marketing

Adventures in Advertising: Can self-published writers advertise effectively?

ad_hereBefore the holiday season derailed my progress here on the blog, I was tackling a critique of the various advertising channels I’ve tried to bolster my self-publishing sales. I started with my adventures with Goodreads self-serve ads, but I realized after writing those 2,000 words that what I should’ve done is give an overview of all of the services and outlets I’ve tried first, then delve into the specifics of each outlet. This post is that summary.

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KDP Newsletter – In other news, water is wet

As a writer published through Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program, I receive a digital newsletter from Amazon with the scintillating title Kindle Direct Publishing Newsletter.

The content of the newsletter is fairly bland, including such items as what your payment for borrowed titles will be and the maddening section “Featured KDP Books,” where all I really want to know is how these writers were picked to be featured in the first place. I don’t begrudge these sections too much, since newly published KDP’ers could probably use this information.

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Amazon opens its doors in India

Interesting news today from Amazon: KDP authors can now reach the world’s largest English-speaking democracy. Amazon announced that, in partnership with Croma retail stores to sell the Kindle, Amazon’s digital bookstores have thrown their doors open to the 1,000,000 books available for the Kindle e-reader at www.amazon.com/kindlestoreindia.

“We are proud to launch this new Kindle store for Indian customers — offering Kindle book purchases in rupees and the ability to buy and read the work of many great Indian authors,” said Russ Grandinetti, vice president of Kindle Content, Amazon.com. “In addition, we are excited to work with Croma to make Kindle available at retail outlets across India.”

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The Six-Day Fantasy Swag Post-Mortem, Part I

As many of you know, in an attempt to promote some of my shorter fantasy titles, I recently (June 22-26) held a six-day sale of three of my short stories: Sword of Kings, Assassin, and Seven Into the Bleak. I thought I’d give an analysis of what I was aiming for, what I achieved, and some of the lessons learned.

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Why WordPress?

The following post began life as a how-to email I sent to a writers’ group I belong to, the Northern Virginia Writers Club, after several non-techy members expressed frustration over trying to get onto the web. It seems a bit redundant to post this bit about WordPress on a WordPress site…but of course any number of people could stumble across this blog via a simple browser search, with no knowledge of why my site is hosted on WP.

This is a very light, quick introduction into why I chose WP for my site and blogging needs. Feel free to ask questions in the Comments section to clarify anything I glossed over.

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