Peter Laurent's Blog - Posts Tagged "book"
The Battle for Reviews
After a stunning few days following the free promotion, The Covert Academy soared up the Amazon charts to #5 in SciFi Adventure as a paid title, and #2 in the UK.
Incredible, especially considering how few reviews I currently have. It has since dropped down to #79 (US) and #12 (UK).
Reviews are the MOST important resource for an author. Without reviews, you don't get noticed.
I suspect the strength of my sales so far have come from the momentum of the freebie day at the start of last week, and (hopefully) a compelling synopsis and book cover on the store page.
As a debut author, it is much harder to get reviewed. Forget traditional reviewers like TV, radio, and newspapers, on or offline. Not a chance, not that I expected it, even in New Zealand.
Yet even book bloggers geared towards indie publishers rarely responded. Of the 30-40 requests I sent, maybe 6 replied, and of them, only 2 agreed to review it. And one of them won't get to it until 2014!
The sad fact is that there are hundreds of thousands of books and not enough book bloggers to weed out the rubbish. They are all inundated with books "to-be-read". Fair enough, I can't expect preferential treatment.
I've posted in forums offering freebies for reviews... no responses there.
So how to get reviews as a debut author?
The trick is to scour books on Amazon similar to your own, and contact the people reviewing them. People without blogs, who review fewer books (with a few exceptions). Yet they too have clout within the reviewing community, which is valuable to any author.
Finding them on Amazon is incredibly time consuming, far more than searching for bloggers. Only a minority display their contact details. This likely worked to my advantage. How many authors would go to the trouble?
After several hours, I have lined up 7 reviewers. The first should hopefully be posted in just a few days.
Of course, the battle isn't won by that point.
Once I've got at least 10 reviews (fingers crossed for positive ones) I will schedule another freebie day a few weeks in advance. With more reviews, I can sign up to the larger ebook newsletters (such as Pixel of Ink) to get the book in front of more eyeballs.
That's the battle plan.
Of course, it all hinges on whether the book is any good!
But no one will know until it gets reviewed.
Cheers,
-Petes
Incredible, especially considering how few reviews I currently have. It has since dropped down to #79 (US) and #12 (UK).
Reviews are the MOST important resource for an author. Without reviews, you don't get noticed.
I suspect the strength of my sales so far have come from the momentum of the freebie day at the start of last week, and (hopefully) a compelling synopsis and book cover on the store page.
As a debut author, it is much harder to get reviewed. Forget traditional reviewers like TV, radio, and newspapers, on or offline. Not a chance, not that I expected it, even in New Zealand.
Yet even book bloggers geared towards indie publishers rarely responded. Of the 30-40 requests I sent, maybe 6 replied, and of them, only 2 agreed to review it. And one of them won't get to it until 2014!
The sad fact is that there are hundreds of thousands of books and not enough book bloggers to weed out the rubbish. They are all inundated with books "to-be-read". Fair enough, I can't expect preferential treatment.
I've posted in forums offering freebies for reviews... no responses there.
So how to get reviews as a debut author?
The trick is to scour books on Amazon similar to your own, and contact the people reviewing them. People without blogs, who review fewer books (with a few exceptions). Yet they too have clout within the reviewing community, which is valuable to any author.
Finding them on Amazon is incredibly time consuming, far more than searching for bloggers. Only a minority display their contact details. This likely worked to my advantage. How many authors would go to the trouble?
After several hours, I have lined up 7 reviewers. The first should hopefully be posted in just a few days.
Of course, the battle isn't won by that point.
Once I've got at least 10 reviews (fingers crossed for positive ones) I will schedule another freebie day a few weeks in advance. With more reviews, I can sign up to the larger ebook newsletters (such as Pixel of Ink) to get the book in front of more eyeballs.
That's the battle plan.
Of course, it all hinges on whether the book is any good!
But no one will know until it gets reviewed.
Cheers,
-Petes
Book Advertising - My Results
Hi there, as promised here are my thoughts on advertising strategies for your baby er, book. I hope this can help some of the relatively unknown gems hiding out there!
First of all, there is no way to know for sure how many "clicks" your online ads get will turn into actual sales.
It seems that word of mouth is and always will be king when it comes to books (which is another reason why reviews are so helpful).
But it can't help to raise awareness of its existence a little bit, while I'm busy writing!
I've got three campaigns going for The Covert Academy at the moment. One on Goodreads, one on Project Wonderful and one on Google Adwords.
All three use a prepay system, you pay what you want then define the price per click or how often the ad is shown (though Adwords has the option to just spend forever).
The basic DIY option on Goodreads is simple and clean. It ties in nicely with word of mouth too, because if someone sees your ad, and adds the book to their shelf, then their friends can see that too.
