If you’ve decided you’re tired of relying on Amazon for your sole source of e-publishing income (or maybe you’re not doing well at Amazon, and you’re hoping the other stores might take off for you), then you may have looked at Kobo, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and wondered how the heck you can get your books noticed over there.
Every now and then, you hear of some independent author who’s selling extremely well at Apple or perhaps Barnes & Noble, even though they haven’t hit it big at Amazon. I haven’t “hit it big” in those stores myself, but my sales in the last 6-12 months have grown fairly substantial, especially considering how insubstantial they were in the first year I was publishing. Right now, I could actually pay the bills without my Amazon income (of course, I love my Amazon income very much, and hope it doesn’t go anywhere, thank you).
So, what’s the deal? Are there advertising options? Ways to get some Apple/Kobo/B&N loving? I’ve already talked a bit about this in a post on increasing international ebook sales, but here are the main things that I’m guessing are helping me:
- Having lots of titles out (lots is a relative word, and authors with 50 books under their belts would snicker at my list, but considering I have seven novels and several shorter ebooks out now, it’s a far cry from the two titles I started with). Each book is a way for people to stumble across your work, and when someone likes one story, there are numerous others for them to go on and buy, thus making your overall earnings much more significant.
- Having free stuff available in all of these stores. I’ve talked a lot about how I’ve done this and how well it’s worked for me, so I won’t go into that here, but it’s the first thing I ever did that started helping me sell at Barnes & Noble. In all of these stores, people continue to find my first book when browsing for freebies, then go on to buy the rest in the series.
- Linking to all of these stores with marketing campaigns. Pretty self-explanatory, I think. A lot of authors just have links to Amazon on their sites and on Twitter/Facebook. There are lots of tools now that let you link to multiple sites, but you can always put up an excerpt on your own site with all the links listed there, then link to that page during your book promotions. That helps make people aware of your blog, if you have one, as well. They might subscribe or sign up to your newsletter while they’re there.
- Being “out there” in the community. Some authors wonder if/why they should bother blogging and building up a social media presence. It’s not always easy to see results (i.e. book sales) from these efforts, but I know I’ve been featured in at least one of these book stores and linked to from numerous publishing blogs because I’m out here enough that people have noticed. You never know who’s reading. If you’re in people’s minds because you’re putting out valuable information or building a fan-base in an interesting way, they might think of you when it’s time to use an author as an example somewhere.
- Advertising. I’m not one to poo-poo at the notion of paying for advertising. When it makes sense (and it only does for places that have huge audiences of readers), it’s just about the most time-saving form of book promotion you can do. In the last couple of years, there have been a handful of really good places to advertise Kindle ebooks, but what of the other stores? I’ve found a couple of spots, and I’ll share them below, but I’m always on the look out for more. If you hear of any good ones, please let me know, and I’ll add them to the list:
“Beyond Amazon” Places to Advertise Your Books
Bookbub — I’ve mentioned these guys several times in the last few months — I’ve bought three ads from them for different books, and they’ve always been worth the money. Their prices are going up, but their subscribers are, too, and unlike with other sites, they have their subscribers segmented by genre (i.e. fans of SF, mystery, romance, YA, etc.), and you’re only paying to advertise to readers who enjoy your genre. Also unlike other sites, they don’t simply put Amazon links in their advertisements. I ran my free Emperor’s Edge book with them at the end of February, got lots of free downloads at B&N, Smashwords, Kobo, and Apple (as well as Amazon) and ended up having my best earnings month ever this March (of course, I released a new book at the end of February, so that helped too).
NookBoards — If you have a banner, you can advertise your “Nook Book” to the Barnes & Noble forum goes here. It’s been a couple of years since I tried this, and it may be time to give it a whirl again, now that I have more titles in their store. There’s at least one other fantasy author who always seems to be in the ad rotation when I pop in there. I don’t see the current rates listed anywhere, but you can email the owner for information.
Facebook and Goodreads — I’m not a huge fan of pay-per-click ads when it comes to selling books (our earnings aren’t very big on any individual book sale so it’s tough to break even), but these sites allow you to run campaigns and post links to your books within the system or to off-site book pages. I’ve sent people to Amazon and Barnes & Noble, as well as my own site. Here’s a write-up I did of my experience with Goodreads (it’s a couple of years old now, but should still apply to creating a campaign). Goodreads was more effective for me than Facebook, though I remember I did get about 50 “likes” to my page when I ran a Facebook campaign for a couple of weeks (I question whether those likes were worth much, but new authors with only 10 or 20 Facebook likes might want to add some just for the “social proof” aspect — i.e. look, other people have heard of me, so you should try my books!).
Unfortunately, these are the only significant sites I’m aware of right now that allow authors to advertise to Apple, B&N, and Kobo — I’d really like to find some big book forums (are there any out there specific to Apple iBooks or Kobo?) or blogs akin to Pixel of Ink and Ereader News Today that post links to all of the sites (not just Amazon) when you advertise. I’ll post an update if I find some good ones; if you know if any, please post in the comments. Thanks!
