How to become a best selling author

Self-Publishing Success Stories: The Anatomy of a Kindle Bestseller

January 21, 2013 by Joanna Penn 36 Comments

Writing for writing’s sake is absolutely brilliant, but many of us have ambitions to be #1 on the Amazon charts, selling hundreds of thousands of books and raking in the cash!

There’s nothing wrong with ambition, especially when others have walked the path before us. Today, #1 Amazon UK bestselling author Mark Edwardsexamines some of the characteristics of what goes into a Kindle bestseller.

As self-published authors we are all inspired by the sight of other indie writers tearing up the bestseller lists, rolling in royalty checks, getting big bucks movie and book deals, and achieving all the things we fantasise about in those misty moments when we raise our heads from our keyboards and allow ourselves to dream.

Personal experience

I was one of those fortunate writers who has achieved self-publishing success. In 2011, my writing partner Louise Voss and I hit No.1 on Amazon.co.uk and sold just under 100,000 ebooks.

This wasn’t dumb luck, but the result of a strategy, based on years of marketing experience. I have identified seven factors that can propel a book onto the bestseller lists if you can get them all lined up and firing.  But before talking about me, I want to look at another self-published success story.

Amazon UK recently released a list of the ten biggest-selling self-published books of 2012. At No.2 was Only the Innocent, a mystery novel by Rachel Abbott, which had hogged the top spot on Amazon for a month early in the year, selling 100,000 copies at a price that earned Rachel the 70% royalty rate. She has now teamed up with Amazon who are publishing Only the Innocent in the US while Rachel remains independent in the UK.

 How Rachel Abbott hit #1 on Amazon

Rachel is refreshingly open about how she did it – and the first part of that was about getting the basics right: a gripping book with a strong concept; an evocative and professional-looking cover; and an excellent book description that makes you want to read the book.

Next, Rachel did something very simple but vital: she wrote a marketing plan. Then she carried that plan out. This does not sound remarkable but you’d be amazed how few writers – and publishers, it has to be said – bother to do this. But if you are serious about success, you need a plan and you need to stick to it. Or rather, you need to follow your plan, doing more of the things that work, and less of the things that don’t. (That’s the secret of marketing, by the way.)

What were some of the things that worked for Rachel?

Selling ebooks is all about exposure – it isn’t true that good books will naturally rise to the top. You have to get them noticed. So Rachel focused on getting her book seen, and to do this she did two things.

Firstly, she used Twitter to get word of her books out there. She didn’t just set up a Twitter account and start banging out links (because that’s a waste of time). Instead, she used tools and services like Tweet Adder and Triberr to increase her exposure. Triberr is interesting because it’s like a club where Twitter users get together to retweet each other’s posts, thus greatly increasing exposure.

Her approach to getting reviews was professional and clever. She identified the blogs and sites that she thought might review her book, then created a template that she sent to the review sites clearly and politely requesting a review. I am sure that if you run such a site, and are inundated with amateur requests, receiving something that looks professional and sane will stand out. It’s like receiving a great covering letter and resumé from a job candidate.

The effect of the social activity and picking up reviews was to slowly build sales – with the aim of getting noticed by Amazon. This tallies with my own experience. I realized very early on that the best way to sell books was to get onto the ‘also bought’ bars of popular books. Short of getting into the Daily Deals or being chosen by Amazon for a featured list, the ‘also bought’ bars are the most important pieces of real estate on the site. If you can get among the first books on the ‘also bought’ bar of a top ten book, your book will also follow it up the chart. Guaranteed.

It’s like pushing a boulder up a hill.

All the effort goes into the ascent – the slow, tortuous climb to the top, one step at a time. Every sale takes you a little further up that hill, and more likely to get picked up by the magic algorithms. Then, if you have done everything else right – the cover, the description, garnered good reviews – the boulder will grow lighter and easy to push. Then – when you get picked up by the algorithms and gain exposure – you can let go of the boulder and let Amazon do all the work for you!