However Goodreads uses an algorithm based on how many clicks you get a day to decide how often to show your ad. It ends up with days or weeks when you get little visibility and not much you can do about it, but when you do get a few clicks your ad can skyrocket. I noticed the most sales on those days in the last couple of months.
Project Wonderful works on a similar system to Goodreads, with a nice clean interface, except you have slightly more options. You can have an ad with an image of anything you choose, not just a book cover. PW uses a bidding system where you bid for how often your ad is shown rather than the number of clicks. Consequently I get a lot of clicks on these ads, but far fewer people will be buyers since the range of websites available to advertise on is quite limited for books.
Finally, Google Adwords is the most in-depth and complicated option. I have gotten the highest "Click-through-rate" on here than any other. Adwords targets your ads very specifically to customers. However it is the most expensive option (rarely shows your ad if you pay less the $5 a day).
Overall I would stick with Goodreads advertising, at least you know that every "view" and "click" is aimed at someone interested in books in general!
A small update regarding my writing progress: I've done 20,000 words for book 2 but have hardly scratched the surface of my plot summary. So it's either going to be a very long book or I need to cut out a lot of filler maybe.
I'm also writing a short story based on a background character from The Covert Academy, which will weave in and out of the story of the novel and hopefully bridge the two novels without being required reading, if that makes sense. I'm aiming to get this out in early June!
Thanks for reading, I hope that info helped someone!
-Petes
First of all, there is no way to know for sure how many "clicks" your online ads get will turn into actual sales.
It seems that word of mouth is and always will be king when it comes to books (which is another reason why reviews are so helpful).
But it can't help to raise awareness of its existence a little bit, while I'm busy writing!
I've got three campaigns going for The Covert Academy at the moment. One on Goodreads, one on Project Wonderful and one on Google Adwords.
All three use a prepay system, you pay what you want then define the price per click or how often the ad is shown (though Adwords has the option to just spend forever).
The basic DIY option on Goodreads is simple and clean. It ties in nicely with word of mouth too, because if someone sees your ad, and adds the book to their shelf, then their friends can see that too.
However Goodreads uses an algorithm based on how many clicks you get a day to decide how often to show your ad. It ends up with days or weeks when you get little visibility and not much you can do about it, but when you do get a few clicks your ad can skyrocket. I noticed the most sales on those days in the last couple of months.
Project Wonderful works on a similar system to Goodreads, with a nice clean interface, except you have slightly more options. You can have an ad with an image of anything you choose, not just a book cover. PW uses a bidding system where you bid for how often your ad is shown rather than the number of clicks. Consequently I get a lot of clicks on these ads, but far fewer people will be buyers since the range of websites available to advertise on is quite limited for books.
Finally, Google Adwords is the most in-depth and complicated option. I have gotten the highest "Click-through-rate" on here than any other. Adwords targets your ads very specifically to customers. However it is the most expensive option (rarely shows your ad if you pay less the $5 a day).
Overall I would stick with Goodreads advertising, at least you know that every "view" and "click" is aimed at someone interested in books in general!
A small update regarding my writing progress: I've done 20,000 words for book 2 but have hardly scratched the surface of my plot summary. So it's either going to be a very long book or I need to cut out a lot of filler maybe.
I'm also writing a short story based on a background character from The Covert Academy, which will weave in and out of the story of the novel and hopefully bridge the two novels without being required reading, if that makes sense. I'm aiming to get this out in early June!
Thanks for reading, I hope that info helped someone!
-Petes
Announcing "Scout's Honour"
Introducing my new novella, Scout's Honour, continuing the story of The Covert Academy as a bridge between the sequel!
Scout's Honour follows a new protagonist, Jayson Georgiou, who also featured as a background character in the first book, now on his own adventure.
The story weaves in and out of events from the first book to explain a few leftover questions, sets up all new mysteries to come, and is action-packed with new and returning characters.
The eBook comes out on Amazon on July 10th 2013, and will be free for the first 24 hours.
The paperback will also be available on July 10th from the CreateSpace store and should be linked to Amazon within a week.
UPDATE: Out now! Grab a copy here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DUK9LPC
I hope you enjoy it!
-Petes
Scout's Honour follows a new protagonist, Jayson Georgiou, who also featured as a background character in the first book, now on his own adventure.
The story weaves in and out of events from the first book to explain a few leftover questions, sets up all new mysteries to come, and is action-packed with new and returning characters.
The eBook comes out on Amazon on July 10th 2013, and will be free for the first 24 hours.
The paperback will also be available on July 10th from the CreateSpace store and should be linked to Amazon within a week.
UPDATE: Out now! Grab a copy here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00DUK9LPC
I hope you enjoy it!
-Petes
