How to Market Your Self-Published Books
The trick with self-publishing is to realize – as has been true all the time – authors do all the heavy-lifting in book sales. Your agent isn’t manning that book table or giving speeches (even though they may take a split of the fees you earn) and your editor isn’t out there pitching your book…
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Authors have always been the marketer – just like the band’s job is just started when they finish recording an album, and then the endless touring starts to promote it.
The consensus among successful authors is to connect with and build your fan base. In our social media days, this means finding where the reader-communities are holding court. Lulu has been in the printing business longer than most, and so has a bit to say about how self-published authors can promote their books. And Lulu is working to help as best they can – since they have a nice community right there: -
Lulu – Hot Off the Press – Connect
Announce the release of your latest title and preview other authors’ works. Don’t forget to provide a link so we can view your remarkable… -
But what seems to be a huge, almost underground community is over there onWattpad. Millions of readers reading millions of words daily – and voting up their authors, as well as helping out with error-finding and a few well-earned “attaboy’s” given out. But nearly impossible to find on Google, interestingly – which could mean that it’s a buyer’s market, not some SEO-enabled pitch-site.
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Lulu Blog ” Find Authors and Readers Like You at Wattpad
Introducing our partner, Wattpad Read what you like. Share what you write.™ is the world’s largest eBook community, and a platform for re… -
Can Posting Stories on Wattpad Help You Sell Books? | Lindsay Buroker
As authors, we’re always looking for new ways to stand out and attract readers to our work. The online world presents numerous opportunit… -
Finding Bliss: Self-Publishing on Wattpad
Have you heard the buzz about ? I saw an article on IndieReader a few months ago by Brittany Geragotelis on her experience publishing her… -
YA Author with Huge Wattpad Fan Base Tries Self-Publishing
Despite attracting 13 million readers to her serialized novel, Life’s a Witch, on the online writing community of Wattpad, aspiring young… -
wattpad time 😀 -
Done! Chapter 3 is on Wattpad! Read it?Pleasewattpad.com/9787250-fake-ba… -
Next (or first) on this list is Goodreads. You can claim your author page for all the books you already have up online. And that means a nice profile with links to your site. As well, another place for reviews.
So Goodreads and Wattpad are musts according to all the current buzz and statistics. -
Goodreads
See what your friends are reading. Keep track of what you have read and organize your books into virtual bookshelves. Join a book club to… -
An author’s guide to online reader communities: GoodReads
An author’s guide to online reader communities: GoodReads Posted on Aug 18, 2011 | 4 comments This is a post by Novel Publicity VP, Rob W… -
But this isn’t all there is – our “Novel Publicity VP” Ron W. Hart (of Novel Publicity & Co,) has a list of several more to check out.
Library Thing: -
LibraryThing | Catalog your books online
LibraryThing catalogs your books online, easily, quickly and for free. -
An author’s guide to online reader communities: LibraryThing
An author’s guide to online reader communities: LibraryThing Posted on Aug 11, 2011 | Comments Off This is a post by Novel Publicity VP, …
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Shelfari – an Amazon offshoot which only does books on Amazon, apparently.
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Shelfari
See what your friends are reading. Create virtual bookshelves for your books to keep track of what you’ve read. Discuss your favori… -
An author’s guide to online reader communities: Shelfari
An author’s guide to online reader communities: Shelfari Posted on Jul 28, 2011 | 1 comment This is a post by Novel Publicity VP, Rob W. …
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Check out our #Shelfari page? Follow us dld.bz/aHUbqand help us promote our hard working authors #PUB -
I finished reading The Greater Journey and wrote a review. shelfari.com/books/17937798…. -
Searching on Google had a completely different set of sites come up –
WeRead: -
weRead.com – All about Books, Reviews, Recommendations and Authors
weRead is the largest, most popular book application. List, rate and review books you are reading or have read in the past. Browse what o… -
Authors:
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Authors.com – Authors, Writers, Publishers, and Book Readers
Welcome to Authors! The place that connects authors, writers, poets, publishers, and book readers. the fastest growing community for auth… -
Webook:
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Writing Community for Writers, Readers and Literary Agents. Submit Works, Read & Rate Writings
Channel your literary genius through WEbook, an online community where you can share your works, get feedback from other writers & reader… -
Booktalk:
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BookTalk.org – Book Discussions, Book Reviews, Live Author Chats
BookTalk.org is a free book discussion group, book club or online reading group with thousands of members and hundreds of forums. We read… -
Now the weirdest one, which is by reputation, but is almost impossible to find anything for authors here (except you can sell your PDF directly to their millions of readers). Scribd:
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scribd | TechCrunch
Started originally as a ridesharing service, then pivoting to become a document uploading and reading service, Scribd now has 100 million… -
An excerpt of @steamykitchen‘s Healthy Asian Favorites is a “Best of the Day” @Scribd!scribd.com/doc/114472215/St… -
Read story #15 in The Explorers Club series ALL GOOD THINGS scribd.com/doc/35388310/A … -
Summary – Goodreads and Wattpad seem the best place to invest most of your author-time “coins”. As we are all publishing on Amazon, popping intoShelfari every now and then would be a smart one. And even though you are selling your epubs and hardcopy books there, it would be a smart deal to post your PDF’s on Scribd as you go.
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Daily self-promotional blurb: Here’s all the social marketing I’ve done to date – but that’s why I’m doing this research for both of us… -
(“Less” seems to fit with the sales I’ve been getting…)