My strategy was very similar to Rachel’s, except I didn’t use Twitter to reach readers (I used it, as I still do, to network with potential influencers, the bloggers and journalists and other writers who can help you gain exposure).

Using blogging to get noticed

My strategy was to set up a blog – IndieIQ.com – on which I interviewed the most popular self-published authors I could find. My belief was that if I interviewed someone with a large following, those followers would come to my blog to read about their favourite author, and maybe check out my books as a result. I also did everything I could to get onto other blogs and sites.

I made sure that Killing Cupid and Catch Your Death both had strong, eye-catching covers and great descriptions, and emailed everyone I could think of who might give the books a mention. One day, after doing this for months, sales suddenly took off – because the algorithms had kicked in. At that point, I tweaked the description of Killing Cupid and sales doubled immediately.

So what are the lessons that self-published writers can learn from my and Rachel’s experience?

Here are my 7 take-home tips.

1. Design a cover that tells the reader exactly what kind of book this is and that looks professional.
2. Write a book description that makes the reader desperate to read it.
3. Write a marketing plan and carry it out – adapting it as you go along to do more of the stuff that’s worthwhile and none of the stuff that isn’t.
4. Instead of sending out endless links to your own followers on Twitter, try to get retweets – reach your audience’s audience.
5. Contact, in a friendly and professional way, every single person and website you can think of who might want to give you exposure – and give them a good reason for doing so.
6. Associate with successful writers – learn from them and get in front of their fans.
7. Be prepared to work damn hard!

You can download my free guide to writing a sizzling book description from IndieIQ – and I am currently accepting new clients. I can write a great book description for you or critique your current one.  Contact me for full details.

* Listen to an audio interview with Mark Edwards here on secrets of Amazon meta-data

* Listen to an audio interview with Rachel Abbott here on how she used reviews and social media to get to the top of the Amazon charts

What questions do you have for Mark in terms of how he and Rachel hit the top spot on Amazon? Please do leave them in the comments.

Mark Edwards is the co-author, with Louise Voss, of thrillers Killing Cupid and Catch Your Death, which were originally huge hits when self-published in 2011, leading to a deal with HarperCollins.

Their third novel, All Fall Down, has just been published. Having worked in marketing for years, Mark also runs IndieIQ.com and offers services to writers including writing book descriptions. He can be found on Twitter @mredwards.

Rachel Abbott is re-releasing Only The Innocent in Feb 2013.

To read more about this duo click on the link below....

http://www.thecreativepenn.com/2013/01/21/self-publishing-success-kindle-bestseller/

Writing Great Short Stories

Writing unstoppable fiction:

I came across this...

Short fiction is the "garage band" of science fiction, claims Tor Books editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden, so it's time to step on that fuzzbox and thrash as hard as you can without knocking over your mom's weed-trimmer. Actually, I think Nielsen Hayden was referring to the fact that you can try more crazy experiments in short SF than in novels, because of the shorter time commitment of both writer and reader. But how can you become a super-master of the challenging form of short fiction? Here are a few suggestions.

I wouldn't claim to be an expert on short fiction writing, but I have written over a hundred of the little fuckers, a large proportion of which have been science fiction-y. Here are a bunch of do's and don'ts, that I discovered the hardest way possible.

World-building should be quick and merciless. In a novel, you can spend ten pages explaining how the 29th Galactic Congress established a Peacekeeping Force to regulate the use of interstitial jumpgates, and this Peacekeeping Force evolved over the course of a century to include A.I.s in its command structure, etc. etc. In a short story, you really need to hang your scenery as fast as possible. My friend and mentor d.g.k. goldberg always cited the Heinlein line: "The door dilated," which tells you a lot about the surroundings in three words. Little oblique references to stuff your characters take for granted can go a long way.

Make us believe there's a world beyond your characters' surroundings. Even though you can't spend tons of time on world-building, you have to include enough little touches to make us believe there's stuff we're not seeing. It's like the difference between the fake house-fronts in a cowboy movie and actual houses. We should glimpse little bits of your universe, that don't necessarily relate to your characters' obsessions.

