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The Secrets to Selling More Books with Penny Sansivieri OCC/RWA Online Class @Bookgal

July 23, 2018 by in category Online Classes tagged as , , , , , , ,

OCC/RWA Online Class:

August 13-24, 2018

 

Secrets-to-selling-books graphic

 

About the Class:

https://www.asliceoforange.net/7765-2/
Week 1: How to Sell Books by the Truckload on Amazon

Amazon is a great place to sell books, but most authors don’t realize that Amazon has an internal sales machine that will actually help you market your book, for free, if you trigger it? It’s called their internal algorithm and, not that dissimilar from ranking on Google, once Amazon’s algorithm kicks in, you could see a boatload of free promotion come your way from Amazon. Here’s what the session will cover:

  • Optimize your Amazon page: what you must do to start showing up in more searches
  • Understanding categories/themes and how to rank consistently #1 in your category.
  • Kindle Unlimited: How some authors are making a fortune here and how you can, too
  • How to quadruple the reviews you get on Amazon.
  • Why having a free book will help you sell more

Week 2: Super Fans & Street Teams- The Secrets to Selling More Books

At the end of the day, for all of the marketing we do, for all of the Tweeting, Facebook-ing, and blogging we really just want to know if it’s paying off. Does any of this sell books?

Have you ever asked yourself:

  •  How do I know if they are the right things to market my book?
  •  I don’t want to spend my life marketing, how can I get the most out of my efforts?
  •  Does giving away my book actually help sell it?
  •  Will any of this help me sell more books?

You will learn how to:

  • Identify and reach your exact right market
  • Turn fans into SUPER FANS and STREET TEAMS
  • Ignite your fans so they promote your book
  •  Use free to sell more books
  • Find and use the right social media for your book

About the Instructor:

Penny Sansevieri

Penny Sansevieri


 
Penny C. Sansevieri, Founder and CEO Author Marketing Experts, Inc., is a best-selling author and internationally recognized book marketing and media relations expert. She is an Adjunct Professor teaching Self-Publishing for NYU.

Her company is one of the leaders in the publishing industry and has developed some of the most innovative Social Media/Internet book marketing campaigns. She is the author of eighteen books, including How to Sell Your Books by the Truckload on Amazon, 5 Minute Book Marketing, and Red Hot Internet Publicity, which has been called the “leading guide to everything Internet.”

AME has had dozens of books top bestseller lists, including those of the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal.

Enrollment Information

 
This is a 2-week online course that uses email and Groups.io. The class is open to anyone wishing to participate. The cost is $15.00 per person or, if you are a member of OCCRWA, $10.00 per person.

To sign up or for more information, go to the class page at the OCC/RWA website: http://occrwa.org/classes/online-class-four/.

Linda McLaughlin
OCC/RWA Online Class Coordinator

 

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Making Ads and Amazon Rankings Work for You

