Kids Book Review is an attractive and frequently updated Australian book review blog. Apart from thoughtful reviews, the site also features interviews with illustrators and authors. Due to the sheer volume of review requests, the volunteers who run the site will not review self-published work. The site also has an excellent list of writing awards and events, plus links to related blogs and services.
You Go, Books!
Printed books seem have unexpected staying power. The growth of the ebook segment of the market has slowed dramatically, and independent bookstores have experienced a modest expansion, both in terms of the number of stores and overall sales. Readers cite the tactile aspect of the printed word, along with the aesthetics of a good bookshelf. Not that the digital revolution hasn't changed the book trade — at least 40% of all book sales are now online.
Free Scholarly ebooks
From the ever-active folk at Open Culture, a very long list of free ebooks, many of them the greats of world literature and intellectual endeavour. From Wittgenstein to David Foster Wallace — a lifetime's reading awaits...
On Writing for Teen Boys and Getting Your Book into Schools
Some interesting thoughts from Anne Davies, author of Wrath, listed as a notable book in the Children's Book Council Awards. She touches on the school market and writing with boys and young men in mind.
“Well, I was a high school teacher for a long time and found boys particularly hated reading, apart from”The Outsiders” which was written by a 17 year old American girl (S.E.Hinton) back in the ‘70’s .They made a movie of it — the first movie, I think, for Tom Cruise, Rob Lowe and Matt Dillon.
Anyway, I thought I would try to write something a bit more meaty but using her principles which boys liked — minimal description, short chapters, plenty happening,every chapter ending on something which you would want to find out,move the action along.I have certain things which I wanted to add — the whole idea of personal responsibility for your actions; how you need to have some “rules” for yourself — what sort of person do I want to be? How can I not be led by others into doing things I don’t want to without appearing a loser? What things do I admire in other people and want for myself? etc.This allowed me to at least touch on Buddhist concepts of being in control of your own thinking. As I say in the book, take over the steering wheel of your mind, without being too overtly religious but trying to convey the necessity of not just floating along being influenced by others or by random thoughts.One reviewer said, the book “gets a bit preachy towards the end for some.” I have to say, I meant to be preachy.
I approached a few schools which had been sent a copy of the book and bought a class set and offered to talk to the kids.I have only gone to two but both have been great, with the teachers saying some kids said this was the first book they had ever read to the end (we’re talking Year 12 here!). They all wanted to know about how much was autobiographical (lots!), would there be a sequel (no, I don’t think so) and so on. The surprise was that girls liked it too. Both teachers were very enthusiastic because the kids had really gotten into it and were happy to recommend it to teachers they knew so it will roll on hopefully.”
Local Author Generating Publicity
The Albury Wodonga paper of record, the Border Morning Mail recently ran a story on Maria Stefanidis and her book "The Sunny Side of the Street". The article details Maria's dedication to her writing and discipline in ensuring her work is of the highest possible quality.
The Mechanics of Ebook Selling
A succinct explanation of ebook selling at Jane Curry Publishing (now relaunched as Ventura), including the setting of prices and distribution of royalties.
Using Social Media to Promote Your Ebook
We asked successful ebook author Donna Usher for her thoughts on marketing ebooks online. She gives some extremely practical and achievable advice based on her own hard work and experimentation.
"When I published my first book I threw myself into social media as a means to market. I used twitter and facebook, and also lured people to my blog. In the first 11 months I sold 72 eBooks on Amazon and 1 on kobo. I also did a blog tour - paid $200 for it - and sold 8 books that month. It was pretty disheartening. The thing I realise now is that most of the people I network with on social media are not my readers. A few of them would be but most of them are writers. So now I think that social media is an excellent way to market once you have the readers that are following you. The trick is to get those readers in the first place.
So how do we get them to find us when out book is sitting at #350999 on Amazon? John Locke very cleverly managed to get his blogs to go viral, and then had his books for sale at the end of the blog for only 99c. But he had a lot of books published by that time. Would it have been as successful if he only had one book published? Probably not. So firstly I think the more books we have available, the greater our exposure, and the more powerful any successful marketing we do will be.