Fuck your characters up. A little. Just like with worldbuilding, you can't necessarily devote pages to your characters' childhoods and what kind of underwear they wear under their boiler suits. Unless your story is really a character study with a bit of a science fiction plot. I used to have a worksheet that included spaces to fill in in info about each character's favorite music, hatiest color, etc. etc. Never filled those out. If I'd tried to force myself to come up with a favorite color for every character, I would have given up writing. But do try to spend a bit of time giving all of your characters some baggage, just enough to make them interesting. Most science fiction readers are interested in characters who solve problems and think positively, but that doesn't mean they can't have some damage.

Dive right in — but don't sign-post your plot in big letters. When I started writing stories, my early efforts meandered around for pages before something happened to one of the characters to make him/her freak out. And then the rest of the story would be the character(s) dealing with that problem. And then, as I got more practiced, I found the foolproof map to awesome storytelling: introduce whatever it was that was freaking out my characters in the very first sentence of the story! And then the story could be about them dealing with that problem, until they solved it in the very end. It was so perfect, how could it fail? It took me another year or two to realize that plunging the characters into the story's main conflict right away was just as boring, in its own way, as the ten pages of wandering in circles. The best short stories I've read are ones which start in the thick of things, but still keep you guessing and let you get to know the characters before you fully comprehend the trouble they're in.

Experiment with form. Short fiction isn't one form, it's a whole bunch of forms jammed together according to their length. Short stories include your standard 3,000 word mini-odyssey thru the psyche. But they also include flash fiction (sometimes defined as under 100 words, sometimes under 500 or even under 1,000.) And those wacky list things that McSweeney's runs sometimes. In fact, for a while there, postmodern short fiction was all about the list, or the footnotes, or the krazy monologue, or the story told in office memos. Try writing super-short stories of only 10 words, or mutant essay-stories written by a fictional person. Also, if you always write third person, try first person. Or if you're always doing first person, try third.

Think beyond genre. Often the best genre fiction is the stuff that cross-germinates. Pretend you're actually writing your story for the New Yorker, and try to channel George Saunders or even Alice Munro. See how far you can go towards writing a pure lit piece while still including some elements of speculation. Or try writing your story as a romance. Or a mystery. Imagine it as a Sundancey indy movie.

Don't confuse your gimmick with your plot. You may have a great idea for a piece of future technology, or some amazing mutation that turns a whole bunch of people into musicvores who survive by eating your memories of rock concerts. Maybe you have the most original basic premise evar — but that's not your plot. Your plot is how your new widget changes the people in your story, and how it affects their lives. Or what decisions your people make as a result of this new technological breakthrough.

Don't fall into the character-based/plot-based dichotomy. People, especially in writing groups and workshops, will try to categorize stories as based on either plot or character. This is a poisonous idea that will turn you into a cannibalistic freak wearing a belt made out of human spinal cords. There's no such thing as a character-based story or a plot-based story, because every story has both. Even the most incident-free Ploughshares romp or the most twisty thumpy space opera tale. If you start thinking that stories can be categorized into either pile, you'll end up writing either eventless character studies or plot-hammer symphonies starring one-dimensional nothings.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1xesN8/+lyNiP+6:qUcWrlid/io9.com/366707/8-unstoppable-rules-for-writing-killer-short-stories?tag=writing-advice

Wool by Hugh Howey Review.

I can give this book 4 stars.

The only reason I didn't give it 5 stars was the author's propensity for drawn out descriptions of settings and/or characters' actions and some of the characters which I thought would carry through to the end were killed off early in the story.

I've never read anything by this author before and I found the writing excellent and  the plot compelling with well-developed believable characters.

Claustrophobia and dread permeates the opening chapters and you can sense the oppression and the subjugation. This is a society without free will; people are just worker drones going about their daily routine with no questions asked. If they dare ask questions about going outside, they are suited up and send outside into the toxic atmosphere to clean the lenses and end up dying almost immediately after they finish the cleaning.

