Book Marketing Gems: How to Market a Self-Published Novel

Guest post by Kenneth Eade

Now that you’ve successfully self-published your book, you can sit back, relax and enjoy the income stream, right? Wrong. Self-publishing, like any other business, works on the 80-20 principle. You’re going to spend a good deal of time marketing your book. Why? Because nobody else is going to do it.

This article focuses on an initial publication with Amazon. When you launch your book for the first time, you will want to use the KDP Select free feature. When you have a book behind your belt and are developing a following, you can use the Kindle Countdown feature. But using one of these features does not insure that people will download it. You must go one step further.

I have searched and tried, paid and paid, one promotional site after the other. I know which ones work and which do not. The holy grail, maker and breaker of careers, is BookBub. Just go to http://www.bookbub.com/partners and create a profile, then you can start submitting your books. BoobBub is the best promotional site. If you are lucky enough to be accepted, and only 20% of submissions are, your book will go out on an email to hundreds of thousands of loyal subscribers and you will be a bestselling author overnight.

BookBub is expensive, you have to have a catchy cover, a lot of reviews, and most of them have to be five star. BookBub won’t tell you their criteria, but you should have at least 40 five star reviews or you are wasting your time. Once your book is rejected, you can submit it again in 40 days. I have written ten novels, and submit one after the other. I have had three Book Bub promotions, two of them on the same book. You have a better chance of doing a free promotion than a paid promotion with them. They are very picky, but don’t give up.

If you do your first launch for free, wait until you have hit at least the top 100 in the Free Kindle Store, then raise your price to 99 cents. At 3 p.m. Pacific Time the next day, cancel your free promotion and let your book ride at 99 cents all the way to the top of the charts. This is a great method for first timers.

If you have been around a while like I have, you will want to use a 99 cent promotion. Don’t bother spending your money on anything but BookBub or the following sites if you are unable to land a BookBub promotion. Plan to use one of these services for each day of the promotion:

Book Gorilla at http://www.bookgorilla.com is the second-best site after BookBub. Just go to Book Gorilla, select advertise, and schedule your 99 cent promotion. They are good for about 100 downloads and it will cost you about $50.

Bargain Booksy at http://www.bargainbooksy.com is the next best site. Just click on Author Advertising, and select a Bargain Booksy 99 cent feature. You will get between 50 and 75 downloads for about $50.

EReader News Today at http://ereadernewstoday.com/bargain-and-free-book-submissions is the fourth best site. Apply for one of their bargain promotions. They are picky, but if you are accepted, you will get 50-100 downloads for about $40.

Buck Books at http://www.buckbooks.net is your final good choice. When you get there, sign up as an affiliate. Then, send them an email and say you are an affiliate who wants to promote your book with them. They used to be good for over 100 downloads, but you will probably get between 25 and 50. Not bad for 13 bucks.

Better Book Tools has a free submitter tool for multiple sites as well as some incredible paid tools to expand your Amazon selling capability.

KDROI at http://www.kdroi.com offers an automated tool from making free submissions or 99 cent submissions.

Note from John Kremer: Also be sure to check out this blog post: 232 Ebook Listing and Book Review Websites

Books by Kenneth Eade

Kenneth Eade is the author of the Involuntary Spy Espionage Thriller Series, the Brent Marks Legal Thriller Series, and the Paladine Political Thriller Series. Eade is known to keep in touch with his readers, offering free gifts and discounts to all those who sign up at http://www.kennetheade.com. He can be reached by email with any questions at: info@kennetheade.com.

About John Kremer

John Kremer is author of 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, the Relationships Matter Marketing program, and many other books and reports on book marketing, Internet marketing, social media, and book publicity. -- .

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