August 17, 2016 by in category Writing: It's a Business tagged as , , , , ,

by Louella Nelson

I’m hoping this article on promoting free and 99’¢  books helps your sales, and I hope you’ll take advantage of the 99’¢  sale on my first historical romance.
Yesterday my book Rye’s Reprieve hit #7 on the Kindle Historical Romance Best Sellers list. Perhaps you are jaded by all the wonderful best-selling authors in our chapter who regularly hit #1 on all the major lists and don’t think #7 is all that much.
But consider: Rye’s Reprieve is my first historical and my first novel-length fiction to release in more than two decades*. Reestablishing a writing career equates to pushing a two-ton boulder up Mt. Baldy. So seeing your new book hit #7 is about as good as eating homemade blueberry ice cream made with blueberries you picked on the hill behind your house just that morning.
*In May 2014, my period short story Cora Lee achieved #6 in Literary Short Fiction, following behind stories by Stephen King and Lee Child. For that launch, the only promotion I did was to mention the book on Twitter & Facebook and in a newsletter to my email list of about 1200. I reissued my Harlequin titles and put out several short stories. My Amazon author page shows all fiction.
I didn’t achieve this recent modest success on Rye’s Reprieve without friends’ advice and a bit of luck. Here’s how I did it.    
Decoding the rankings
On March 9 after my initial email promotion, Rye’s Reprieve went to #6 in Kindle World Romance. In contrast, this go-round, August 7-11, with the 99¢ sale and some specific promotions recommended by friends, the book has been #1 in Kindle Worlds Romance and Westerns for days. It achieved #3 in Kindle Western Romance and held there; today it went to #4. And the book has been #1 in Kindle Westerns for a few days too.
The message? Make a study of Amazon’s ranking structure. It’s complex – more complex than what you see beneath your title’s descriptive data on the book’s Amazon page. Here is the link to see all the lists available under Best Sellers Kindle Store eBooks: Link. From there, click on your genre and drill down until you find the various lists where your book exists.
Under ebook subcategories, Romance is the umbrella topic. I then checked Historical Romance as well as Western Romance. Clicking Westerns takes you to Western Romance.
Another ranking, Westerns, can be found by clicking on Literature & Fiction/Genre Fiction. Strangely, under Genre Fiction, Romance is not listed!
I found Kindle Worlds rankings in the Ranking area on my book’s page.
But also think seriously about placing relatively inexpensive ads on websites whose sole mission is to promote free and 99¢ ebooks.
 
What worked in promotion
First, because Rye’s Reprieve is published by Amazon as one of several novels released in February 2016 in Debra Holland’s Montana Sky Kindle World, Amazon put the book on sale without warning at the beginning of August. I’m assuming they did multiple email blasts that included my book, but even those didn’t keep the book up in the rankings for long.
In addition to my own Facebook and Twitter announcements of the 99¢ sale, a  member of OCC RWA and Novelists, Inc. (NINC), Lauren Royal, opened her Friday Freebies & 99-Cent Bargain Books and her weekly newsletter featuring historical novels to NINC members, so I submitted my book. She also mentioned my title on Facebook and Twitter. The promotion at www.LaurenRoyal.com hit on August 5 and was free.
Debra Holland recommended I try for an ad in eReader News Today (ENT) and I was lucky to be chosen to participate. The fee for an ad on a specific day for historical romance is only $60. You can pay by PayPal or credit card (as most of the sites I mention allow). The morning the ad appeared at www.ereadernewstoday.com, August 7, the book shot to #1 in the Kindle Worlds mentioned above and the top 5 in Western Historical and Western. Unfortunately, I did not think to check the Historical Romance category, but when I did a couple days later, the novel was ranked #22, rising to #7 in the past few days.
I credit Amazon emails, the ENT ad, and Lauren’s newsletter for Rye’s Reprieve initial rise in rank.
Meanwhile, I contacted Linda Carroll-Bradd and asked her advice about advertising. She recommended I look into www.JustKindleBooks.com and www.Ebookshabit.com.  The ad at Just Kindle Books costs $20 plus Add Ons (keep the book on their homepage for extra 3 days $20; Facebook post to 26,000 followers, $10) for a total of $60. The fee includes cover image/link on Pinterest, Tumblr, and other main social media.
That promo hit August 11. The book rose to #7 in Historical Romance, # 3 in Western Romance, as well as #1 in Westerns, and #1 in KW both Romance and Western. This is a pretty good indication that Just Kindle Books is worth the money. I did not get the bump I was hoping for from a $10 ad with eBooksHabit.
After reading a Morning Juice email and attending the PAW group at OCC/RWA on Saturday, I gathered the following advertising ops for ebooks that are free or 99¢ from Kitty Bucholtz, Vicki Crum, Shelley Bleackley, and others. I had spent $120 so far. With a remaining budget of about $250, I placed ads here:
Robin Reads (August was closed when I checked but I wrote to them about the success of the initial advertising efforts, they encouraged me to submit my book, and voila! A spot in their calendar opened up: Aug. 25. If they select me, the cost will be $45.)
Choosy Bookworm accepted me and will advertise Rye’s Reprieve on Aug. 18. Yay! The Rush Premium Feature costs $70, and the cover will remain on their Featured eBooks Page for a week.
Book Sends is pricey at $90 for the spot on Aug. 18 and just about ate up my budget – I have only $25 left to spend.
However, when you’re making 35¢ per book, money can’t be your main motive for promotion. It has to be gaining new readers, racking up a few more reviews and even cross-over sales to your other books and stories, and seeing your efforts pay off in a rise in rankings that you can share with followers. Some authors also experience a bump in sales when the book returns to its normal price, which in the case of Rye’s Reprieve is $3.99.
Did I mention BookBub? If they agreed to let me advertise with them – a slim possibility – the cost would be $500, and they anticipate I’d have roughly 2500 sales. If that happened, I’d clear $375 after costs, and the ranking would no doubt shoot Rye’s Reprieve to single digits on most coveted lists, plus bring a whole bunch of new readers to my author page.
I did not yet advertise with eBookWorth, Bargain Booksy, or Fiverr’s BKnight with its $5 price tag and 50,000 readers because I needed to meet Marianne Donley’s deadline for A Slice of Orange. However, I will at least check out their sites.
I probably don’t need to mention, most of the authors and professional newsletter editors want the authors they feature to put the newsletter link in their social media announcements.
I would appreciate having an email from anyone who wants to share their promotion/ranking journey, and if things really jump by the end of August, I may give a follow-up report in a future Slice.
Contact me at lounelson@cox.net or www.LouellaNelson.com. Follow on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/louella.nelson.1 and Twitter: @LouellaNelson
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OCCRWA’s November Online Class: The Amazon Bookseller’s Toolbox, with Erica Barton

