SFFMP 135: Amazon Bestseller Charts, Using Goodreads to Sell Books, and Listener Questions Answered
Today, the guys answered listener questions, and Jeff and Lindsay interviewed Jo about what he learned at the big Book Expo America convention last week. There were reps from Bookbub and panels that discussed Goodreads, ebooks in libraries, and the new weekly Amazon best-seller and most-read charts, so there was plenty to discuss.
Here are some of the highlights:
- Is it possible to find the next big trends early?
- When it comes to success in self-publishing, how much relies on craft and how much on business and marketing?
- When it comes to audiobooks and ACX, are you better off paying up front or doing a royalty split with a narrator?
- How to market the second book in a series.
- How many books did the guys have out before they were able to switch to writing full time?
- How the BEA conference was different this year from last year when Jo went.
- Uses for the new Amazon Charts showing the most purchased and most read books each week.
- Ebook trends in libraries.
- Getting ebooks into libraries and the increase in audiobook borrows, including digital ones.
- What Bookbub gives preference to when deciding whether to choose or accept a book for a sponsored ad.
- Bookbub’s new pre-order alerts and other ways you can market with them beyond the typical ads.
- The Bookbub Insights blog where they share their tips for authors.
- What’s working at Goodreads these days to help authors sell books?
- The Goodreads ebook giveaway program is supposed to be coming out of beta testing soon.
- Posting your book on Goodreads before it’s released so you can get early reviews.
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Thanks everyone. Useful session as ever.
On the library front, if you don’t mind me linking out, I have on my blog what I hope is a very useful article for indies on how to get our books into libraries and (in the UK at least) get paid for each borrow. It is mainly an interview with a Libraries Manager and she gives a lot of detail on how libraries acquire books and who to approach to get your books on the shelves. Another author friend of mine who has been in the game a lot longer than me (he’s published 40 books so far) makes upwards of 10k a year from library PLR payments. Not to be sniffed at.
I think this kind of effort is well worth your while if you have MG or early YA stuff as I do. As Jeff pointed out, you can track loans online, and I know that I’ve had buy-throughs from loans, too.
Anyway, here’s the link: http://austinhackney.co.uk/2017/03/26/how-to-get-your-book-into-libraries-as-an-independent-publisher/
By all means make the link NF etc.
🙂
Thanks, Austin!