for authors

May 11
Love0

Why some readers prefer PDF ebooks

By Blog

When people ask me about sales of In 30 Minutes guides, I tell them that the paperback editions generally sell the most copies. However, I’ve learned to expect a different sales pattern for the recently-released jQuery Plugin Development In 30 Minutes. Because this guide targets a different, niche audience (Web developers), the jQuery Plugin PDF version may end up being the best seller over time.

jquery plugin PDF

At first glance, PDFs may not seem like a strong candidate for breakout sales. PDFs are an older digital technology, which has its roots in print publishing. Created by Adobe Systems in the early 1990s, a PDF page is designed to appear on a computer screen exactly as it would were it printed out on paper. It has some additional properties, including the ability to add links and a table of contents. In addition, the text within most PDFs is searchable. However, unlike more modern ebook formats such as ePub and .mobi, PDF text can’t be scaled to a larger or smaller font on a computer screen or ereader such as the Kindle. And, not all PDF reader applications allow highlighting, annotations, or “bookmarks” that let readers quickly return to a favorite passage.

But PDFs do have advantages over ePub and .mobi files. The first is flexibility: A PDF can be read on practically any screen or printed out. This means you can switch between a PC, Kindle, and iPad, and print out all or part of the PDF document. In addition, the text in a PDF can be copied and pasted (with some limitations; text is sometimes out of order when it’s pasted into a text file or Word document, and the formatting is usually broken).

Finally, PDFs are a stable format. A PDF from 20 years ago still looks the same, whether it’s on the screen or printed out. It is not certain whether ePub or .mobi files will have the same consistency. Indeed, different ereaders and ebook software don’t treat ePub files in the same way — Robert Duchnik, the author of jQuery Plugin Development In 30 Minutes, told me that when he attempted to read the ePub version of the guide on an ereader application for his Windows PC, the formatting was broken, even though it looked fine when I tested it on other devices.

For Web developers studying jQuery Plugin development, the PDF version of jQuery Plugin Development In 30 Minutes is an attractive option compared to the ebook or paperback editions. The ability to easily copy and paste with a mouse on a computer screen means that the code samples in the PDF version of jQuery Plugin Development In 30 Minutes can be quickly brought into eMacs, Notepad ++, Komodo Edit or some other code or text editor. Links are also easy to access and bookmark when the PDF is read on a computer screen.

Finally, many programmers are used to buying PDF books. When people on Hacker News discuss programming books, PDFs seem to be the preferred format. When it’s not available, people will ask for it.

The jQuery Plugin Development In 30 Minutes PDF is available on the official companion site for the guide.

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