Great Sales in self-pub without doing ANYTHING at all?

Buyers have to know about the book. If the author doesn't do anything to promote it, how would buyers find it or even know it existed?

I've bought several e-books on amazon just from random trolling around. So they've each gotten at least one sale the lazy way.

Pretty much. The only thing I did to "promote" my first two books was to mention it on a couple websites I frequent and I had very good sales for the first year. I've started trying to promote my books recently but haven't noticed much in the way of a difference yet.

RikWriter said:

Pretty much. The only thing I did to "promote" my first two books was to mention it on a couple websites I frequent and I had very good sales for the first year.

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I'm interested- when you mean mention, did you contact the owner of the site and have them do a review, or just leave comments about your books in blog posts? Any specifics would be super helpful to this young self publisher.

I'm new to self-publishing, but my first novel (with no marketing) sold ten times as many copies in its first three months of existence as my successive three ebooks have sold since then. Keep in mind we're talking relatively tiny numbers here.

If I could isolate the reason for the first novel's success, I'd bottle it. Unfortunately, I have no idea why it's become the "flagship" of my humble offerings. If pressed, however, I'd say it has something to do with pacing; the first novel starts off real quick-like. The rest of my books are a slow boat to China kinda thing.

Personally, I haven't noticed a correlation between sales and marketing effort thus far. Insert shrugging-shoulder emoji here. I can tweet and blog my rear off for a month and see no bump in sales, then hibernate social media-wise the next month and make enough cash to buy a six-pack of seriously good craft beer.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that your guess is as good as mine. Best of luck.

Gray-
Congrats on the four books and some modest success.

Did your ebook readers know of your novel being published? I ask because I'm wondering maybe they saw your quality which let them take the dive into buying your novel. Ebook is a low barrier to entry format to test a new author.

plumone said:

Gray-
Congrats on the four books and some modest success.

Did your ebook readers know of your novel being published? I ask because I'm wondering maybe they saw your quality which let them take the dive into buying your novel. Ebook is a low barrier to entry format to test a new author.

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Yeah, I'm hoping in a modest kind of way that readers were attracted to the free samples on Amazon and elsewhere and decided to spend their hard-earned cash on my book(s) based on the samples they read. That's humbling.

I don't think ebook is necessarily a low barrier to entry format to test a new author. It's just what I decided to do.

Hanson said:

I suppose that's really the sub-text to my question.

Sure, a lot of leg work is bound to have some effect - maybe even significant effect. But I doubt if any causation between the two, promotion and sales, can be actually proven.

Of course that's always been a conundrum for marketeers and advertisers - but that's a different discussion, because

I'm talking specifically about self-pubbed books. I wonder about the correlation of sales with 'promotion' and how interrelated they are.

I wonder if the selling site, such as Amazon have their own search logic, and if that is the major player in terms of sales or not.

It is a reasonable assumption that an individual's promotion can and will effect some level of sales, but most folk have limited contacts/ resources/ time etc. and so the overall sales from an author's promotion may well in the half penny place, ie 5% of overall sales.

Hence, does effect = reward? Or is effort much greater than reward?


I'm speaking from a lazy position here, but it's also a bit of general curiosity.

ETA. Just to add, I'm not talking about offering your book for free on say amazon for a period of time, as really, that's an Amazon promotion, of which you avail.

I'm talking about promotion other than that facilitated by your sales platform.

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I thought you literally meant can a person upload their book, walk away, and expect sales with absolutely no promotion. No mention. It's there on Amazon with all of the millions of books offered.

There is quite a bit of information here on promotions, marketing, and what works versus what doesn't. There is no magic formula that I know of. I have heard of some authors who have done very minimal marketing, and their book takes off after a mention on a high-profile blog or something like that.

