Five sales in two weeks, someone help with marketing, I'm simply not good at it

I would suggest thinking about creating a more grabby title and blurb. Currently it basically says (to me) 'five stories about stuff that might be a bit suspense-action-like by a completely unknown/amateur author'. What there would make me buy the book? You seem to be absent a hook, teaser, angle or selling point.

P.s. I would be kind of annoyed if I bought the book on Smashwords for 2.99 only to find it sells at Amazon for 0.99....

Hi,

You have three good reviews there, so it seems like the people who do buy it, enjoy it.

Even the three star review is mostly positive, and having one three star to offset the two five stars is great - it makes them all look genuine. (I'm not saying they are not genuine, I'm just talking about the reader's perception when they look at your reviews.)

Cover

Strong, clear image, but you really, really need to make the text a lot bigger. Remember that a lot of people will see your book in listings such as this. That's a tiny thumbnail, and they have to be able to read your text. Make it pop. Move the location of your name, it's obscured by the image of the Kindle. The author's name on its own looks better IMO, remove "By".

Title

This isn't catchy at all. Rework it. I know you wanted to reflect the concept of the collection, but do that in the description (although I'm not sure if that's such a big selling point, I would consider saving it for background pieces like author interviews). The title should grab people's attention. If you can't come up with anything, name it after the best story and put that first, that's what people will read in the sample.

Formatting

Your title page/copyright notice could look more professional. Have a look at some trade published e-books. Copy them. (Not all are good though, look around - or take a look at the sample of one of my books in the signature.)

Also, you have some blank pages at the start - remove them - it looks bad, and it means that the reader gets less of your story to sample - you want to give them as much as possible. On a similar note, your title page seems to run over two pages - remove the space at the top and try and get it onto one page.

Another thing - you seem to use a long line of dots as a scene break. Either use one clear line or three stars centered - ***.

Finally, you have gone for "block text" formatting which is more common for websites. Consider going with a more traditional way of rendering the text - look at printed books and some of the bestselling e-books - copy that.

Sample

I haven't read the sample, just glanced over it for formatting issues. Make sure you are starting with the story that has the strongest opening, that will make people want to buy the rest.

Marketing

It's hard to give you advice without knowing what you are doing already. Are you on Twitter? Facebook? Goodreads? Do you blog? Have a website? Have you sent your book out to any book blogs?

Amazon Author Central

It looks like you haven't set this up, it makes your book listings look a lot better, and you can link it to your Twitter account and your blog. Go here: https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/landing?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

Dave

One word to add to what the others have written...well, two. Jane Friedman. If you don't know her, do. She is a marketing phenom. Rule 1: Do NOT wait until your books are out to market

http://blog.writersdigest.com/norules/

Hope this helps

Tania Dakka said:

Rule 1: Do NOT wait until your books are out to market

Hope this helps

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I agree with David and especially agree with the above from Tania.

Is there a specific reason you choose to sell the stories directly to the reader?
If your aim is to attract a wide audience, I would try to sell to magazines and websites with lots of readers. It's hard to break in there, but if you do, it pays itself back a thousand-fold.

P.S. You want to change the Amazon description. "Five gripping fictional short stories" shouts amateur to a lot of authors. Short stories are fictional by definition, so you don't need to repeat it.

I went to look at your free sample (Nameless Number Seven) and the cover art looks quite odd, as if there is a watermark over the woman's face. Am I missing something?

I thought there was a watermark in the cover of the original story too, but I wasn't sure if it was deliberate.

There's def. a watermark there. It looks like the swirl used by a couple of stock art warehouses to prevent unpaid use of their images.

It looks exactly like the watermark for the stock site dreamstime.com

Bad stock theif is bad.

LOLL, sorry, this is Anacry on nymall's account - I didn't realize he didn't log out. Silly fiance

There we go, here I am.
But yes, that's stock from Dreamstime.com

Alessandra Kelley said:

The watermark could be there as a way to protect the cover of the book from being swiped. (It's not commonly done, but maybe it could be so.)

However, if there's a watermark there because the art is being used without permission, that's a serious problem.

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If it's to protect the cover of the book, then why does it look like somebody tried to blur it out in the cover for the free sample? If I watermarked my cover, I'd make it as clear and obvious as possible.

A week and Five Thrilling Stories

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I find the title super confusing and if I'm confused by the title, that's not a good start...

FROM YOUR AMAZON INFO:

Five gripping fictional short stories in the suspense/thriller genre. These stories involve the human condition, and in one case the not-so-human condition. This short story book is more than 25,000 words in length.

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SOOOO vague. every story about any person is about the human condition. if not so human, how so? why do i care? the random mention of length is random.

In Nameless Number Seven-Sarah is leaving for the seedy streets of Chicago with only a briefcase in hand. She has travelled from motel to motel, city to city. What is she looking for?

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Why is this in the short story description with absolutely no lead in. I'm even more confused. Is this in the SS book? if not, it's distracting and not helping you.

Anytown- Jim, Tom, Brian and Joe have known each other for many years, they know alot about one another. On this foggy night during a walk home they will learn more than they had thought possible.

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huh?

Luck of the Cards- Imagine having to make a decision on the life and death of you and your family? You survive but you carry yourself with a burden that you may never overcome, and others are sure to make sure you never forget.

Tommy's Home- Martha and Robert have been married many years, lived in the same house for 30. During a horrible rainstorm they are about to experience something that will either bring them together, or tear them apart.

Jump in the Water's Fine- A couple rents a cottage and meets a mysterious old man who lived next door. Fred Hutchinson carries a secret that noone knows and someone is about to find out.

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After a while I guessed you were talking about the stories in the set. that was unclear enough that I stopped reading, and that was just the blurb...

