Offer your books for free. You just upload documents directly from Pages, Cupertino’s free word-processing app for Mac, iPad and iPhone. I feel like taking your Fiverr suggestion further with getting pros from there to do more marketing tasks for my author brand. One suggestion would be to use not just one successful, self-pub author’s blog for a guideline, but several. If you’re like me, and you’re into the digital products industry, then having a multimedia platform where you can easily access hundreds and thousands of designs, templates, graphics, fonts, etc.If you are not so creative enough or don’t not how to use sophisticated software to edit works, then you might love to use Glorify. Embed Payhip directly into your website or use Payhip’s storefront to sell your work. I’m sure your Mom and husband have reason to rave, so good luck on creating your marketing plan of action, and sell some books! Glad you found at least one thing out of the 71; guess I’m going to have to work harder next time… My only thing is finding the time, lol. A badly formatted e-book will alienate readers more quickly than a badly designed print book.

The PDF format makes it quite straightforward for the readers who desire to print it out to do so. Select the print location closest to your shipping destination. Many books cost much more than that to arrive on the bookstore shelf. The average cost of a paperback book with about 200 pages ranges from $18.99 to $9.99. An International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric code used to uniquely identify a book, right down to the language, publisher, edition – and whether it is an ebook, paperback or hardcover. Unlike a traditional book publisher, though, where you need to persuade an acquisitions editor to offer you a contract to get a book published, anyone can self-publish a Helena book cover – http://helenabookcover.com/, on Amazon. To incentivize you to go “exclusive,” they offer a program called Kindle Unlimited (KU for short). Others like Lulu offer tools to create, publish and promote their work. I’m just wrapping up my second book which I feel like is an achievement but it’d be great to have someone besides my mom and husband raving. That’s why it’s so important to start your platform building and marketing efforts as soon as you can, so that you don’t feel the pressure of trying to set everything in motion after you’ve released your book.

If you have the opportunity (and the cash reserves) to outsource, choose things that don’t require your authorpreneurial vision. It’s easy to get distracted by all the things we can do to build our platform and promote our work, but the key is to figure out what we should do; and it’s not the same for every author, or even every book. That is, those things that are repetitive, technical or require skills you don’t possess. Don’t worry too much about the Amazon associates program; it’s a bonus, not a necessity. It’s jam packed with actionable tips. Just keep in mind that it’s always your reputation and brand on the line. Befriend someone who has self-published a book: Whether it’s via online blogs or your neighbor down the street, you should get as many first-hand accounts of the self-publishing process as possible. The theory is the same, whether you’re marketing a book or a blender; you must find a way to get your ‘product’ noticed by the people who will value it highly and tell others.

There are self-published authors who can make a living writing with a sustainable income of $5,000 per month to $8,000 per month, so even self-published authors who make an excess of $10,000 per month. But until I can figure out how to make some, my current strategy is to just try and prioritize. Don’t try to include every tactic, just the ones that will give you the best ROI. I don’t have a book to promote, but if I did, I’d definitely be using this post, Kimberley. Then, when your readers get to your book’s product page, Amazon’s Look Inside feature allows them to see the first 10% of your book. The cover is a big factor on whether potential readers will click on your eBook to learn more or not. When you have more books published, you can have some of your backlist a little cheaper and charge more for the new releases. Like 10 to 15. That way you’ll get a better feel for the key elements that work, and more inspiration for helping your blog standout. Here’s a post that might also help: 11 Author Website Must Have Elements. When you map out your marketing plan, incorporate those promotional elements that (based on your research) you feel will deliver the most impact.