My Novel on Amazon Overwhelms Me!

Congratulations on the release of your new book! Self-promotion is something that scares me, but I haven't finished a book yet. One hurdle at a time.

You can submit to blogs that take your genre. Some bloggers are picky and don't take self-published books, but no worries. There are in fact some out there that do.

Maybe google to find blog review sites that accept your genre. I hope this helps. Congrats too btw!!!! Good Luck with it.

Congrats and welcome to the club!

Get yourself on Goodreads. Join the groups in your genre and interact with people there. Offer your book free in exchange for an honest review to those readers.

If you have a paperback of your book, do a Goodreads giveaway. That will get your name out there & get people to add your book on their "to read" shelf. Their friends will see they added it and then that'll get you even more exposure! It could lead to sales and more reviews.

Do a blog tour on blogs of your genre and that may or may not get you some reviews.

Good luck!

Giveaways at LibraryThing and Goodreads are a great place to start.

Like most activities, the more you do it the easier it gets. Presumably you're in this for the long haul and want to be more than a one-hit wonder.

Scribelady, put a link to your book on Amazon etc into your signature so people know where to get it.

Those of you worrying about promotion might find this excellent thread useful:

How to promote your book like an intelligent human being and not an SEO Dweeb

congratulations! I find it very difficult too. But it's necessary!
Since you are a publicist, you probably know a lot better what you are doing than I did...

Every time this thread comes up on my screen I wonder why I'm being shouted at.

Scribelady, is there any reason you typed the thread-title in all caps? If not, you could perhaps edit it into upper and lower case...

You are not alone with the nerves, Scribelady! It's much easier to talk about other people's stuff than your own. They say the more often you do it, the easier it gets.

Good luck!

They're price matching Google Play.

Self-pubbers often get around this loss of income from Amazon sales by pricing higher on Play and expecting the discounting to get it back about where they want.

You're through some 3rd party publisher which means you could be in the excellent position where you get paid for your list price regardless, or in the lousy position where you're making less than expected on each Amazon sale and have no way to control Play pricing independently. Which it is depends on the agreement between your publishing service and Amazon.

If you can somehow get the price at Google Play changed, the price you need is $5.18. That should (according to my sources) end up with a discounted price of $3.99.

Was just playing around with Google Play yesterday. Seems under $2.99 it's not an issue, but above it is. My note here says Google Play does a 23% price cut, so maybe you can use that to calculate the price you need. The $5.18 number is from a list someone had put together and posted elsewhere.

You might need to get in touch with your e-book distributor and let them know about the price difference. It would also be prudent to figure out exactly where they've uploaded and listed it so you can stay on top of everything.
Also, congrats on self-publishing!

Congrats on the release! I know how you feel about promoting. I contacted book review sites, some responded some didn't. As other suggested, doing a giveaway on Goodreads at least gets your book a bit more exposure and people will add it to their TBR list. That doesn't always translate to sales, but it's something.

I also broke down and paid for a blog tour a few months back. Again I got some exposure, and a mini spike in my sales.

Best of luck on your journey!

M. H. Lee said:

If you can somehow get the price at Google Play changed, the price you need is $5.18. That should (according to my sources) end up with a discounted price of $3.99.

Was just playing around with Google Play yesterday. Seems under $2.99 it's not an issue, but above it is. My note here says Google Play does a 23% price cut, so maybe you can use that to calculate the price you need. The $5.18 number is from a list someone had put together and posted elsewhere.

Click to expand...

The discount depends on the price of your book as well it seems.

My book is $7.99
They discounted it by 23% so I raised the price. The new discount was only 20%, so I lowered the price...

Now it's listed at $9.99 and discounted to $7.99

Congratulations on the release!
I would feel overwhelmed too if I had to do all that work. But you gotta do what you gotta do, right?
I hope your book does well.

I've just got Lazarus Tree paperback on Amazon for 11.99. All the posts have been helpful. Thanks

Some info that might be useful. Amazon price for Lazarus Tree is same as price I set on Lulu: $11.99. For paperback. No discount. Other web sites offer from $10.99 to $14.99