You’ve written a book. Gotten it edited. Come up with a fantastic cover. Made it available for sale.
Congratulations!
Now, how do you get people to buy it?
As difficult as it can be to write a book, it’s even harder to sell one. Over a million new books are released every year, to there’s a ton of competition for the readers’ attention in almost every genre. To make it even worse (for the new author), many of them are underpriced or free. The self-published author faces an additional hurdle: the lower barrier to entry has allowed a lot of crap to be published (admittedly, traditional publishers put out a lot of crap as well, but they usually provide at least basic editing), which leads many people to (unfairly) dismiss all self-published work as crap or “not really published”. That means that authors in general, and self-published authors in particular, have to be at the top of our game to stand out. Great covers, great stories (for the fiction authors, anyway) and ideally, great reviews.
Here are some things that don’t work (at least, not for long):
- Buying reviews. This is against Amazon’s TOS, and they will eventually find the fake reviews and remove them (possibly along with your account).
- Having your friends and family buy books and leave reviews. Aside from Amazon possibly removing them (and it looking just bad if you have 5-star reviews from people with the same last name), this screws up your also-boughts if the people you send to your book don’t normally read that type of material. I’m not aware that any member of my family has read any of my books, and they certainly haven’t reviewed them.
What you CAN do is provide people with free review copies of your book. What you cannot do is make that free copy conditional on leaving a review, much less a positive one; it’s up to the recipient to decide if they want to review the book (and if they do, they should note in the review that they were given a free copy). In most genres, there are people who actively seek out books to review for their websites and who leave their review on Amazon as well. Back when I had a book review site, I got contacted by everyone from self-published authors to a publicist for Larry Niven.
There are also places that provide editorial reviews, with or without charging a fee. This is the exception to the “never pay for a review” rule — these are legitimate businesses that may give a good or a bad review and they don’t put it up on Amazon; it’s up to you if you want to include it in the editorial reviews section. I haven’t paid for a review like this, but I mention it as an option. With my computer science book, I contacted the Midwest Book Review (which reviews all genres and prioritizes Wisconsin authors) and sent them two copies of my paperback, which resulted in a nice editorial review I’m using with both Amazon and IngramSpark.
Another way to get reviews is to simply ask for them. There’s nothing wrong with including a review request at the end of your book; a reader who enjoyed the book may be happy to help you out and you’re catching her at the perfect time to leave an informative review. This is also a great place to include a link to the next book in the series; your reader will want to know what happens next! It’s always easier to keep satisfying an existing customer than to attract a new one.
Of course, potential readers will never even see those book reviews in the first place unless you can somehow attract them to your book’s page. Fortunately, Amazon is very good at this. If you can teach the algorithms what kind of people are likely to buy the book (for example, by advertising it to people looking for similar books), then it will suggest your book to those people. (More than once, in fact, I’ve gotten an email from Amazon recommending my own book!)
Another method many people have success with is a newsletter, sometimes combined with a giveaway. Offer people a short story related to your work to sign up for the newsletter, then use the newsletter to let them know when you have a new book out. I haven’t done this myself, but plenty has been written about it. The first big sales bump I got for my book was when someone I know mentioned it to his mailing list, and a bunch of them purchased it.
The main thing to do when you’re telling people about your book is to not be spammy. For example, I belong to programming groups on Facebook, and if somebody is looking for a resource that my book is appropriate for I will recommend it — I’ve definitely made some sales that way — but I don’t just leave links to it everywhere. Your goal should be to identify a problem somebody has (that problem could be an actual physical problem that your nonfiction book tells them how to solve, or just a need to be entertained by someone you have reason to believe would enjoy your novel) and help them with it, not just to promote your book. I sometimes mention my book on my twitter feed, but rarely; people will follow you because you’re providing interesting content, but not if it’s just a steady stream of ads. The second big bump of sales I got was when someone with a lot of twitter followers mentioned that he was reading it, and many of them followed suit. I’ve also appeared on a relevant podcast where my book was briefly discussed but wasn’t the focus. Again, the goal is to provide useful content for free, with the hopes that people will purchase your book to get more.
Like many authors, I find this area challenging: I get consistently good reviews of my writing, but getting it in front of people can be a challenge. The independent author (and, to a large extent, even the traditional author) these days has to work in marketing as well.
Part 1: What to write
Part 2: Getting ready to publish
Part 3: Making your book available
Part 5: Realistic expectations