October 27, 2014 by in category Archives tagged as , ,

OCCRWA’s November Online Class starts November 10th and features full-time writer and blogger, Erica Barton. Here’s Erica on her upcoming class:

Do you have a book on Amazon with sluggish sales? Or is your book about to be published on Amazon and you want to promote it? Are you a traditionally published author wondering what you could do to spike your rankings, or a self-published author who is really hoping to see your book hit one of Amazon’s lists?
Well, guess what! It’s easier than you think. Amazon has created dozens of tools to help any author at any stage of their career promote their books.
In this workshop, you are going to find out:

  • What tools Amazon has to sell books on auto-pilot.
  • How to change your Book Pages on Amazon, even if you aren’t the publisher.
  • How to see who is coming to your Book Page and where they are coming from.
  • What to put IN your book so you can make even more sales.
  • Amazon’s cross-promotional tools.
  • A marketing plan from BEFORE your book is published to long after you’ve forgotten how the story goes.

And much more–here’s one example of additional content:

3 Easy Ways to Deal with Negative Reviews on Amazon

Every author gets them, no matter how good the author is.  For example, “Beautiful Creatures” (a book that was made into a movie) has 90 1-star reviews from the Haters, but that’s only 90 bad reviews out of 3,551 reviews total.  And while it may seem like a negative thing, it can actually be good for two reasons.  

1)      Haters often raise the ire of the Lovers who will come to your book’s defense for you. And,

2)      They give an honest perspective to the book which lets potential readers know that there are real people reading the book versus an author bribing people to go in and leave good reviews. 

The facts are these.  You will probably get bad reviews when you run a KDP promotion because people who don’t read your genre are going to pick up your book for free.  Not only that, but there are authors without scruples who will go in and try to tank your book sales by leaving a bad review so that authors will go check out their book instead.  Finally, there are the people who will just hate your book no matter what because they just don’t like your voice or your plot, or whatever. 

In regards to those people, I say don’t let them get you down.  Bad press is still press, and every review kicks up that little number of total reviews.  Get enough reviews and those bad ones get washed out by the good ones. 

But, let’s not dwell on bad reviews.  Instead, let’s talk about how to deal with them. 

It’s Alina again. To check out Erica’s class or sign up, visit  http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclassNov14.html

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