How to sell my books? Difficult for self published authors.

New and struggling self published authors keep this or similar questions on Quora and other forums: How do I sell my books? 

I have given the short answer already: selling a self published book is difficult. Yet, everything is not lost, as I will discuss later.

First let's face the facts.

One. If you are an author, chances are that your passion is writing, not marketing and sales. The ones who produce books that are not half as good as yours end up making money while you do not make much sales if you solely depend on the strength of your book's content. 

Two. Even if you put some money aside for book promotion, the money soon evaporates without much gains. Most promotions on media, social media and electronic bookstores such as Amazon and BookBub result in big figures (impressions, etc) but hardly any sales. 

Three. While the indie author is there alone, there are big book marketing services, book promotion services, resellers and publications that are busy selling books. These have many times bigger budgets, expertise and team behind them than the solo author. 

Four. Even if an author uses the services of book marketers or book promotion services, there is no guarantee of sales. There are thousands of book creation platforms, paid reviewers, marketers, etc - some claiming to polish your book and place it before thousands of genuine book readers. These seem to work for some but most authors end up nursing their wounds. The ones that do really well are then engaged by the book marketers for testimonials.   

Supposedly the best among them (for free or discounted books), BookBub has promotions that cost a few thousand bucks. On their website, they give a likely sales figure but one is not sure whether it works out that way for all authors. Amazon has its own advertising and promotion service but I do not find many authors having made money out of it. The same goes for Google Play, Barnes & Noble and others.

Five. Making friends on social media and pitching books on Twitter, Facebook, etc may give some publicity to the book but your posts are usually seen by the same people (who soon get sick of seeing the same book again and again) or to people who are not interested in buying the book (but interested in like-íng, making a quick comment and sometimes starting a conversation). 

Authors promoting authors? That sounds good but that is a community of wordsmiths, not buyers or marketers. So, most of the times, groups on Facebook and those using same hashtags on Instagram and Twitter do not result in sales. I am yet to see groups that help authors really gain in terms of better exposure and sales.

Six. Some book promotion sites want you to discount your book. After that, they charge heavily for promoting your book (to thousands of email subscribers, Twitter followers, etc they claim). Amazon has KDP Select program that claims to put your book before many more customers, but the book has to be available exclusively on Amazon to qualify for Select. KDP Select also allows discounted and free promotions for a limited time. No such program guarantees additional sales but the author ends up paying heavily (for promotion sites) or locking the book from other book stores (in the case of KDP Select) or selling it cheap (free or on discount).

The result is: You, the indie author, might have created a great product but it does not sell. If you try to promote the book, you end up losing more money in advertising and more time in socializing. 

That is frustrating, to say the least. But almost all self published authors pass through it. Some come out of it but most (99% ?) are not able to do so.

The earlier we learn our lessons, the better. As a self published author myself, I have burnt my fingers. So, I did some solid research, which I share with you.

What is the best book marketing service available to an indie author?

Well, if you are a new self published author, there are not many options. I am in the process of compiling ideas that have actually worked. I shall welcome any inputs and will include them either in this very post or make new posts so that new indie authors learn from these.

I have looked at the book promotion services and have applied to some of them. I find them fleecing you. Whether they market your book or not, they market themselves quite well. You as a self published author jittery about book sales are easy target for them. To hook you, they show you the examples of books they have sold in thousands. They won't tell you that out of a thousand books promoted by them, just one or two succeeded well. 

So, I will not suggest a book promotion service to a new author. If you are not new but your book is not selling, you can try a book promotion service after thorough assessment of the available ones. But it is likely that you will pay up more than you will generate sales through their promotion.

There also are hundreds of books on book marketing. Some of them are best sellers on Amazon. Why? Because they have a big market in the form of struggling or wannabe authors. Do they give tips that will succeed for sure? Generally no. One, because they are usually one person's take on everything relating to book marketing. Two, in making the book, they need to inflate their logic with examples and logic and they often trash competing recommendations and opposite logic. Three, because books are not dynamic; what worked yesterday might not work today. Four, the authors of these books usually have affiliation with companies engaged in book production, editing or promotion. That leads to bias in their recommendations. 

If you come across a book that actually helps new and struggling authors in selling books, do share that with me.

The rest of this article is on book promotion ideas, not book promotion services or books on book marketing. I have made two lists: one, of all the stray ideas and pieces of advice that people give on the web/ social media, and the second, of the ideas that have worked.

Book promotion ideas that float on the web 

(For ideas that have been shared by authors as actually working for them, see the second list, given below.)