The fact that even though the silo-144 stories deep into the earth connected by a long spiral staircase-has advanced technology, it lacked an elevator. This at first, was hard to get my head around but when I realised that this was a device designed to keep people in their place be it below ground where all the workers existed, or above ground where the hierarchy lived it made sense.

The people live and die trapped inside this silo. They are told the atmosphere is toxic and the land is ruined. The small community is separated, with the farmers and mechanics in the lower third,  information-technology workers in the heart of the structure and the leaders and law makers in the upper level. All wear color-coded uniforms. Everyone must abide by rigid sets of rules from the number of children to the number and kinds of pets they are allowed.

I did like Juliette, the main character, though I would have liked it if the author introduced her sooner in the story, and followed her struggles to the ending which wasn't an ending at all as you need to read the next two books to find out what happens.

If you enjoy downbeat sci fi and dystopian with a touch of steam punk, then Wool is for you.

Review by O. N. Stefan. Author of The Deadly Caress.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/review/RJG05PSDA88R2/ref=cm_cr_pr_rvw_ttl?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00873GRU4

Show, Don't Tell, on Twitter

I just found this and though I should share:

Show, Don’t Tell, on Twitter

Posted by 

≈ 

From blackberryczech.cz

I have often mentioned the “show, don’t tell” rule in my blog. MMJaye, a regular around here and a great supporter of Indies in her own blog, kindly wrote this guest post for me, tackling the rule from a novel perspective: how to use it when tweeting. Enjoy her excellent post, which, I admit, was an eye-opener for me.

“Show not Tell” on Twitter: a guide to “clickable” tweets

The “show don’t tell” rule has been drummed into every writer’s head. Traditional publishers and editors swear by it. Some Indie authors are less than enthusiastic about it, but, no matter how much you use or respect the rule, you have to admit that it does invest your writing with one major attribute: it becomes evocative.

What surprises me, however, is the fact that although writers accept that “show don’t tell” leads to evocative writing and therefore elicits a reaction from the reader, they totally disregard this rule in their promotional tweeting. Sure, 140 characters won’t allow for much but, still, there are ways.

Tweets that tell

Here’s a list of common tweets that “tell” rather than “show”:

• “The most exciting thriller ever!”
• “Another 5-star review for (title)!”
• “You won’t be able to put (title) down!”
• “Read (title) on Wattpad!”
• “Don’t miss out! (title) only 99c!!”

Now if you’ve used these tweets yourselves and keep track of your Twitter statistics, you’ve probably noticed they got tons of retweets. Indeed, if you use the right hashtags, have a retweeting service, you are a member of a group or especially if you campaign through Thunderclap, any tweet you hash out (pun intended) will probably be shared with a potential outreach in the tens of thousands.

But what’s your ultimate goal? To get tons of RTs and FAVs or have people actually click on your link and go to your site?

The problem with the tweet templates above is that they’re so overused that what sticks with people is the enthusiasm of the writer. They’ll want to share, to help the author out, but this is not enough to make them leave Twitter and go check out a link. So how do you get tweeps to become more involved and go the extra flick of the wrist to click on a url?

Tweets that “show”

Think “show don’t tell”. Let’s try this on the examples above.

Example 1

Telling tweet: “The most exciting thriller ever!”

Says you. Show me why. “International espionage, exotic locations, action-packed scenes” might do the trick, but why not go all the way and add an actual snippet that will draw a reaction from me?

Showing tweet: “A thick clod of dread thudded onto the pit of his stomach.” The acclaimed new thriller by @JohnnyWho (+link)

Now, you have me! Alliterations, puns, original analogies, evocative words … surely you have those in your book. Don’t tell them … show them off!

I know for a fact that I sold a copy of Fate Accompli, my newly-published debut novel,  through the snippet I have included in my scheduled tweets:

“Staying is a mistake.”
“Why don’t I feel it?”
“You don’t know what’s coming next.”