After the 11 months of watching the sales trickle in, and trying twitter and facebook and goodreads, I took my book off Kobo and signed up for KDP select. I figured I had nothing to lose by making The Seven Steps to Closure free for 5 days. I was hoping for maybe 1000 dowloads and expecting not to see any change in my sales for a while. In fact I was planning to release Cocoa and Chanel a few months later and was thinking perhaps some people might find it when I did.
I had about 42000 downloads in that 5 days and the sales took off immediately. I hadn't accounted for the exposure the book would have on the amazon site in the people-who-bought-this-book-also-bought-these section. Within an hour of the free days finishing I had more sales than I had the entire 11 months. Over the next two weeks it made itself up to #132 out of all books for sale on amazon. I sold over 1200 copies in the last 2 weeks of that month. It tapered off over the next two months so that I sold 300 copies in the month before I released Cocoa and Chanel. (By the way I put the success of my book's exposure largely down to my cover design. It's pretty and bright and not too fussy, and I've branded the two of them so they are obviously my covers!)
I made Seven Steps free again when I released C and C, this time for 2 days. I had another 12000 downloads and both book's sales took off. That month I sold 1786 copies of C and C, even though I didn't make it free at all. So the free days on Seven Steps was also selling C and C.
Since then I've played around with putting both books up for free and the number of days that I do it. Seven Steps is more effective than C and C as it is in a slightly different genre. It's women's fiction and romantic comedy. C and C is women's fiction and mystery/detective/female sleuth. So the genres that are more female/romance orientated get much better exposure.
This is backed up by two of my friends who each put their books free for 5 days. Kristy (who you know) had about 5000 downloads for her YA horror and another girlfriend of mine only had 400 downloads for a thriller over the 5 days. It didn't affect her sales at all.
I have a few theories on this.
- More women own kindles than men.
- More adults own kindles than kids.
- There are far more romance readers than there are thriller.
- The majority of men who read read non-fiction as apposed to fiction.
So I feel that the books with a greater chance of getting noticed are those aimed at the romance section. Hence my thriller writing girlfriend is now writing a romantic thriller.
Regarding the number of days that I place my book free. I find if I only have it free for 1 day it doesn't really increase the sales rate at all. So that's about 4000 downloads for 7 steps. Tomorrow I start 3 free days so I will be looking at how it effects my daily sale figures.
I have also played around with the price of the books. I put them down to .99c for a while, then up to $1.99, $2.99 and I know have 7 steps at $3.99. Funnily enough its ranking improved when I put it up to $3.99. I read an article that said $1.99 is a bad price point. At 99c people see it as a marketing price. Apparently they perceive $1.99 as being the price of a poorer quality book.
The other good thing about the free days is that I get a huge jump in reviews on my site whenever I do it. And good reviews sell books.
So how do I use Social Media?
Firstly I use it to set myself up as an expert. I interview authors and do author reviews on my site, which is a good way to lure potential readers onto your site. Random House has started using me to do book reviews on the books they are launching which is excellent as they allow me to link the review on their website back to my blog and the author interview I have also done. I write articles on writing and am publishing the How To book of Self-Publishing.
Whenever someone contacts me about my books I ask them if they would like to go onto an email list specifically to be used for letting them know when my books are released.
I believe that eBooks are the way of the future so am not terribly fussed about my print book sales at the moment. I will look at it in the future, but am actually hoping a big publishing company will approach me for the rights of the print books.
My aim is to get 2 eBooks published a year because the more I have out there the more effecive my free days will be. Imagine if I had had 10 books available when 7 Steps had the 42000 downloads. If only 10% of those people had liked me and bought all my other books that would have been 37800 books I would have sold off that 5 free days. That's powerful!!
So at the moment I intend to stay with Amazon. It is the most popular e-reader and I find that if people don't have the device they have the kindle app.
Self Publishing 101
A successful self publisher discusses tactics, platforms and pricing. She is remarkably transparent about her earnings, which while not spectacular, are certainly respectable.