Today's guest
post by Rebecca
Dahlke addresses one of the great challenges in publishing, whether traditional
or indie – getting the word out about your books. Here's Rebecca:
In
2010, I started an e-newsletter for mystery and suspense authors. It ran, free
of charge to the authors, until December 2011. I decided to let it
go because: 1) authors just weren't with me on how effective this kind of
advertising could be, and 2) I had my own books to write.
So I put the
website in mothballs, but kept the Facebook site; the yahoo group (which is
where authors meet to talk about promotion, and readers come to see what
authors are talking about); the Goodreads group for Indie and small press
promotion; and a Twitter account.
Since then I
have put four mysteries up on Amazon/Kindle, and because I understood that my
books are a product, I also began a six-month quest for the best, and most
effective, form of advertising.
The results were
exciting! I discovered that with a combination of inexpensive paid
and free promotion, I could sell more books. I thought the results of this were
interesting enough to share. I put together a 7 page handout and spoke on this
subject with my local Sisters in Crime chapter in Tucson. The handout was
necessary because I had a lot of powerful information to share, but also I
cautioned my grateful listeners with the following: The only thing I could
guarantee about this information was that some of it would change.
That was in June
2012, and sure enough, things did change. One of the sites I listed as smart
and creative bit the dust, and another site, Digital Books Today, has taken a
giant leap after only 18 months in the business. Eighteen months?
Gee, All Mystery e-newsletter started before DBT… so that meant… but
wait! There's more!
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In a 2012 e-mail
from the founder of Digital Books Today, Anthony Wessel says, and I
quote: "Traffic on our Sites: March: 8,000, June 16,000" and in their
"The Top 100 Best Free Kindle Books List: November 2011: 600+ and June
2012- 10,000+ with 38,000 click outs to books on Amazon."
Obviously
authors had finally seen the light and were using paid book marketing as part
of a successful campaign to sell books. I know, because I was using them too,
and the results have been gratifying—except I had one complaint: As a mystery
writer, all of the promotion sites had mystery squished in between vampire and
memoir.
It didn't take
me but a nano-second to see that All Mystery e-newsletter's time had finally
come. I ticked off the obstacles for resurrecting this e-newsletter against the
fact that it might take some time to gain momentum. Then realized I already had
all of my requirements for a good promotion site: I still had my list of
readers from last year's e-newsletter, and I had a Facebook page, Yahoo and Goodreads groups,
and Twitter with a small army of Re-Tweet pals.
September 1st I
sent out the first weekly e-newsletter accompanied with additional
author posts at Facebook and Twitter that would continue throughout the week.
Sound
interesting?
Here are links
to All Mystery e-newsletter places:
Twitter handle:
@allmysterynews
Last but not
least, for those of you who would like a copy of that 7 page handout for both
free and paid promotions for authors, send me an e-mail with "promotion
handout" in the subject line and I'll send you a PDF copy. E-mail: rp@rpdahlke.com
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