Why is your book not selling?

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sugarhit

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Just curious because I know each of us write for different reasons. If you self published a book that isn't doing as well as it could be, why is that?

What could you do to make it better?
 

Deb Kinnard

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I don't think "making it better" is necessarily the one right path. My indie books are written out of the same brain as my trade-published books. Yet one lot seems to sell slightly better than the other.

What IMO you're discussing is discoverability. In my 15-month indie adventure, this has been the beast that has risen up to bite me. Granted, I've not had the time to put my indies out on multiple platforms, though I plan to dip my toe in D2D pretty soon. But my trade pubbed stuff sells a modest amount more, and I'm leaning toward discoverability as the reason.

It's hard to find my little City Lights romances when there are a gajillion other books competing for attention. It's also hard to figure why Amazon's algorithms work like they do.

I plan on ramping the promo up and seeing what happens. I know I do get a nice little bump in sales on each respective platform whenever I release anything new.
 

TheCuriousOne

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I'm totally guilty of not promoting. I write for pleasure, and don't feel the need to put my book out there. Besides, I hate walking into a shop and being pounced on by the salesperson, so I tend not to force myself on others the same way. I only mention a release, then it disappears into the most remote corners of Amazon. Could I improve things? Most probably, but at this stage, I'd rather focus on writing than selling, and unfortunately, time is not available in large amounts (and I tend to do a fair amount of procrastinating).
 

benluby

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A lot like TheCuriousOne, I don't do a lot of self promotion. I just don't worry about it, as I figure it will come with time. I write, put it out there and then I move on to the next one.
Since book two is now nearly finished, I'm going to attempt to get motivated to do some promotional things, but we'll have to wait and see if that makes a change.
 

sugarhit

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I'm totally guilty of not promoting. I write for pleasure, and don't feel the need to put my book out there. Besides, I hate walking into a shop and being pounced on by the salesperson, so I tend not to force myself on others the same way. I only mention a release, then it disappears into the most remote corners of Amazon. Could I improve things? Most probably, but at this stage, I'd rather focus on writing than selling, and unfortunately, time is not available in large amounts (and I tend to do a fair amount of procrastinating).

Refreshingly honest answer. As a marketer who's in the midst of writing my first book, I'm wondering if there's a niche out there for publicizing self pubbed books for fellow authors ;)
 

J. Tanner

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Refreshingly honest answer. As a marketer who's in the midst of writing my first book, I'm wondering if there's a niche out there for publicizing self pubbed books for fellow authors ;)

There is if you've got an audience of readers in the author's genre.

With the huge variety in genres, such services with mass appeal are few and far between.

Most marketers with an audience tend to have an audience of other marketers and that's not particularly valuable to most authors.
 

PortableHal

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I have to admit, the novels under my primary pseudonym are finding few readers lately. When I did the marketing thing -- blog posts, interviews, FB, the occasional paid ad -- I saw a tiny spike in interest and royalties, but not enough to justify the time spent. Or the money spent, for that matter.

Besides, marketing wasn't nearly as much fun as writing. After a few weeks, I began to resent the time I was spending, asking bloggers if they'd review my stuff or do an interview or wave casually in my direction. It's demoralizing. I say this, even though some of the bloggers are very nice people and some of those nice people said wonderful things about my books. The sales numbers barely budged.

Sometimes, it's as simple as writing in a genre that the audience wants to read. YA horror and YA thrillers are a tough sell for me, especially when there's no romance involved.
 

augusto

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I, too, am guilty of not promoting my first book and it shows. I've got a second book coming out shortly and a third in the summer--hoping each book will help the sales of the others. Even reading about promotions and advertising makes me feel guilty about not working on the fourth book. Like PortableHal says, marketing just isn't as much fun...
 

Lizzie7800

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I think mine isn't selling quickly b/c I'm an unknown author and it's only been out a few weeks. I have lots of marketing work ahead of me!
 
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