I chose a sexually charged moment as I’m trying to sell a contemporary romance. That said, try to use actual snippets of your book, even if you need to edit some words out to make them fit. Don’t make them up. Inventive, yes, a fraud, no.

Example 2

Telling tweet: “Another 5-star review!”

Now that’s a bit trickier, but going down the same route, choose a snippet of the review that “shows”. Avoid generic attributes such as “exciting”, “amazing”, “wonderful”. They, too, fall under the “telling” category. I have but a few reviews so far (I expect quite a number in January, yay!), but only a couple of days ago, I received a great review by a book blogger that I wanted to share like gangbusters. That’s the excerpt I chose:

Showing tweet: #FateAccompli
“Gut-wrenching pain, hilarious humor and #romance, neatly packaged against the beauty of Greece.”
ow.ly/FTUCe

That tweet created actual engagement and a lot of reactions. I did have sales the next day but, frankly, there’s no way to know for sure if these were a direct result of the showing tweet. Knowing I did my best, though, makes me feel good!

Example 3

I recently reviewed Rayne Hall’s myth-busting “Why Does My Book Not Sell? 20 Easy Fixes.” What I did for my review tweet was to use an eye-catching phrase from the book itself:

Showing tweet: “An authors’ guide to identifying “the plugs that block sales from gushing”.
Why Does My Book Not Sell?”
http://ow.ly/FKMon  by @RayneHall

That’s a great way to catch the attention of an author that matters to you.You show that you cared enough to be creative about their work.

Example 4: Wattpad tweeting

Wattpad is a good way to make your work visible to readers. Many readers of my genre (romance) find authors through this platform, and I often see writers tweet about adding extra chapters of their books there. But it seems that all they do is notify:

Telling tweet: “Another chapter of (title) on #Wattpad!”

When I first posted the first three chapters of Fate Accompli on Wattpad, I tweeted about it by writing a mini summary of what goes on:

Showing tweet: “4 Chapters of #Fate Accompli on #wattpad!
Why is Monica obsessed with working for Alex, hiding who she is?
ow.ly/ExZDN #romance”

That tweet got tons of RTs, and my uploaded work on Wattpad reached 1,000 views in just under a week. The effect of a well-phrased, intriguing pitch on Twitter was further proven when I uploaded the fourth chapter and tweeted about that exclusively:

“Chapter 4 of #FateAccompli on #Wattpad!
Monica revisits her past, featuring Alex and a ton of humiliation!
ow.ly/Fveiz #romance”

Maybe it was the concept of humiliation that drew attention, but that chapter had many more views compared to Chapter 3, which didn’t receive special attention.

Bottom line: we have shed blood, sweat and tears to hone our craft, and we have the right tools under our belt (no pun intended this time!). Why not use them on every form of writing, not least our platform building through which readers will get to know us first?

Example 5

Rachel Thompson (@RachelintheOC) has been using this technique even before publishing Broken Places, the follow-up to her bestselling Broken Pieces.

Showing tweet: “It’s only in the quiet spaces between our stars that I feel you now” ~ Night (Broken Places) out soon http://ow.ly/FSh3I”

And where can a link of unpublished work take the reader? To Rachel’s Poetry Pinterest board with even more quotes of the upcoming book. There’s an idea!

Example 6

When Nicholas told me that he wanted to tweet about Runaway Smile, I suggested the following:

“An unshared smile is a wasted smile: read Runaway Smile, my #free children’s #book, on http://bit.ly/1xqb4Jv”

I’m delighted to see he is now smoothly employing this technique in his tweets about his heartwarming children’s story!

Thank you for reading and special thanks to Nicholas for hosting me today!

Who is MMJaye?

MM Jaye is the pen name of Maria Messini, a bilingual Greek native.  She is a certified translator and has been teaching the art of translation for over fifteen years. Writing was Maria’s idea of therapy when, back in 2009, her spirits had temporarily nosedived. Fate Accompli  is her debut contemporary romance, the first book in the Aegean Lovers series, available in two heat versions: Clean & Spicy. She lives in Athens, Greece with her husband, daughter and Kindle.

