I thought I’d give an update on both the audiobook platform that I started doing this spring and the promo efforts that I’ve made for the past few months. Maybe it can give some of you ideas for expanding your content’s reach or for marketing it.
ACX—Still steady income for the $0 I put into the process. Readers are requesting that more books go to audio (several readers wrote that they’re losing their eyesight and can only “read” via audio). I hate admitting that I don’t have the audio rights for the traditionally published books and that I find it less-likely that my publisher will put them on audiobook.
This time, as soon as the latest of my self-published books was published, I immediately put the book up for audition on ACX. Now I’m already at the point of reviewing the finished audio. It’s moved things through a bit faster. Thanks to Lia Frederick for narrating.
Free books. I believe that the single, most effective thing I do to move books is to keep one of them free. I keep one of my titles free at all times by listing it as free on Smashwords and allowing Amazon to price-match it. I consider it advertising and it’s the only form of real reader-focused promo that I do…except for Goodreads giveaways, which I’ll mention next. I do think, however, that this is probably a better practice for writers who have several or more books out.
I’ve found that the freebie also seems to result in sales for my trad-published titles, even though they’re higher-priced than my self-pubbed books. My royalty checks have been higher as my self-pubbed sales have grown…even for the books I’ve written under a pen name. I think that Amazon does a good job putting my other books in front of the readers. I don’t think that Barnes & Noble does nearly as good of a job in cross-promoting my other titles.
I’ve noticed that although free promos always work well to keep my other books visible, they do especially well if the freebie is one that has lots of reviews. It’s almost as if the readers are looking at the number of reviews and not the reviews themselves—one of the books that was recently free has 236 reviews. But its giveaway was not quite as successful as a freebie for another of my titles that has 446 reviews, even though I think the one with fewer reviews probably has more favorable reviews.
So…what does this mean? I’m wondering if it means that readers can be influenced by sheer numbers—an “everyone is reading it” mentality. Even subconsciously.
Goodreads. On that same thread (trying to get reviews), I received a box of ARCs (Advance Reader Copies) a few weeks ago for the book that’s coming out in December. I was a little surprised to get them, since I don’t always get them except for the first book in a series. My editor’s assistant asked me how many ARCs I wanted. The idea these days is to get as many reviews on the upcoming release as possible. I think, before online retailing became such a huge thing, that ARCs usually went out to various print reviewers…then bloggers, when blogging reviewers became popular. Now it seems to be readers. I asked the assistant for 18 ARCs for a Goodreads giveaway.
I’ve noticed that giving away ARCs on Goodreads sometimes makes traditionally-published authors a little nervous. This is because sometimes signed ARCs end up being sold online on eBay…even before the release. I’ve heard writers talking about it. It’s against the Goodreads rules, but pirating, etc., has never seemed to hurt me or my sales.
The giveaway for the December book had a good response…Goodreads reported that 1310 people entered it and I had 16 winners, keeping two of the ARCs in case one got lost in the mail or some other problem. I’ve found that a good approach seems to be to send a message to the winners –you can click on their link when Goodreads sends you the list of winners. You congratulate them, tell them when you’ll send the books out (I hear that you can get one-stars on Goodreads for not being prompt), and possibly even give them your other contact info so that they can email you or Facebook you, or whatever. It makes you a bit more human, more friendly—instead of just a calculated giveaway. I don’t ask for reviews when I send my note, but several readers wrote me back this time (a few on my email instead of using Goodreads) and said that they were excited to have won and planned to write reviews.
As I’ve mentioned before, I personally don’t find Goodreads a particularly warm and fuzzy environment for writers, so I just pop in, do my giveaway thing, and pop out again. You don’t have to hang out there to do giveaways…you can tweak your settings so that Goodreads notifies you via email when they’ve picked the winners. You do have to have a physical book for a giveaway there…they don’t give away ebooks. But your books don’t have to be traditionally published to be entered, either—CreateSpace or Lightning Source works fine.
So, that’s about it for how things are going for audio and promotion—and what works for now. Being flexible is good in this business…what works one month may not work the next. We should just be prepared to change course.
What have you found that’s worked promo-wise lately? Any thoughts about Goodreads giveaways? Anyone doing ACX?
As my series are still pretty scattered, I don’t get quite the boost you do from freebies (not for other books) but I find some books, if they are free for a couple of months, will both improve their own overall sales, and often still lead to sales of other books.
Interesting about the reviews — yes, I think I’ve noticed this. Freebies often lead to lower rated reviews (because people who might not be the prime audience are lured into checking out a book) but it doesn’t seem to hurt anything.
Camille–That’s a good point to make. Yes, I think that if you have a *series* with several books in it, freebies work the best. I started doing freebies when I had only 2 self-pubbed books (but I had another, trad-pubbed, first in the series, so technically I had 3 books) but it works so much better now with five books in the series.
Yes–I do get poor reviews for the freebies. No doubt. I’ve sometimes lured readers into a genre they don’t ordinarily read and possibly aren’t suited to read. The poor reviews used to make me anxious, but then I started getting so many reviews overall that the lower ones were balanced out by higher ones.
Oh, Elizabeth, when I think about everything I could possibly do to promote my book when I get it published, I get so overwhelmed. I’m not sure i’ll have the energy. But that could be the health issues I”m dealing with. Anyway, thanks for this good info. It’s very very informative.
Never thought about sending a personalized message to Goodreads winners. Bummer.
