Marketing
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Blog Posts
How to Build an Author Website
https://booklaunch.com/author-website/
Post by Tim Grahl of booklaunch.com, with examples, templates, and how to build one.
Books
See the index for this section for books I recommend about other author-related topics.
5 Critical Things for Successful Book Signings
by Adam Dreece
Canadian fantasy author Adam Dreece is arguably one of the most experienced hand-selling authors alive. Whether it’s questions about how to present yourself at a live event, how to get one set up in the first place, or even how to make them profitable, this is a book you need to read.
The Alter Ego Effect: The Power of Secret Identities to Transform Your Life
by Todd Herman
An award-winning performance expert reveals the secret behind many top athletes and executives: creating a heroic alter ego to activate when the chips are down.
How to Write a Sizzling Synopsis
by Bryan Cohen
I have a short post about writing your book description, but for those who want to go deeper, this is one of the best breakdowns of this kind of copy writing that I’ve seen. Bryan makes this easy to understand and do, and he’s funny while he teaches. He should know what he’s talking about—his business is writing book marketing copy for people. Well worth it.
An excellent follow-up to this is Fiction Blurbs the Best Page Forward Way by Phoebe Ravencraft and Bryan Cohen.
Newsletter Ninja: How to Become an Author Mailing List Expert
by Tammi L. Labrecque
Are you struggling with email? Newsletter numbers getting you down? Fewer people opening your messages? No real reaction when you launch a book?
There's another way—a better way.
Newsletter Ninja 2: Supercharge Your Mailing List with the Perfect Reader Magnet
by Tammi L. Labrecque
Newsletter Ninja 2: If You Give a Reader a Cookie is a thorough breakdown of all the aspects of reader magnets—from choosing which type to write, through planning how it fits into your catalog, to getting it into readers’ hands.
The Book Launch Blueprint
by Tim Grahl
The hardest part of writing a book isn't writing it, it's launching it. Tim Grahl shares the pattern he’s used to launch dozens of best-selling books.
Following: A Marketing Guide to Author Platform
by David Gaughran
A solid primer on your first and second steps to setting up your author platform. At the time of posting, this is only available free to David’s newsletter subscribers, so go sign up, okay? (It’s a great weekly bit of marketing advice, so it’s win-win, right?
Strangers to Superfans: A Marketing Guide to the Reader Journey
by David Gaughran
This book will change how you think about marketing. Strangers to Superfans puts you in the shoes of your Ideal Readers, and forces you to view marketing from their perspective.
Services
Consultants
With over 25 years in the book industry and as an indie and traditional author, creator of Kobo Writing Life and currently on the Draft2Digital team, Mark is an excellent resource and coach to help boost your writing business.
Copywriters
Unlike many authors, writing good book descriptions that convert is one of my all-time favourite things to do, and I’ve even been hired by a traditional publishing company to do it. I also coach other authors on how to get better at book description copywriting. Check out my services at the link.
Tools
Reporting
For wide (on all platforms) authors, this is the best, most intuitive reporting tool available. It’s free until your monthly sales go over $500, and the fees scale automatically based on sales. It doesn’t require or store any of your login data to other platforms. All the information is displayed in easy-to-understand graphs. Built by authors, for authors, it just came out of beta in April 2021, and they are making more improvements and adding more sales channels all the time. This is my number one recommended reporting tool. Plus, you get to try it free for 14 days!
A fantastic service for more accurately tracking sales and royalties from KDP. Free until you have $1,000/month in sales.
This service is still in Beta, but it is an absolutely free way to track your sales in Kindle Direct Publishing, similar to BookReport. (But free.)
Social Media Management
Planner and visualizer for Instagram. An official Instagram partner. Load photos into the feed from your phone or PC, then post from the phone app.
Scheduler for multiple social media platforms. Their free tier allows you to use three accounts, but you can pay for more robust options if you need them. Excellent for scheduling posts on Twitter and Facebook and monitoring Twitter hashtags from a single place. Phone app available.
Merchandise
Print-on-Demand Merchandise and Fulfillment
Invite your readers into your story world through products they can wear, carry, or use, branded by you.
By breaking down the elements of blurbs that consistently sell books, you, too, can create a compelling blurb. And the good news is, it’s not as hard as you think, and might even help you make your plot better.