1. Open a blog or website. You can open a free blog on Blogger or Wordpress, but it is supposed to be much better to go for a self-hosted blog/ website.
2. Keep posting excerpts from the book on the blog.
   
3. Collect subscribers to your blog/ website by placing a pop-up for subscription. 
4. Give away a book or its excerpts or some other goodie to subscribers.
   
5. Do promotion before launch (called preorder) of the book.
   
6. Broadcast among friends, relatives, acquaintances. 
7. Word-of-mouth publicity is said to work well in some cases. People also use their position and influence to get the books purchased.
8. If the book suits that, try to get the book included in the curricula of schools/ universities.
9. Gift a book to a good library and ask them to display it prominently.
10. Contact book clubs for keeping the book, giving you an interview, and an interactive-session with readers.
    
11. Be active on social media. If the book is on visually-appealing subject such as cooking, fashion, beauty, etc,  be active on Instagram.
12. Post regularly on Instagram with good photos of yours with the book and book readers. Also engage with others, give away book, offer discounts.
    
13. Be active on book platforms such as Goodreads.
    
14. Take care that the cover is professionally designed.
15. Interact with other authors, especially similarly placed ones. You can use social media for connecting with them.
16. Place some books with reputed book-sellers and request them to display the book prominently.
    
17. Use a good book marketing service. Use one that is well-established and has a great credential to show. It should have successfully promoted many books over time. The agency should use many channels to promote the book including reviews, book tours, placement in book fronts, etc. It should also have good following on social media and a big email subscribers' list. Some names flaunted are: Kircus, Bookbub, Reedsy. There are many other big names - some relating to specific genres and some catering to specific markets.
    
18. Use paid promotion (advertising) on web media. Some big platforms that offer advertising are: Amazon/ Kindle Advertising, Google Adwords, Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads
19. Do guest-posting on other blogs. 
20. Give interviews on podcasts, blogs and YouTube channels.
    
21. Give interviews to the press (newspapers, magazines, television channels).
    
22. Get invited for interview on book review sites/ blogs/ book marketing platforms.
23. Arrange book launches, book tours and book signing events.
24. Present the book to celebrities. Post their photos on social media.
25. Get book reviews wherever you can, especially on Amazon. There are thousands of book reviewers/ book review bloggers who review books free or on payment.
26. Get good reviews from reviewers and celebrities, and tom-tom them wherever you can.
27. Offer the book on discount or even free for some duration. Before that, publicize the give-away. This you can do through your blog/ website or through many discount platforms available, e.g. Bookbub.
    
28. Keep the production cost low if printing the book. Keep the book length in check by small margins, small font-size, etc; do not have colored interior pages; etc. 
29. Don't depend on one distribution channel only. If the book is an ebook, go for Amazon, Draft2Digital, SmashHits, Google Books, etc, But check that they do not overlap.
30. Keep your 'author profile' on prominent sites such as Googreads (author program), Amazon (author central).

There are dozens, even hundreds, of such ideas available on the web. However, most of them make sense only when you have established yourself at least to some extent. When you are a new author or the one who has tried some of the advice (e.g. opened a blog, run a price discount, requested and got many book reviews, networked well on social media), you are likely to struggle with low sales. It could be that your book lacks substance, but the real reason could be poor marketing.

Even if you know that it is poor book marketing that is the reason for poor book sales, what can you do? Book promotion services, as discussed above, are there mostly to make money out of your desperation. The more viable option is to have a re-look at your book, and act differently this time - do what self published authors did and made an impact.

Book promotion ideas that have actually worked

I had published a couple of non-fiction books through trade publishers, and they sold well. Part of that was that the publishers specialized in those subjects and pushed the books to libraries, bookstores, etc. well. Then I published a fiction book through a small, local publisher who kept on telling that the book was selling OK but it was not breaking even: the sales were not covering the printing and marketing costs. Then I looked at self publishing, and have - hesitatingly - self published two fiction books. As of July 2021, they are three months old.

As far as sales are concerned, my experience has not been good. For about a fortnight I also experimented with Amazon and Google ads. Amazon ads did not result in many impressions and any additional sales. Google ads reported hundreds of thousands of impressions but no sales.   

My experience as an individual self published author does not make a trend. I also know that I am poor at networking and self-publicity. The genres that I have chosen also have narrow focus. On top of it all, I am not an [already] established author. 

And yet, my advice should make sense to new and struggling indie authors. Read on.

Why my advice on book marketing is important

Though not [yet] successful as an indie author, I have long experience as an author and have experimented a lot with publishing. So, you can learn from my mistakes. 

