Damn it, Jim, we’re authors not marketers.
Like Bones from the original Star Trek, paraphrased above, indie authors are forced to do things we’re not trained to do when we join the landing party of indie publishers. Sure, some writers might enjoy marketing and may even be good at it. But most of us just want to write, so when it comes to marketing our work, we’re the red shirts in the group.
The following links are for those of us who have no idea how to promote our work but want to survive the alien landscape that is marketing.
Scroll down for the section on Reviews. It deserves its own special place, and I’ll try to keep the article links current for the latest on Amazon’s rules.
GDPR — New Privacy Policy Rules
I’m putting this first because it’s new and frustrating and we have to have it on our websites.
GDPR — Build Your Own Privacy Notice — this is a free template.
GDPR for Authors, Part I — from Advanced Fiction Writing
GDPR for Authors, Part II — from Advanced Fiction Writing
GDPR for Authors, Part III — from Advanced Fiction Writing
SPF-117: GDPR — What Authors Need to Know
The Ultimate Guide to WordPress and GDPR Compliance
BookBub Marketing Tips
8 Book Description A/B Tests You Need to See
10 ideas for getting more BookBub followers
How to get a Bookbub promotion
How to write attention-grabbing promo copy
Rejected by BookBub? Look in the mirror and change your marketing ways
The Ultimate Guide to Book Marketing
Events
How to sell more books in person and at events
General Marketing and Promoting Tips
Book marketing questions to help you sell more books
Book marketing resource for authors: the best of 2016
Business musings: define your target audience: the intermediate stages
Deconstructing Back Cover Copy
Don’t advertise with Amazon until you’ve read this
Fifteen Instagram book marketing ideas from publishers
Free Amazon book description generator tool
How authors can find their ideal reading audience
How I wrote the book description for a famous book
How to actually sell books through advertising
How to build an author page on Amazon Japan
How to get your books into bookstores with Ingram
How to get your book sales moving with FB ads
How to hit the USA Today bestseller list with ad stacking
How to market your book after the new release buzz dies down
How to market your book using content marketing in five easy steps
How to optimize your Amazon Author Central page by Penny Sansevieri on Jane Friedman’s blog.
How to optimize your Facebook author page to sell books
How to (really) make $1,000,000 selling e-books — a lengthy post, but worth the read.
How to use simple psychology and basic common sense to sell more books — Anne R. Allen
How to write a book marketing plan in 13 easy steps
How to write a novel synopsis by Jane Friedman
List of 100+ book promotion sites
Marketing and publishing checklists for authors
Ninety-eight book marketing ideas that can help authors increase sales
Put calls to action in the back of your books
Recommended books and resources on marketing your book — This one’s from Joanna Penn and worth examining. She provides lists of books, podcasts, and tutorials, some of them free.
The best categories for your book sales on Amazon
The least you need to know about search engine optimization
What authors can post online (without driving away followers)
What’s the best time to publish your book? — Includes tips to boost sales
Why authors need a speaker reel
Writing Taglines
How to Write a Tagline for Your Book
What Makes a Good Book Tagline?
Keywords and SEO
Amazon Categories and Keywords
Improving organic sales on Amazon with keywords
Kindle Keywords for Self-Publishers: Should You Use All 50 Characters?
SEO basics: a beginner’s guide
Pricing
5 ways that playing with pricing can sell more books
Reviews — Tips, Rules, and Etiquette
Mythbusting the Amazon review algorithm
Mythbusting the Amazon review algorithm part II
The secret behind disappearing Amazon reviews
What authors need to know about Amazon’s review rules
Tools
Pronoun — Publishing platform that provides free tools.
Yasiv — use Yasiv to discover which other books are pointing to your book on Amazon. Enter your book title and your author name into the box, and the search will return a graphic showing the books your book points to and the books that point to yours. NOTE: Yasiv is temporarily unavailable, but keep checking. Hopefully they’ll resolve their technical issues.
Indie author support & Discussion 