I like the cover art on this set a lot.

(I have to agree that if you didn't purchase the rights to the the other photo, that's not cool. just because you can, doesn't mean you should. And if you did purchase the rights, you should have gotten a better resolution. lame or low quality art is actually a big turn off for me as a reader. it says to me that the work wasn't worth the investment on the author's part ... so why should it be on mine.?)

Promote it to family and friends. You should be able to get a lot more sales than that simply through them. Some won't be interested, but a lot will, imho.

I'd consider sending any future short stories to small press publishers and magazines. You can find a load of them on Duotrope and in other sources. Just research what they want first and make sure you target your submissions right. Publishers are unlikely to want any you have already sold on Amazon/Smashwords (though some might - check the guidelines carefully).

Some of them are non paying markets but these can sometimes be good for publicity/marketing (especially if you stick a weblink to your author page/blog/other site from where you can link your Amazon and smashwords pages), some of them pay token (a couple of cents a word) while some of them pay professional rates and/or royalties. Just go through and find ones you think will accept your work, list them in order of highest paying first (hey, be ambitious...) and send your story to each one in turn until one bites.

This means your story will be in a magazine (ezine or print) and therefore out there and earning you money and once it is out of print (usually, check the contract when you get it for this) there is nothing to stop you putting it on smashwords or amazon yourself and adding to the description 'previously published in [name of market]' which adds a little kudos and professionalism to your story.

Marketing needs to be relentless and you should not be afraid of marketing to friends and family. Use your facebook account, yout twitter, your live journal (or other blog) and any social networking you have to full advantage. If you haven't got any of these, get them and use them. Even popular and successful authors do this. Offer free downloads in competitions, post free extracts (and make sure they are compelling enough to make people want more) and basically do your damndest to get your name or story titles trending on search engines (you won't, there's too many big guys playing that game, but still aim for it and you may get somewhere...)

Looking at the cover, I agree with others. That stock image is in fact ripped from Dreamstime.com. If you're going to use someone's stock, at least pay the $10 in credits. Really, is it that hard to pay your cover artist? Most cover work costs 100s if not 1000s of dollars.

For this reason alone, I wouldn't buy the book, no matter how good the hook or title was. Look at this as if someone took your book and sold it as their own without asking/giving credit. Bad form.

While we're on the subject of giving credit where credit is due, make sure the fonts you use on your cover and in the interior have a free user license. Otherwise, you'll need to purchase one from the designer, which can get pretty pricey depending on the font in question.

Another thing to consider is including an excerpt on Amazon. It's rare for anyone to purchase a novel if they cannot read a chapter or two first. I always read the teasers to get a feel for the author's voice. If it moves too slow or doesn't click, I don't buy it. I cannot see any teaser here aside from the one listed in the product description. That's another point against me making a purchase.

Sorry to sound harsh, but the ripping off stock has really rubbed me the wrong way. I've had my art stolen before and I know how it feels. Please, pay for the rights or use a different stock that's free to use.

ethicalwriter said:

Thanks for the advice all,. Good concrete information, it is much appreciated.

It was slightly rushed, I am one of those people who writes alot, I have hundreds of idea at any one time. These stories were literally written in a week while taking a break from my romance novel.

I will look closer at it. I wanted to get off on the right foot with readers, even if it was a different genre. I love writing horror/suspense stories and I expect to have a follow up short story book.

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As a reader, I'm insulted by this attitude. You pop out, by your own admission, a few rushed stories and then want people to pay for them?

No offense intended, but that's like charging people to read SYW.

If you're getting a lot of preview reads, but no sales, my advice is to not worry about marketing but instead, focus on honing your writing skills. All the marketing in the world won't sell a book people don't want to read.

Anacry said:

There we go, here I am.
But yes, that's stock from Dreamstime.com

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Why are you using a watermarked image?

brainstorm77 said:

Why are you using a watermarked image?

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Anacry's not the OP. That'd be ethicalwriter--which strikes me as ironic.

MJNL said:

Anacry's not the OP. That'd be ethicalwriter--which strikes me as ironic.

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I'm all for artist's right- I'm sort of a writer, and my wife, son and daughter are artists AND I'm an IP lawyer, but I think we should give the new guy some slack until we know em intentionally knicked someone's artwork for em's cover.

The thing I don't get is how the place the stories are up is supposed to work. You upload your writing and people might come buy it? Does the site let anyone upload everything? Does anyone who isn't already famous sell much of anything?

Sorry, but using an image that still has the watermark is like selling stolen car parts without filing off the serial numbers. He might not have known that it's unethical to use art posted on the internet without paying for the right, but ignorance doesn't mean you get a legal pass. Right? As an intellectual properties lawyer, I'm sure you wouldn't say to a client "Sorry, the guy didn't realize he had to pay you for your work."

Stealing art for your cover is the same as stealing passages from a book because you liked them. They're not yours and you don't have the right to use them without permission, whether you've heard of plagiarism or not.

Copyright is copyright. We have people griping about the rights they have to sell as authors all the time, and there are lots of authors afraid someone will steal from them. Most of the time, as a writer, you’ve got nothing to worry about. Clearly, artists do. For some reason people don’t think twice about appropriating images they don’t own, but those are copyrighted just the same as text.

If it was a mistake, and the author meant to upload the versions he paid for--sans watermark--and accidently picked the wrong file, I apologize. Hopefully he'll change it soon. He's clearly concerned with his lack of sales, and the fact that it looks like he's stolen his cover art might be preventing his collection from doing as well as it could.

As for your questions, I'm unsure because I haven't ventured into self publishing. We do have a whole sub forum on it, though. If you ask there I'm sure knowledgeable persons will come forth.