In addition, most of what I advise below is NOT my advice. It is taken from indie authors who have achieved success.

Take the book as a project rather than a writing exercise for your own satisfaction or thrill. 

If you ignore this exercise, you will end up either as a frustrated author or a vanity author who pays up rather than earns from the book.

Like an entrepreneur, decide whether you will write as part-time hobby or will make it a full-time profession. How much time will you give to it? How much will you invest in it (for formatting, cover designing, paid promotion, book presentations, book launch and such other events, etc)? What is your timeline and goal? What will you do if the book fails - do you have an alternate plan or you will dump it or will use it as a pedestal for a better product later on?

Answer these and similar other questions. Start writing only when you are sure of the purpose of the endeavor and its success. The next point tells you where to start.

Match your writing assets with what sells. 

If you want to sell well, do not jump to writing on a plot/ subject that interests you. Even more important is the study of market and competition.

• First look at your writing assets: your passion, writing skills and experience. On which subjects/ themes/ plots you can write a book. Is your idea unique? If not unique, is it on demand right now? Have you worked on a similar, perhaps smaller, project? 
• Then research whether there are some niches in the broad area of your expertise/ passion, which have a great demand for your type of book. Use Amazon and other publishers/ platforms to check what is 'best selling' overall and in your field. If the book has a local appeal, do that research even deeper because the buyer universe will be smaller. 
• Think of more than one ideas that will work. Then make their outlines, and choose what appears to be the best - from sales point of view. 

Also check if you have possessions that will supplement book sales.

People exploit their position for selling their books. I have seen people in high public places getting their books published from big publishers and forcing their subordinate organizations, libraries and people under them to buy their books.

I am not suggesting misuse of authority or position. However, because there is completion, a small initial support - in ethical ways only - helps book sales in many ways: (i) direct book sales, though not many; (ii) word of mouth publicity and reviews; (iii) a good social signal for others to buy [For example, if 50 copies of the book are sold this way, the book comes up high on Amazon.]; (iv) viability of the project [If the book earns you $100 this way, you can invest that amount in paid promotion.]

• Examine if there is a ready-made market for your book: your friend circle, people in your social media groups on whom you have influence, a community of like-minded people who will buy your book (school/ college, Rotary club members, co-players in a club, local fraternity, etc.). You can also post a teaser on a group/ social account and see the response.
• Leverage your authority. If you have built a name in some field, that gives you a big push as people will look forward to buying your book. Your field of working or interest (teaching, sports-training, cooking...) also generates a loyal audience - your present and potential students, learners, etc. If you have been writing stories in magazines, people already know your name and that should help you in selling your novel or collection of stories. 

Can you make it a joint venture - even if indirectly?

When two people join in any project, the load on one is reduced while their skills, effort, connections get pooled. This works wonderfully well in the case of non-fiction. You get more ideas too, and you get great emotional support when the chips are down.

This might not work [at least directly] for novels. But even in fiction, there are ways of collaboration. For example, anthologies. You can put together articles, stories or poems of different writers. It is likely that they themselves and their fans will buy/ promote the book.

An indirect way of creating a market for the book is to associate interest groups. For example, if your subject of non-fiction, or setting of novel, is of local type, the local community can be very supportive. If your book is likely to evoke an emotional appeal among the locals, you get a ready-made market for your book. As another example, if your book is on wildlife conservation, you can examine whether you will be able to associate organizations and  activists engaged in this field in a way that they buy/ promote your book.

When the book does not sell in spite of marketing...

It pains to say, but the reality is that if you do not have something that would beat the competition and place you ahead of others, it is very hard to sell a book. 

If you have a book that is stuck, things are not yet over. This roadmap will help you reclaim success:

• Do not put too much effort in marketing if the book is 8-10 months old but has not done well despite your marketing efforts.
• For a moment, think that the book does not exist.
• Examine your strengths, connections, etc as advised in the upper section, Book promotion ideas that have actually worked. 
• Re-do the book if you think that it will work: depending on the subject, etc you can think of minor changes (e.g. some editing, cover change) or major alterations (e.g. new title, chapter re-arrangement, revised edition and updation). 
• Re-imagine other assets already created: website/ blog, social accounts, email list, etc.
  
• Re-launch the book after taking all necessary steps. 
• Or, do not work on the book any more. Start a new book project after careful examination of your strengths, etc. If your books are in a series, use the first book as a giveaway. You can use it also for discussions on the blog, cross-referencing, etc.