Should you advertise direct to your Series Page?
By: Ginger | Posted on December 24, 2021
It’s an unfortunate reality that many authors cringe when they hear that Amazon has made yet another change to their storefront with regards to how product pages are displayed or laid out. After all, it seems like more often than not those changes are more of a benefit to Amazon than to the actual author whose book is being sold on that page. So it’s a welcome relief to learn that they’ve finally added something that is actually useful. For authors that like to write books as part of a series, Amazon now allows more customization around how your series landing page looks and acts, making it a much more powerful tool for selling multiple books. Here’s Ginger with how you can start taking advantage of this! It’s a pretty well-established fact that the most successful self-published authors tend to write multiple books – often as part of a… Read More >
Has Apple’s recent update killed your Facebook ad performance?
By: Ginger | Posted on December 17, 2021
One of the constants of being a self-published author is that just when you think you have this game all figured out, one of the other players goes and changes the rules and throws everyone back a few steps. This time, it wasn’t one of the usual suspects making our lives more difficult, and what was done wasn’t targeting authors at all, but many of us have been negatively affected nonetheless. I’m taking about Apple’s recent ‘Do Not Track’ 14.5 iOS update. Designed to improve the privacy of Apple users, one of the side effects has been that authors everywhere are seeing their Facebook ad performance drop significantly. Today, Ginger goes into some detail about why this is happening, and some of the things you can do to try and compensate for it. Earlier this year, Apple announced that their IOS 14.5 update would include a “Do Not Track”… Read More >
Updated your book? Now test the results.
By: Ginger | Posted on December 10, 2021
As a self-published author, you’re probably very aware that your book isn’t done just because you’ve finished writing. You’re still ultimately responsible for putting together all of that “other stuff” that helps actually sell the thing. I’m talking about blurbs, covers, or any of the other details that make up an enticing product page. But unless you’re also a marketing expert, you may not get all those things right on the first try, and missing the mark on them can lead to poor sales for even a great book. That’s why you should never shy away from making changes if you think you’ve identified an issue, regardless of whether your book is already published or not. But even if those adjustments don’t lead to a dramatic or immediately obvious change in sales doesn’t mean they didn’t make a difference. You’ll only know for sure if you carefully measure and test… Read More >
Don’t forget to curate your back catalog!
By: Ginger | Posted on December 3, 2021
Authors get better with every book they write and publish – that’s inevitable. However, readers often like to start from the beginning of an author’s back catalog and work their way through. How do you avoid losing these potential fans when they insist on starting with your not-so-strong books? Ginger offers up a couple of ideas. There’s a famous parable about a pottery class in which the students were divided into two groups. One group was assigned to make the best, most perfect pot they could. The other group was assigned to make as many pots as they could – they’d be judged on quantity, not quality. The result? The students who’d made the most pots had also made the best ones – repeatedly. They’d easily beaten the best efforts of the group who’d been asked to make a single, perfect pot because practice makes perfect – while perfectionism… Read More >
Self-pub or traditional? Which one delivers what an author deserves?
By: Ginger | Posted on November 26, 2021
Independent authors still sometimes face a stigma when it comes to their work, whether from the subset of readers that continue to believe a traditionally published book is somehow more “real” or “professional”, or from their own feelings of self-doubt that they hope may be finally quelled by the added legitimacy they’d feel from landing a trad pub contract. But is it really worth it? A decade ago the answer was a clear and obvious yes, but the publishing industry has seen some radical changes since then. To answer whether or not there are any remaining benefits in choosing traditional over self publishing, Ginger digs in to what those big companies still offer, whether it’s worth the cost they demand in return, and what still needs to change. In November, Harper Collins and the Ian Fleming Foundation announced that British author Kim Sherwood had been selected to write the… Read More >
What can Ian Fleming teach us about writing?
By: Ginger | Posted on November 19, 2021
I don’t think it’s possible to be a great author without also being an avid reader, first. In fact, while it’s often said that writing daily is the most essential habit an author should develop in order to improve their craft, I think just as important is reading as much and as often as possible. Both of those things are essential ingredients to being a successful storyteller, and there’s no better example of that than Ian Fleming, creator of the iconic character James Bond. There is a lot of benefit in studying authors like Fleming, and as someone who has done just that, Ginger is happy to share what he’s learned. The 25th James Bond movie, No Time To Die, has hit theaters across the world. Some have hailed it as the “savior of cinema” for finally getting people to return to the movie theater after over a year… Read More >
Tweak your Sales Strategy before Cyber Monday!
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on November 12, 2021
Every year, Black Friday and Cyber Monday seem to grow bigger as consumers save up their money for when they think they’ll get the most bang for their buck. But most of the really big deals are limited, and not everyone is looking for a new 60 inch TV or fancy espresso machine anyway. There are plenty of consumers that don’t even know what they want, and they’ll just be browsing online on Cyber Monday for anything that catches their fancy. And that’s why authors are missing an opportunity if they don’t try to capitalize on all those new eyeballs. Here are a few ways to get yourself and your catalog ready for the biggest online sales day of the year. For decades, America has been gripped by Black Friday fever. The day after Thanksgiving – the last Friday in November – is when department stores and retailers traditionally… Read More >
“A Novel” is not a suitable subtitle for your book
By: Ginger | Posted on November 5, 2021
As a self-published author, you have probably heard the advice not to re-invent the wheel, and that sometimes it’s not a bad idea to pay attention to current trends, in case there is something you can use to help attract more eyeballs to your own book. One example of that would be looking at the covers of best sellers in your genre to get a feel for common concepts or elements that are currently attracting attention, and then incorporating some of those into your own design. But that doesn’t mean that everything is worth copying, and sometimes you have to really consider whether something is actually a good idea, even in cases where you see other authors doing it. After all, just because Billy jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge doesn’t mean you have to, right? (Hopefully some parents get that…) So today, Ginger is here to warn you against one… Read More >
A History of Kindle Unlimited
By: Ginger | Posted on October 29, 2021
I was editing an article a few weeks ago, and there were some references to Kindle Unlimited and its various iterations. For the purposes of fact checking, I went looking for an article that summed everything up for me but failed to find anything. I did find some blogs and references that discussed specific changes from one version of KU to another, but nothing that really laid the entire history out all in one place. So I discussed it with Ginger and we decided it would be worth putting something together. Of course, knowing how KU worked in the past doesn’t change how it works now, but there are probably some newer authors out there that are interested in reading about how the program evolved, and why. And for those of you that lived through it, you may still want to take a nostalgic trip down memory lane… In… Read More >
The startling importance of your “Look Inside”
By: Ginger | Posted on October 22, 2021
I never feel my age as much as when I catch myself referring to the “good old days”, and yet with self-publishing I can’t help but think back about how much easier things were (or at least seemed) back when the online eBook landscape wasn’t so crowded. With less books to choose from, it didn’t matter as much if you clearly did your own covers or hadn’t tweaked your blurb to perfection. Writing in less popular sub-genres was no big deal, either, because while there were fewer readers, they were hungry for content and there weren’t many authors feeding each niche. And don’t even get me started on advertising! It not only cost less but gave a much better return. True, those days are gone, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make money as a self-published author anymore – you just have to pay a lot more attention to the… Read More >