It is interesting. I have three books on Amazon. I don't do much promotion for any of them. My one self-published title has fairly consistent sales month to month whether I promote it or not. I really don't know how this happens, but I think it has to do with that book consistently showing up in its category, so people find it when they do a search. I know other authors whose books sell consistently without much promotion. It could be that buyers are seeing it suggested as an "also bought."

There is word of mouth, too, and I've had people tell me they've bought my book based on someone else's recommendation. Build enough word of mouth, and you'll see sales increase.

Read Leah Raeder's Unteachable thread. The author really didn't do much promotion other than a blog tour, as I recall, and went on to have phenomenal sales.

I just self-pubbed a few days ago so I don't know either, but...

I self-published a collection of 100 flash stories, but nearly all were previously published in litmags and anthologies. That exposure probably provides a boost once people find out my book exists.

I'm sure it depends, too, on how popular the genre you write is. For example, erotic romance or SFF novels tend to have a higher following than books of short stories.

Also, "lazy" things you can do might be the most effective. The first day, I only sold two ebooks even though I was only charging $2.99. And I knew both of my buyers, lol. The second day, I signed up for a Kindle promotion that makes the ebook free for 5 days. On just the first day of it, I "sold" nearly 200 copies.

In theory, some of those readers will leave reviews, which boosts future sales. And there's word of mouth, which also boosts future sales. But it's too soon to tell how much effect it will have. Plenty of people probably nab anything free but never read it. But we can only do what we can do...

The first day it was free, it reached #1,200-something in free Amazon ebook sales, and #10 in free ebooks of stories by a single author. The increased visibility further gets my book and name out there.

Another easy-peasy thing is join Goodreads and put a few forthcoming print copies (they don't take ebooks) into their "Giveaway" drawings. So far nearly 200 people have signed up for a winning copy and it's only a couple of days into the month I signed on for. Again, more visibility and readers, though where that leads remains to be seen.

Also, list it here. This is a big site, it will get some notice. I mentioned mine on Twitter and a few other sites I'm on as well. But of course you can't blab about it too much or it comes across as spam and just annoys people.

I also listed it on my author site.

So there are a few lazy ways to get some attention on your book. But during the first day, when I did just slap it up there without doing a thing, it was lost in the masses and didn't get noticed at all.

I've only tweeted about mine a few times. I think they have decent sales for being shorts.

plumone said:

I'm interested- when you mean mention, did you contact the owner of the site and have them do a review, or just leave comments about your books in blog posts? Any specifics would be super helpful to this young self publisher.

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They were just a couple message boards not at all related to writing or science fiction. I just went on their general discussion forums and said "hey I wrote a couple books. Check them out if you want. "

Great feedback everyone.

I hope this info helps all of us increase our sales.

This sort of thing is possible. But it generally isn't just one book though it can be about the same number of total words. It's 3+ in series in popular genres.

There was a podcast just this week with an author doing it:
http://rockingselfpublishing.com/episode-57-using-pen-name-selling-1000-books-day/

His "promotion" is all maintainence stuff. Twitter, facebook, mailing list which are updated to tell readers who have already found him through Amazon when the next book is available. No promo at all to drive readers to the initial purchase, not even freebies. Just low prices of .99 or 2.99 and Amazon algos. (Of course, good writing, covers, and metadata to go with that.)

Of course, to get to his full time writer status of selling 400-600 books a day you have to repeat this many times. But each individual series starts with a blank slate as he uses new pen names for every genre. And they just grow on their own (but according to him very slowly until there are 3 books in the series.)

And he's not alone doing this. His partner is also a writer and she reached similar milestones before he did if memory serves.

Hanson, "Don't throw me in the briar patch," that kind of lazy --

I'm too new to say much from experience. The Kindleboards, blogs & newsletters are my main source of info on author's self-pub sales, all taken with a hunk of rock salt unless I know the author.

The ultimate in lazy sales depends on category. With a strong title, top-notch cover, compelling blurb and a hot niche, yeah, sales without footwork could happen.