Mark Goodreads down : Amazon just bought them. I wonder how soon they’ll change the EULA to forbid non-Amazon ebook links or non-Amazon Author pages …
Hm, I’m planning to give them another try when I have the first book in my next series out. I’ll have to see what sorts of changes have come down. I imagine you’ll always be able to link to a page on your own site, where you could have links for various bookstores.
I was just going to comment about Amazon snatching up Goodreads and saw TheSFReader beat me to it.
Can I imagine Amazon won’t use it’s power to squash competition? Nah…
http://www.epubdeals.com used to be a place to advertise for KOBO. Unfortunatley, it looks like it is no more. At least for now…
I’m a little more optimistic about the Amazon/Goodreads merger than many. I don’t see the problem with an Amazon monopoly if they continue to give authors what they want (a solid platform). If the competition refuse to play catchup, then that’s their problem.
That said, I love Kobo and I think they are making some huge steps in the right direction. It’s going to be an interesting year for publishing (aren’t they all?) that’s for sure.
I’ve been dinking around with Goodreads advertising, more just for kicks at this point since I only have short stories available for sale and am still finishing my first novel. I figured I’d put in $5 and play around with the interface. For those who have used Goodreads ads before, do you typically see multiple clicks per day? Lots of days with no clicks?
I definitely have most days with no clicks, although I have put in a very low bid per click (varied from $0.10 (the minimum) to $0.25) and typically hover in the range of 300-350 views per day. I haven’t played around with the ad copy too much yet.
Just curious what kind of results others have seen once you have a campaign up and running.
>> do you typically see multiple clicks per day? Lots of days with no clicks?
Yes and yes. I tend to get a few new readers adding my books to their TBR list every few days. It’s somewhat inconstant and there’s no easy way to correlate clicks to actual sales. Some tighter integration along with better reporting could be a nice win out of the merger w/Amazon.
It seems like a couple of years ago, I could get away with bidding lower, but now they don’t display your ad very much if you’re on the low end. It’ll usually get displayed more often in a day if it gets some clicks early on. Their ultimate goal, of course, is to make money and they reward the campaigns that get more clicks for more money, heh.
20-40% of my sales come from B&N. This is due entirely to Bookbub kicking them off. Alas, if only Kobo had adjusted my price in time to be part of the promo. I’ll have them and iBooks ready for the next one.
I can attest to Lindsay’s self-pub blog turning a stranger into a fan. I never read steampunk, so even if I had stumbled upon her freebies, I wouldn’t have picked it up. In the process of finishing my first novel and have been trolling the Internet for any fiction authors who have successfully blended useful content on their blog site. Found Lindsay. Yay! Spent days stalking her site and loved her voice, so I picked up her free EE1 and now I’m a fan. And yes, I’m in the process of buying out her series. BTW Lindsay- time for another Kali & Cedar adventure!!
A long time ago Lindsay offered a 100% off coupon via Smashwords for Flash Gold. I took advantage of that and lived the novella. This was well before Kindle books went up easily for free. I frequently tell other readers – still, to give this ebook a try.
Writing awesome stuff will win every time.
I ‘loved’ it – not ‘lived’ it… 🙂
Although it’s kind of a kick butt fantasy.
Just wanted to tell you that I am so glad I found you. I am about to publish my first book and the in depth insight and wealth of information you offer on your Blog is priceless. I am glad I found you in time, before I take the next step. I am a total novice to publishing, so finding such wonderful guidance is to say the least, of great value to me personally. Thank you!
I’ve had a problem advertising on Amazon. Since my first book was in their KDP unlimited program, the moment I pulled it so I could advertise on other sites, they refused to allow me to pay for advertising. Since Amazon represents a significant portion of my readers, I had to put it back into KDP in order to continue making money. Any suggestions here? If I could keep my advertising, but not be exclusive to just them, that would be idea.
You do have to be in KDP Select to use Amazon’s advertising program, so if you want to advertise and be wide, it would have to be with sponsorship sites or Facebook ads.
Any recommendations for sponsorship sites? Other than Facebook that is. Bookbub, or so I’ve heard, does a good job advertising, but it seems to me that people use it only during giveaway periods, then count on their sales rising after the promotion is over. Am I correct on this?
Forget that last comment. That would, as it is, be the point of this blog post after all. Thank you.
A lot of the sponsorship sites are built around offering their visitors bargains, so they’ll typical require that you’re having a sale on a book. Aside from Bookbub, some others that have been around a while and can deliver results are Ereader News Today, Freebooksy/Bargain Booksy, Free Kindle Books and Tips, Book Barbarian (SF/F), and Robin Reads. There are more discussed in this thread on Kboards: http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,232786.0.html