2020 Book Sales Survey Results
By: Craig | Posted on January 1, 2021
When the Covid-19 pandemic first started and everyone entered their first (of many) lockdowns, many authors reported seeing an initial uptick in sales. As time wore on, however, and 2020 continued its downward spiral, I began to hear more and more about how book sales were starting to fall. While anecdotal reports are great for being alerted to an issue, it’s usually more useful to try and gather info from a wider variety of sources in order to look for trends, and with access to so many self-published authors, I’m in a unique position to do just that. So with that in mind, I sent out a recent survey to gather more hard data, and I’ve crunched the numbers on the results to try and give you an idea of just how bad things have gotten, who has been affected and to what extent. Way back near the start of… Read More >
U.S. Trademark FAQ: Your Questions Answered
By: Nate | Posted on December 25, 2020
In Nate’s last article, he answered some frequently asked questions about copyright. This week he’s back to do the same thing to the idea of trademarks. So if you’re an author concerned about protecting your brand, you won’t want to miss this primer on what trademarks are, how they are protected, and whether or not you need to worry about them. And at the end, if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment for Nate and he’ll do his best to get you an answer! Howdy again, everyone! Just wanted to give you a heads up that the same caveats apply to this post as the previous FAQ about copyright: while I am pursuing a law degree that I may or may not ever use, I am not a lawyer. Nothing in this post should constitute legal advice, and everyone should always engage a law professional… Read More >
Calculating the real value of your book ads
By: Ginger | Posted on December 18, 2020
As an independent author in charge of your own marketing success, you owe it to yourself to make sure you can properly determine just how effectively your book ads are performing. But if you’ve been assuming that you can simply rely on the advertising dashboard provided by Amazon or Facebook to give you the answers you’re looking for, you need to understand that those numbers can be very misleading, if not completely wrong. To illustrate this, ad expert Ginger takes us through some actual numbers pulled from one of his own recent ad campaigns. Before I finally published my first successful book, I had spent 25 years carving out a career in advertising and marketing; which probably gave me an advantage when it came to promoting my books. I’m old enough to have entered the advertising industry before the days of Facebook and YouTube – back when people still… Read More >
The 30-day Social Media Challenge
By: Ginger | Posted on December 11, 2020
One of the topics I discuss most often with authors looking for advice on expanding their readership is social media, because the importance of building a following cannot be overstated when it comes to self-publishing. There’s no one else to do it for you, so even if you shun social media in your personal life, you can’t afford to ignore it when it comes to your writing. That’s why advertising and marketing expert Ginger is here not only to challenge you into using your social, but he’s also handing out plenty of tips on how to do it effectively. There’s probably nobody reading this who doesn’t know what NaNoWriMo is – the “national novel writing month” in which people commit to writing 50,000 words in 30 days, each November. Well, successful self-published authors spend every month as if it’s NaNoWriMo – because of how important it is to write… Read More >
Twelve Tips for Building a Self-Publishing Career
By: Nate | Posted on December 4, 2020
There are many paths to success and if you poll a dozen different successful self-published authors you might get a dozen unique answers on how they got their career going. But you’ll probably also find that regardless of differences in things such as genre or marketing strategies, most (if not all) of those authors also have a lot in common. This is because, at a lower level, there are some core things that are much more essential to success. So if you’re ready to move from occasional author to serious novelist, Nate has put together a list of twelve self-publishing tips that will help you kickstart your own writing career. Tip 1: Do your research. Not just about your favorite niches and not just the bestsellers, though. Watch and read the news. Watch for trends in other media, like television or movies. And definitely don’t be afraid to step outside… Read More >
Is your book worthy of the ad budget you’re about to spend?
By: Ginger | Posted on November 27, 2020
Nothing burns through ad dollars faster than trying to sell a book that no one wants to buy. But even if the story is great and an author has done everything right inside their book, that doesn’t necessarily mean they haven’t gone completely off the rails on everything else. And unfortunately, it’s the ‘everything else’ that drive readers to click the buy button. In this next installment of Ginger’s continuing series on turning your writing dreams into a reality, he dissects one of his early publications in which he made just about every mistake possible, all so that you can learn from his missteps instead of making them on your own! The question I get asked most often by other authors is: “How can I advertise my book?” The more important one can sometimes be: “Should I advertise my book?” So, you want to be a successful author –… Read More >
US Copyright FAQ: Your Questions Answered
By: Nate | Posted on November 20, 2020
A couple of weeks ago we went over the rules around copyright and designers as it pertains to your cover design, but what about when it comes to your actual book? One of the questions authors often ask is whether they need to copyright their book in order to protect it. Unfortunately, like that last article and pretty much everything else related to self-publishing, the answer isn’t a simple yes or no. It really depends on a variety of factors, which is why Nate is back to go over what you need to know. Howdy, y’all! Let me preface this by saying that while I am pursuing a law degree with certification in intellectual property, I am not a lawyer, and I don’t really ever intend to practice. Nothing in this thread should constitute legal advice, and I would advise everyone to always engage a law professional in your jurisdiction… Read More >
When to throw out your first draft?
By: Ginger | Posted on November 13, 2020
For some authors, the common advice to “throw out your first draft” is the stuff of nightmares, but it should only be that scary if you’re taking it too literally. It’s rarely (if ever) necessary to just toss your book out and forget about it altogether! The point is more about how an author must sometimes be willing to tear their first draft down completely and rebuild it into a better or more marketable book. But the question is, how do you know when that’s needed? In his continuing series on turning your writing dreams into reality, Ginger lays out when and why you may need to go this route. If you’re serious about becoming a successful self-published author, you have to make some serious decisions about what you’ve already written and published; and sometimes, you’ll have to go right back to the drawing board. Ernest Hemingway warned authors… Read More >
Copyright and Cover Designers
By: Nate | Posted on November 6, 2020
Many authors believe that if you hire a designer to do your covers, you’re free to use the finished product however you see fit – including resizing, zooming in on, or cropping out parts of the images to use in your ads or other promotional material. But be careful, because in many cases, doing those things may actually be in violation of your license agreement. Just because you paid a designer for a cover or purchased some stock images doesn’t mean you’re free to use them however you please. That’s why Nate is here to go over what is and is not allowed across the various scenarios. You’ve invested a ton of time and energy into making your story perfect, but without an eye-catching cover designed to communicate to your intended audience, you’ll be at a major disadvantage when the time comes to hopefully see some returns on your investment…. Read More >
Be a Plotter when it comes to your writing career!
By: Ginger | Posted on October 30, 2020
Just like some authors start a new story not knowing where it’ll lead, many self-published authors approach their writing career ‘by the seat of their pants.’ But is that the best path to success? In this installment in our series of posts related to turning your writing dream into a reality, Ginger lays out the argument that the truly successful authors approach their future in publishing with the same discipline as they plot out their stories. That is, they plan things out carefully by deciding on a genre, researching it thoroughly, and then commit to delivering books that meet reader expectations. It’s a well-known concept – the writer as “plotter” or “pantster.” In fact, we’ve written about it a number of times on this blog! A ‘plotter‘ plans out the path of their story, often using something like a ‘beat sheet’ or a story circle. Successful authors who literally… Read More >
