A checklist on how to increase your discoverability

 

Maybe I am not the right person to write this post, considering that I am just at the beginning of my career ( =my sales are tiny), but I am so sick of tired hearing authors whine about their lack of sales and try to blackmail readers into buying their new book.

Guess what? All it leads to readers not buying your book. I know that authors want good sales, but I have read enough blogposts and threads at Kboards to know that two things needed: Patience and a professional product. I cannot do anything about the patience part, but I can do something about the professional product part.

Part of the reason is that some authors think that you can put out a book without doing any promotion and a so so cover. Sorry, that might have worked in 2012, but not any more. Now you need a professional looking book and webpage.

First, read Courtney Milan on backmatter ( My backmatter is based on Kit Rocha, but I have friends who uses Courtney Milan as an inspiration).Does your book hook your reader into buying the next book in the series? If not, think about how you can change that.

Second, take a good look at your covers. Do they tell the reader which genre it is? That it is written by you? That it is the latest book in your series? If the answer to any of the question is no, get new covers. And don’t use Amazon’s cover creator.

Three, take a look at your pricing. Are you tempting readers to try you by offering the first book in a series  as a loss leader? Are your pricing consistent over all the distributors? And before you ask, yes, the consistency part is important, because it is a sign of professionalism.

Four, Have you done any promotion? If you haven’t, think wide. Talk with friends that writes similar books, do cross promotion by doing a discount on your books at the same time, get a graphic done. Run flash giveaways by signing up for Instafreebie. Experiment with Wattpad or free serials on your blog, but take it down a month or so after it is finished. Why? Because it is much better to have 3 standalone novellas, set in the same universe, that isn’t available for free on either your webpage or Wattpad. Free is a good promotion, but you want to funnel the readers toward the next book in the series.

Five, Do you have one central webpage with an easy to remember address? I get that it is tempting to use a plethora of blogs, but it is just confusing. If you have one, is it updated with blurbs, covers, excerpts?

Six, Do you have a newsletter? If the answer is no get one. Why? Because not everyone is on twitter or facebook. By having a newsletter, you have an easy way to announce your new book, or a sale, or your patreon etc.

The point of this list is to force you, the author, to sit down and make up a plan, a checklist, that will hopefully increase your sales. And yes, some of it will require a bit of money, but you can do it for cheap. But the important part that you have to keep on experimenting, and to think like a publisher.