Maria blogs at MM Jaye writes. You can also find her on Facebook, Twitter andPinterest.

Thank you, Maria, for your eye-opening post. Readers, I just read her book,Fate Accompli, and I’m amazed at her skill. I found myself skimming through the book in order to find out what happens next, laughing out loud and moaning with frustration with her heroine – and I’m not even a romance reader! You can read my review on Amazon.

The Game of Thrones - A song of fire and ice REVIEW

REVIEW

The Game of Thrones – A Song of Ice and Fire

If you love fantasy that is not formulatic then this is the book for you with the sheer brilliance of a multi layered plot that weaves so many seemingly unrelated stories together to form a plausible alternate universe in which not only politics, intrigue, war, adventure and romance can coexist plausibly, but magic as well. However, the magic is low key so it’s not an easy out for the characters in a jam. 

In the story we follow the lives of a number of characters via allocated point of view chapters through the story. The characters are interesting with some totally good or totally evil and others are shades of both. 

For the MEDIEVAL HISTORY BUFFS: this story was influenced by the WARS OF THE ROSES and THE HUNDRED YEARS WAR.

Once you start reading this epic, don’t expect to be able to tear yourself away. It will have you in its grip ‘till the end. Then you just have to buy, borrow or steal the following book in the series to find out what happens next.

One negative I could find was that if you don’t like to read about gore and blood, then this is not the book for you. 

Review by: O. N. Stefan Author of The Deadly Caress on Kindle:www.getBook.at/B00I0DI0MY

Six tips to bring your book out of the doldrums

More than ever before authors are struggling to make sense of what's happening with ebook publishing and keep up.
When do we get time to write after blogging, facebooking, twittering, etc? We're told you can't get seen and your book purchased if you're not socially marketing yourself.  It's never easy but we must find the time.

I've just read Mark Coker's tips and wanted to share them here.

Six Makeover Tips:  How to Bring a Book Back from the Doldrums 

Makeover Tip #1 – Look at your reviews at Smashwords, Apple, B&N and Amazon.  Ignore the reviews from friends and family, they don’t count.  Average them up.  How many stars are you getting out of five?

Reviews of Never Too Far by
Abbi Glines (Apple iBookstore)

Today, when I look at the top 20 bestsellers at the Apple iBookstore, they’re averaging 4 stars.  On other random days I’ve done this test, they averaged 4.5.  The #1 bestselling book today at Apple is Never Too Far by Abbi Glines (distributed by Smashwords), and it averages 4.5 stars.  Some of the representative comments are, “loved this book,” “Amazing,” “couldn’t put it down,” “couldn’t stop reading,” “such a wonderful story,” “cannot wait for book 3!” and, “this book hasn’t been out 24 hours and yet I read it twice already.”  If you want to be a bestseller, good or good enough is not good enough.  

You need to WOW your reader.  It doesn’t matter if you write romance, mystery or non-fiction, if your book doesn’t move the reader to an emotional extreme, your job isn’t done.  Take the case of my novel, Boob Tube.  It averages around 3.5 stars.  That’s not good enough.  We’re not wowing readers.  My wife and I should probably do a major revision if we want better reviews.  Our sales range from 20 to 40 copies a month.  What if after a revision, we averaged 4.5 stars?  Imagine how that would move the needle on sales.

    What if you don’t have reviews? – This is as big of a problem as poor reviews.  If your book has been out for more than three months and it’s not selling well and you don’t have reviews, I’d set the price to free, at least for a limited time.  What do you have to lose?  Readers aren’t finding you anyway.  That’s the decision we came to with Boob Tube.  For the first two years (2008-2009), Boob Tube sold maybe 20 copies.  It had only one or two reviews.  My wife and I decided to set the price to free for six months.  We got 40,000 downloads, a lot of reviews, and even our first fan mail (yay!).  Then we set the price to $2.99 and it started selling.  Without reviews at the retailers, Goodreads, LibraryThing and elsewhere, few readers will take a chance on you.  FREE helps readers take that chance.