BTW, people often mention social media, yet Twitter and such seem to run pretty low on conversions. Those platforms are useful for networking, yet the people spamming them with book ads are probably doing themselves more harm than good.

I'll watch for your romance novel. Now there's a category with a built-in readership.

Tanner-
Thanks for the podcast link. Really helpful stuff.

The Bigfoot erotica author didn't do a whole lot, as I recall. Just wrote the books and they sold. The trick is being in a niche with high demand. Erotica and romance are generally good bets, but within those, some niches have more demand than others. If you want an easy life, your best bet is to look at the ones that sold with minimal effort and see if you fancy writing that sort of story.

The big issue is really for those who don't write romance or erotica. I found it a lot harder to find low-promotion successes outside of those. The ones I did find included cozy mystery and military science fiction (which is good for me, as I like both of those). And also non-fiction of various types.

Polenth said:

And also non-fiction of various types.

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What non-fiction niches do you recommend?

Polenth said:

The big issue is really for those who don't write romance or erotica. I found it a lot harder to find low-promotion successes outside of those. The ones I did find included cozy mystery and military science fiction (which is good for me, as I like both of those). And also non-fiction of various types.

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Yep. The writer I linked had success in SF and Horror as well. Didn't do well in steampunk and abandoned the series. But I think his biggest successes are romance. And his partner was all romance.

Viola Rivard did spectacular business recently with a werewolf romance serial capitalizing on the hot "alpha" keyword but she might have used permafree too. Don't recall.

But it does seem nearly all of the big breakouts are in niche romance of one sort or another.

Hanson -- Glad you took that in the intended spirit. And I *do* watch the sky.

Seriously, as others pointed out, there are options aside from romance.

Fun thread. I checked out the link Tanner posted and started roughing out a series I've been toying with for years. It would be a relief to drop all the platform-building and just wing a couple series out under a pen name and see if they fly.

plumone said:

What non-fiction niches do you recommend?

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This wasn't my big area, so I didn't look as closely. But books that explained how to do something seemed popular. Like recipes, crafts and so forth. And of course, this category includes the how to self-publish books, written by people who got successful self-publishing by writing books on how to self-publish.

This wasn't so much about instant bestsellers, but books that'd keep selling consistently over a long period. There's always someone who wants to know how to do whatever the thing is.

RikWriter said:

Pretty much. The only thing I did to "promote" my first two books was to mention it on a couple websites I frequent and I had very good sales for the first year. I've started trying to promote my books recently but haven't noticed much in the way of a difference yet.

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There are a couple of ways to do the 'other sites' thing.

I'm a member of one forum where there are a few writers in the mix. In the general course of conversation, aside from their kids and pets and jobs and vacations, they talk about their books: what they're working on, problems, how it's going, what they're doing instead of writing, etc. Casual conversation, over months and years. So when their books came out, I was interested and I bought them. I wanted to see how they turned out, how did they work out the problems, etc.

On the other hand, we've had writers turn up, out of the blue, with nothing on their minds but selling their books. We report them as spam. Or, sometimes we pick apart their books based on the author's description.

You can sell through connections to other communities, but the connection has to come first.

And, sometimes Amazon does that 'People who liked this liked that'. If it looks interesting, I'll try the 'Look Inside'. There has to be a 'Look Inside' for an unknown book.
(And not one that tells me all about the copyright, then stops at page 2 of the actual writing.)

*The 'People who liked this liked that' doesn't always work, if I've only looked up a book because someone said something bad about it, and I wanted confirmation. Or, if the author was Making A Big Mistake, and I wanted in on the action.

Polenth said:

And of course, this category includes the how to self-publish books, written by people who got successful self-publishing by writing books on how to self-publish.

This wasn't so much about instant bestsellers, but books that'd keep selling consistently over a long period. There's always someone who wants to know how to do whatever the thing is.

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Yea, I'm trying to write some how-to books that sell well enough to make up a full time income.