And I’d be happy with 236 reviews on Amazon…
Elizabeth – Thanks for the update. I think you have a really good point about the ‘everyone is doing it’ mentality. I know it’s a factor at least sometimes in the books people choose to read. So I’m not surprised you’re noticing it.
Alex–This is the first time I’ve done it, myself. I think I read about other authors doing it and thinking, “Oh.”
Yeah, it’s a decent number of reviews…it just looks a little weird when the other books have so many and it has half. I’ve no idea why, either…it’s honestly not a bad book (I think one of the other ones is a worse one!)
First of all I think Quilt Trip is a very clever title. Secondly, I need to update my sidebar with your new books.
I think free always brings people in. And if the product (or book)is good, then that’s a plus.
T
First, thanks for the nudge to get my books into the ACX audio book production. I’ve got 5 titles accepted, with the first two coming out sometime in November, I think. I chose 1 narrator for 4 of them in a series, which slows things down, but I’ve heard that “listeners” often choose books (or reject them) because of the narrator, and I wanted consistent voices. I’m amazed at what it takes to produce an audio book, and have been blogging about it myself.
I’m with you on the lack of warm fuzzies at Goodreads. I can’t really figure it out.
As for freebies–I’ve indie published mine all over the place, and it’s too much trouble to mess with them, but I do keep the first book in one of my series at 99 cents.
Terry
Terry’s Place
Karen–I’m so sorry! I hope you’re much better soon. There are definitely easier promo approaches…I touched on them on Wednesday.
Margot–I guess it’s only natural that it would be that way. If I were buying coffeemakers, I’m sure I’d have the same reaction: “Oh, this one has gobs of reviews. Maybe this is the coffeemaker for me…”
Teresa –Thanks so much! I appreciate it. :)
Terry–I think there’s a lot to be said for consistency…and, of course, that’s not what I went with. :) I was into speed–I’m just impatient. I’ve not gotten feedback on whether I screwed up or not yet. But I do think all the narrators did a great job.
The Goodreads environment…yes, I can’t put my finger on it. There may have been a number of Writers Behaving Badly.
This is very interesting. Can you tell me more about self audio-publishing? I have some actress friends who have volunteered to audio my novel. What advice can you give? Thanks
Girl in the Jitterbug Dress–You know, on the writer end, it’s a no-brainer. You create a profile, claim your title(s), open the book for auditions, make an offer (through ACX…they supply the contracts), and then approve the audio. Easy peasy. You can choose a royalty-share option which means you split the profits 50-50 with the narrator and put no money down at all. That’s what I did…I just don’t have tons of extra cash, what with having kids and all.
For the narrators, there are guidelines here: https://www.acx.com/help/narrators/200484550
Again, I think it’s pretty straightforward. There’s also info for authors who want to read their own books. ACX does a quality check after the authors review the audio, to make sure everything sounds good, then it goes live. It’s really remarkably easy (at least on the author end). It’s actually been the easiest money I’ve made in this business because the content was already available (i.e…I had the books ready to go) and I only had to audition and approve.
Free must be done strategically: either to gather names and build a following, or to create interest in other titles — which means we gotta have other titles already. I think giving away the 1st book in a series will be an especially devious way to make sales, and I’m looking forward to finishing the sequel to Through the Fog, then giving TtF away free.
Somehow I missed that authors can record their own work at ACX. Time to make an audiobook of Through the Fog.
Joel–It worked well when I had 2 self-pubbed titles (although it hurt a bit more because you’re giving away so much potential income). It works a *lot* better with 4 self-pubbed titles out. I alternate which one is free, although most folks will give the first one away for free. I write my books so they can be read out of order, though.
Authors can definitely narrate their stuff at ACX, if they wish. Link is here: https://www.acx.com/help/authors-as-narrators/200626860
Through the Fog is excellent! Looking forward to finishing it up this weekend. :)
Thanks for posting about this. I hear many author say free doesn’t work anymore, but having just published the 3rd book in my spy series, I’m debating with the free option. :) Nice to see that some authors still think it works.
Laura–I feel very strongly that it works…especially with series. Hope it will work for you, if you decide to go in that direction!
Hi Elizabeth,
As always, I find your thoughts on self-publishing so helpful. I was wondering. Have you heard of Story Cartel? It’s a site that Jeff Goins and I developed to help authors do giveaways to get reviews. It’s similar to GoodReads’ giveaways, but a little more focused than GoodReads can be since they’re such a huge site.
Anyway, some of our strategy was developed from your advice. So thanks for all you do. :)
Hulloo, Joe! I’m a fan of Jeff, and just heard of Story Cartel recently from my friend Tom Bentley.
I studiously ignore a lot of these online tools because many seem designed to benefit the site, not the author. Story Cartel appears to have its heart in the right place. With Jeff on board, this is no surprise.
I’ll be testing Story Cartel and including what I learn in my book on marketing. I wish you and Jeff and Story Cartel well.
I’m soooo glad you’ve shared your experience with audio. Because of you, I’ve added that to my to-do list when pubbing my book.
I’ve heard the same thing about Goodreads, that it’s not a warm and fuzzy place for authors to hang out. Good to know.
Thanks!
Such a helpful post. A roving freebie has been on my mind a lot too as I build up my own series. Good to see more about audiobooks as well; Joanna Penn at The Creative Penn has been discussing this quite a bit lately, and it’s sounding like a growing opportunity stream for books.