Since losing my online job in February, Don and I have had endless discussions about new ways to earn income. One of the things we wanted to do for some time was to self-publish a variety of things we've written over the years (including Don's collection of country humor stories).
But oddly, I also have a number of (clean) romance novels that remain unpublished. One in particular, titled "Rachel's Folly," remains my favorite unpublished manuscript. It's too long (74,000 words) for Harlequin's Love Inspired line, and too outside-the-box for Harlequin's Heartwarming line. So, with my agent's blessing, I'm going to go "indie" on this one and publish it myself.
Don started watching YouTube videos detailing how to self-publish books using Amazon, and it just spiraled out of control in terms of complexity. Between our daily workload and projects we're tackling, he just didn't have the bandwidth to learn something so completely unfamiliar to both of us.
So we connected with a woman named Jessie Denning, who used to be the managing editor at Backwoods Home Magazine before splitting off to start her own business. She quoted us a reasonable price for formatting and uploading the manuscript to Amazon. Don and I will try our hands at designing the cover art.
The mechanics of getting the book into print (especially since most of the heavy lifting will be done by Jessie) is the easy part. The difficult part is marketing. And that's where I'd like to pick the brains of you, dear readers.
Keeping in mind my limited experience with social media, what are your recommendations for how best to market an indie book? I'm all ears!
A good cover design is CRUCIAL. Yesterday someone I know was pushing me her self published book and the cover was so bad--it just screamed self published and I know it's going to be atrocious. (Besides, it's a children's book and everyone thinks they can write children's books and they can't.) See how much a professional might charge for a cover on Upwork or Fiverr or something.
ReplyDeleteDead readers? See your second to last paragraph.. LOL..
ReplyDeleteI for one can't wait for the publication of your newest book. So I'd say your current readers here are a good start. Will we be able to review on Amazon?
I'd also suggest a road trip to your favorite book stores to see if they'll feature you on a "Meet the Author' event.
Best wishes on this new venture. I am always in awe at the teamwork you and your family have.
Cheers, SJ now in California
Whoops! Typo fixed, thank you!
Delete- Patrice
There are some self-published books I have purchased after they put slides of scenes I could read though on TikTok to give a flavor of what the book was. Look up Kate Alyne- she has a TikTok and YouTube channel giving advice for using social media to promote self-published works. She gets very specific.
ReplyDeleteFYI I got that info from my husband who is using Kate’s free resources for a con-fiction thing he is doing, but I see from looking closer that her name is actually Kate Hall and she strongly promotes her paid courses. Sorry to not be fully transparent about that!
DeleteHave your loyal readers market it for free. We can share it on social media.
ReplyDeleteAn acquaintance of mine published a book about earning college credit while homeschooling using Amazon and ran into trouble. People were basically stealing the content and then uploading it as their own to sell. Amazon would not do anything to help. She ended up republishing it another way.
ReplyDeleteI have more thoughts--will spill them tomorrow. But as someone who worked in (real not self) publishing for decades, these ideas (other than mine) are all a bit....B. Sorry. If you guys don't know how to market a book, just say so. Re blog readers: I'm a faithful blog reader and my interest in any romance novel is nil, and nil minus 500 if it's "clean" and Amish. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteSadly, I think Social Media is your best marketing. I know you hate it, but that's where the people are these days.
ReplyDeleteNot me. And many others don't like it either. To me, it's an unnecessary compromise. And if you use something like that which you don't support otherwise, your work is compromised.
DeleteI am unable to give any advice sorry but look forward to finding out how it can be purchased. Jenny
ReplyDeleteDo you still sell tankards from stall in history events? You could sell your books in those, too. In my country, we have one publishing house that sells only re-makes from old books. They started with stall on medieval events, and of course they had a webshop. That is great way to get visibility.
ReplyDeleteThat is, if you are selling physical books, not only e-books.
I personally would love your books. I liked the one amish novel I read from you, but I dislike Harlequin because they are too short.
My gut on this says hold off for another day.
ReplyDeleteAll those little formula books aren't my thing in the first place. I do like a longer book with a good plot to it. You may "graduate" into a different publisher. The ccokie cutter book publishing method is quite effective and I'm not knocking it. But if you're outgrowing it, and you may be, explore the possibility of a new( to you), professional publisher. Home grown is fine for veggies and farm animals. But using a professional publisher brought professional growth.
My 2 cents.
I'm giving you the website of a collective of writers who publish independently. If you do a search for "marketing," there are several articles there you should find helpful. Briefly, many of them have their own websites/Substacks/etc to communicate with readers, many talk to local bookstores about carrying their books and/or go to local book fairs and crafts fairs. The gist is that marketing is a fair amount of work but it does pay off.
ReplyDeletehttps://madgeniusclub.com/
First of all, best of luck Patrice. I have enjoyed the books of yours I have read to date.
ReplyDeleteFor what it's worth, I have never been tempted to buy a book based on its social media advertising. That might just be me, that might be the presentation of the the ads themselves, which all seem very much alike. The marketing seems to be "If you liked X book or X series, then you will really like my series".
I have done some self publishing on Amazon (which was easy enough), but never marketed. That seems to be key. I have read that one key to finding potential publishers is already having a built in audience and platform, which you do have.
Patrice, I make a happy living as an indy author, and I don't use social media. Here's a guest post I wrote some years ago, on that topic....
ReplyDeletehttps://southernwritersmagazine.blogspot.com/search?q=jamie+lee+grey
If you want to get in touch, feel free to use the contact form on my web site (JamieLeeGrey.com). I'd be happy to share more specific details.
Blessings and best wishes for your new indy adventure!
Jamie Lee Grey