Self-publishing on Amazon

onlyroz

Anyway, if anybody's interested you can search the Amazon site for "Rosemary E Chandler" and my book comes out top. If you miss out the "E" then it comes fourth.

I'm not completely happy with the cover art, but that's something that I can work on.

havyn12

Rosemary, I've had some books with publishers and self-published some and there is really no way of guranteeing what will sell and to who. Some books did better than others, but it changes from month to month and I couldn't pinpoint one thing and say, "Oh, that's why that title is selling better this week."

I run a blog with book reviews and author interviews and I list my books down the side bar, so people see the covers without me contstantly going on about this or that book that I've written.

If you'd like an interview on the site (I'm getting around 1500 page views per month now), please PM and I'll send you the link, I don't want to spam the board. There's no cost to authors or readers.

Take care,
Annette4

Mrs_Bones

As it's a children's book could you get a plug in anywhere on Mum's net, they seem to be a force to be reckoned with and it might give your book the push it needs to get noticed.

Gazing_On_Sunsets

Have you also published it via Smashwords? The main advantage of this is that you can give out "coupons" which offer up to 100% off the title. Unless you're in Amazon Select, you cannot do this on Amazon you see. So, you can make little bookmarks to give out with the 50% off code on, directing people to Smashwords. People like discounts. Otherwise, if you ARE in Select (which means you cannot publish the book elsewhere for 90 days) then you have some "free" days where you can offer it for free, which bumps your book up the rankings, so people see it more, which can have a good effect.

onlyroz

I have signed up to Amazon Select, which ties me to them for three months. I think I'm allowed 5 "free" days with them, which I'll use once I've got a blog etc set up.

onlyroz

I have also set up a Facebook page for the book, and an advert to promote the page. I'm not completely sure how the advert works - I've set it up to cost up to £1 a day with the aim of increasing the number of views that the page gets. I'll have to wait and see whether that makes a difference or not. No actual sales yet though

onlyroz

Well I sold four copies today (although one of them was to my mum) and spent £3 on advertising. The advert was apparently seen by nearly 3000 people and resulted in 12 clicks on my Facebook page. Three of those clicks resulted in "likes" for the page.

picket_fence

Problem is, as even the big companies have found, likes do not automatically mean sales. Can you run some sort of competition? People love freebies, especially with christmas coming up. On the subject of freebies - I've noticed a lot of people self publishing on Amazon have two or three books/short stories listed between free - 99p in order to get people to start reading their stuff - all of which have links to their other works at the end. I'm sure I've read an article somewhere that stated that this works quite well (or may have been in an ebook re. self publishing), as you get people interested in your works via a free or relatively cheap option and if they're interested they'll go on and buy your full priced items. I've even seen offers like this (in a very short term/limited offer way) for series such as Inspector George Gently and Agatha Raisin, so there must be something in it....

onlyroz

Yes, I think I need to get more up there for sale or to give away. I could try and write some short prequel stories for the main characters, and then put those up for free. I've also got some ideas for my next novel, but that'll take longer to get going because I want it to be longer and I want to plan it all out properly before starting.


I've been working on my Facebook page - writing short features about the story and its characters. I plan to put up a new character profile every day or two, to give the page's fans a reason to go back to the page.

The FB page is about the book itself, rather than about me as the author and so I've been trying to write it from a 3rd person perspective as if it were written by my agent or similar.

I think I'm going to set up a personal blog to chronicle my experiences as a writer, and then link to the blog from the Facebook page. Also, I've read that the blogs themselves can generate advertising income, but I need to read up more on how to do that.

To date I've sold seven copies, and I also have one review - which seems to have been written by a genuine reader (rather than by my mum) - because it refers to the story structure. Seven sales is around six more than I thought I'd have by now, so I'm happy enough.

square-pants

Is this the book? http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fair-Play-Mystery-Story-ebook/dp/B00AD68SZK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1354190264&sr=8-1

If so, I think the short description is great and I could see my 9 year old son loving this. I've bought him a Kindle for Christmas and this will be the first book that we download when we work out how to use it!

I also agree with others about approaching your local newspaper and schools. You could offer to give a writer's workshop at local schools, this needn't be complicated. Discuss the basics like choosing narrative, different genres, creating characters - help the children to write their own stories and the school could collate and print these cheaply and easily themselves into a volume and sell them to raise money for the school. Schools are always looking to raise more funds.

Good luck and keep us updated