Marketing tips

1. Social media.  Show folks who you are and what you write. Tweet a lot and get followers. Avoid the constant "Buy my book" tweets, but get your name out there in other ways by retweeting others and tweeting on non-book-related topics. Get an author page on Amazon, then post a link to it and your website on your Facebook page.
2. Reviews. Solicit book bloggers to review your book. Some bloggers do interviews and offer guest posts in addition to reviews. There are websites that will solicit reviewers for you for a fee, like Choosy Bookworm and Net Galley. Review swaps are tricky, now that Amazon is looking hard at reviews between writers with a professional relationship or know each other personally, but possible if done right.
3. Creativity in tagging your book on Amazon. If you can make the genre of yoor book narrow enough, wherein there aren't thousands of books competing with it, you would have a shot of being in the top 100 of books sold on Amazon in that category. And that would make you an "Amazon Bestseller" which you can use to promote it. Amazon has recently changed its book classification descriptions, making it easier to carve out subgenres. Say you have written a historical novel. Is there crime, adventure, or romance in it? Does it take place in an exotic location? Adding these tags can help your book stand out. Take a look at some books for sale on Amazon, and you'll see what I mean. 

I'm certainly not an expert in marketing, but the above are things I've done and am doing for promotion. Good luck!

1. Find a company that will send your advanced copies to interested readers. I typically pay about $30 for this service and it is much easier than tracking down bloggers who might be willing to accept your book and then may post a review.

2. Skip the blog tour. They are time consuming, a giant hassel, and you won't make sales. I've hosted blog tours before, I've paid for a blog tour, and I've organized them for others. Skip it.

3. Price it at 99cents for the first few days, then up the price. If it's the second or third in a series, then lower the price of the others as well. 99cents will get you a number of sales and a boost in rankings. When your price goes up it'll be higher in the rankings and then the increased cost means a bigger boost to ranking when you make a sale.

So you asked for 3 but here is a 4th.
4. Find someone who knows what they are doing who organizes book launches. Don't rely on recommendations from people whose books are in the 100,000's. Find someone who's books are in the below 50,000 range and ask them which companies they would reccomend. 

Okay 5th
5. Go on Facebook and find some indie authors who are having success in your genre. See what they are doing. I have learned so much by see what other authors are doing. Even just those from tNBW like Apryl Baker and DelSheree Gladden (both of whom have become marketing genuises).

You paid for a blog tour, Penang? What, paid somebody to arrange it for you? That would save you time but that money would be better spent on other promotional venues, in my view. And who knows how a blogger on a blog tour will affect sales down the road. The purpose is getting your name out there; the more subscribers a blogger has, the greater the exposure.

Steep discounts game the ranking system while contributing to the growing expectation among consumers of books (and music) that the author's creation should be available for next to nothing and, therefore, not worth much, human nature being what it is. Sure, your name will get out there with all the cheapies and freebies, but the danger is that the name will then be associated with a second-class product. You don't see established authors doing this, and a comparison with these intro discounts and let's say a Proctor & Gamble offering coupons for a new product isn't valid, in my view. I'm concerned about the trend that is working against the potential livelihoods of indie authors and musicians.

I just finished a blog tour - that cost me nothing except time spent in interviews and blog posts. No giveaways were involved, though some of the bloggers ran contests in conjunction that had nothing to do with me or my book.

The deals Wal-Mart makes are not author-driven. Publishers have had to bow to the giant retailers like Wal-Mart- still another reason the BIG Five are loath to take a chance with unestablished writers, since their bottom lines have been hurt seriously in recent years. I have yet to see a current bestseller offered with deep discounts, but maybe they exist. Anyway, my publisher sets the price without my input, anyway, so even if I wanted to boost sales - and thus ranking - by offering deep discounts, I couldn't. I did do a Riffle promotion after getting permission from my previous publisher, and this did result in a big sales uptick, so there's no question it works. But I still think it's gaming the system.  Not as blatant as getting PACs to buy thousands of copies of a politician's book to get on the NYT bestseller list, but it does use the system that's in place to manipulate ranking. Gaming, manipulating, marketing, what's in a name?   Anyway, a self-published author can do more to "market" in this way, and I've got no objection, other than my above concern that the practice will tend to devalue the output of indie authors. If you can find me an example of a new Coben, Child, DeMille, Connelly, Sandford et al e-book being offered for 99 cents, please let me know, and I'll download forthwith!

Indie musicians are seeing their work offered for free or almost so all the time, and this new streaming venture by Apple will likely make this worse. Michael Smerconish had a guest on his Sirius radio show last week (I can't recall his name) who was touted as being an expert of the iTunes world. Smerconish said, "That sounds great. But how do the musicians get paid?" He asked this question at least three times and never did get a satisfctory answer.

Bottom line, if it works for what you want to get out of the bookselling business, by all means do it. But if landing a top literary agent and then a contract with HarperCollins is one's goal, giving away and selling for 99 cents thousands of books is not likely to accomplish it, Amazon ranking notwithstanding.

I picked up Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings on a free promotion a while back. So yeah, even publishers are doing it with their big names.

Ang, you are spot on in everything you said. I know this because I live it. 

The only thing you didn't mention was going exclusive Amazon with KU, and how those $.99 books work for you then. Book one in my series is always $.99.

I also did several free promos this year, gave away 1000s of first in the series books, then not only did I sell books 2&3  for a nice price (this means the readers enjoyed those free book) but sales,started bleeding over into my other books... And they started reading.... Reading those pages and pages and pages, and pages are money in my pocket... That's KU. And I love it.  But bottom line will ALWAYS be, the story behind the marketing. The writing, the story, hitting your market area, that's what sells books ONLY IF THE READERS KNOW THEY ARE THERE. That's why you sell a book for .99 or do FREE days Jack.

I think the minimum is 10 pages. Although many of those are up there because they were scamming the old KU system of having a reader reach the 10% point to get the pay out. With the new system authors are rewarded for keeping readers turning the pages. So quality pays in KU. As for what people are willing to spend it depends on the reader. Personally I have never spent any money knowingly on a short story. I struggle to even justify paying 99 cents for a novella. Novels, well the last kindle book I bought was just over $8. However the novella category is thriving with KU, even with the payout changes.

I'd only recommend splitting up a book if it needs to be split up and if you have a point in the book where a break makes sense. Unless it's a serial, readers are going to expect a complete story in each book. If they don't get it, they'll get frustrated and stop reading.

How is everyone doing with book marketing? I thought I would revisit this thread as my book gets closer to launch. Is Amazon still the only game? What about Smashwords?