This month’s special guest GB Ralph reveals his preferred social media platforms for marketing his books…
TRANSCRIPT
MARK: Marketing wise, which platform do you find the most successful for your books?
GB RALPH: I presume you mean, like, social media platform? All sort of have different purposes. My Instagram is sort of… I’ve inherited friends and family who are very lovely. There’s only so many times you can sell the same book to your friends and family. Then Facebook. I’ve picked up a lot of readers who I wouldn’t have expected. TikTok was really fun. It comes in waves where I get enthusiasm to do some videos and then it drops off again. But that is… because TikTok shows your stuff to a lot of people who don’t follow you. So I think that has been really interesting to pick up people who’ve never heard of me because my videos have been shown to them or whereas on the other platforms a lot of it is your stuff getting shown to a subset of your own followers who already know you. I don’t know. Probably the most engagement is through my mailing list actually, because that’s the most reliable. It gets sent out and I can see roughly how many people open it. That’s where it starts. And then it’s sort of like, okay, I have the content now, I need to now I can recycle that to the social medias.
Are you a debut author or seasoned writer needing to know HOW to market your book? Or HOW to promote your book on YouTube?
In this in deep-dive, they talk candidly about WHICH video marketing strategies have worked, and which have not been as successful. WILL they hit their 1000 target for pre-sales before Feb 2021? WHICH digital marketing techniques will they enlist? WHICH book marketing strategy will be put to the test next on their ambitious (some may say foolhardy) quest?
In Episode 6 you will learn:
The definition of a blurb and how a few words on your book cover can make all the difference.
How to run a blog tour (or get someone to organise it for you).
Why categorisation is important, but ultimately it’s the reader who decides.
The kind of pre-publication publicity that a publisher can organise for you, including features in trade magazines like The Bookseller, and interviews in store magazines like Booktime.
Why an author should be a “squeaky wheel”!
And we take a look at other AuthorTubers and why they are so successful.
I can only do this in the USA… Unbound have the UK rights and I have no visibility on sales other than the twice yearly statements.
I’m going to stick with Kindle and Kindle Unlimited.
I’ll be counting both Kindle and Paperback sales.
Here’s week three!
Oh dear… oh deary dear… I somewhat dropped the ball this week. In my defence, I’m on holiday and have been mostly reading and napping. I highly recommend it for one’s mental health, but it’s not conducive to sales.
For those of you keeping track, I had intended to try a little more advertising last week with a Bookbub campaign aimed at both the US and the UK to drive visibility. There was a hitch however. When checking my links I got this when checking Apple Books…
Oh, bugger…
I got straight on to Unbound, my UK publisher, who promised to fix it, but it took them nearly a week to do so (it was sorted overnight last night). It was, if you’re interested, a “a playorder error in the toc.ncx document in the epub”. So there.
This delay — along with the reading and napping — meant there was no targeted advertising activity from me this week, apart from the tick-tock of AMS ads. Once again, the VE Schwab ad got me a couple of sales…
However, I did continue to get a few residual sales which I suspect came from the book’s inclusion in the newsletters of the wonderful Ian Sainsbury and Andi Cumbo Floyd.
Here are last week’s sales…
Nine… Nine!!
Not great. The peak came from Ian re-sending his email. I also got a few extra followers on my newsletter, which is very handy. On the upside, the KEDP page reads are still on the rise…
By my reckoning a fair few KU readers got through the book this week…
What’s next? Well, I suspect next week will be similarly flaccid as I’m still on holiday and still reading and napping (really, it’s a fantastic way to live), though I do still have a squeeze page on my to do list. More on that next time. Maybe. If I can get out of the reading/napping cycle.
Here’s a summary of last week’s sales
Kindle units sold: 9
POD Paperbacks: 0
Kindle Unlimited Pages read: 2349
Royalty: $3.15
Advertising spend total: $12.35
AMS: $12.35
Bookbub: $0.00
And here’s the running total…
Kindle units sold: 65
Kindle Unlimited Pages read: 3151
Royalty: $28.01
Advertising spend total (since 9th July): $233.59
AMS: $35.90
Bookbub: $197.69
A piffling 935 units to go!
That’s a little over 6 a day between now and Christmas.
Thanks again for all your messages of support and to everyone who’s bought the book or spread the word.
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Mark Stay Writes 