Makeover Tip #2 – Redo your Cover Image.  If your book’s reviews are averaging over four stars, yet the book isn’t selling, your cover is probably the problem.  This was the case last year for Smashwords author R.L. Mathewson.  She was earning fabulous “WOW” reviews from readers, yet she was only selling a few copies a day (even still, a few copies a day is way above average for most authors). Read the interview with R.L. here. 

When she upgraded her cover images, her books immediately took off and hit the N.Y. Times bestseller list.  Great reviews plus a great cover can make all the difference.  A great cover image makes a promise to the reader.  A poor cover image chases potential readers away.  Does your cover make a promise?

Here’s a quick test, and a challenge:  If you were to strip away the title and author name, does the image tell the reader, “this is the book you’re looking for to experience [the feeling of first love for romance; fear for horror; edge of your seat suspense for thrillers; knowledge for a non-fiction how-to; an inspiring story of personal journey for a memoir, etc].”

Is the cover image professional?  Does it look as good or better than the top-10 sellers in your category or genre?  The human brain is programmed to process imagery faster than written words.  When a reader is browsing book listings, they’re looking to have their attention arrested by something that speaks to them.   Everything else is noise.  Don’t be the noise.

Back to my novel.  A couple bestselling Smashwords authors have told me that the cover of Boob Tube doesn't work.  It took me awhile to come around, but I agree with them now.  The image focuses on breasts, which are an obsessive, almost-debilitating focus for the actresses on daytime television soaps.  We explore this in the book.  Yet to the reader, the image sends conflicting messages.  Is this book erotica, or pornography?  No, of course it’s not, but the reader doesn’t know.  Because the image isn’t resonating with the right promise, we’re probably chasing away readers who would otherwise be drawn to the story.

Makeover Tip #3 – Is your book priced too high?  When a book is priced too high, it makes the book less affordable to the reader. If you're an unknown author, it makes the reader less willing to take a chance on you.  For readers who could afford it, the high price can makes the book less desirable when there are alternative books of equal quality at less cost.  Last year, when we conducted a comprehensive study of the impact of price on unit downloads and gross sales, we found that lower prices moved more unit sales than higher prices (no surprise there).  We found $1.99 and below underperformed in terms of gross sales (unit sales * price).  We found books priced at $2.99 earned slightly more than books priced over $10.00, yet enjoyed six times as many unit sales.

Dollars in your pocket are nice, but over the long term, the greater number of readers is what will drive your fan base and future sales.  If your book is priced over $5.99, and it’s not selling well, experiment with a lower price and see what impact it has.  There’s one other potential advantage of lower prices:  if the reader feels they received a great read for the price, they may be more likely to give you a positive review, and a positive reviews will lead to more readers.

Makeover tip #4 – Look at your sampling to sales conversion ratio.  The Smashwords store has a little-known feature I think is entirely unique in the ebook retailing world:  We tell you how many partial samples were downloaded.  If you click to your Dashboard, you’ll see a column for book sales and a column for downloads.  The download count is a crude metric, but if you understand how it works, you’ll be able to use it as a relatively good tool.  This data is only for sales and downloads in the Smashwords store.

The download data includes both sample downloads and full book downloads for purchased books.  If a customer or sampler downloads in multiple formats (such as epub and mobi), or downloads multiple times, each time will tick the download count higher.  To make the data cleaner, subtract your paid sales from the download count.  Divide your sales at Smashwords.com by the number of downloads.  This will tell you, roughly, what percentage of downloaders actually purchase your book.

When I do the numbers on my priced book, The 10-Minute PR Checklist, I find that approximately 13% of sample downloads lead to sale.  That’s pretty good.  When we last ran the average numbers a couple years ago, we found that site-wide, about 1 in 50 sample downloads led to sale, but when we looked only at books that had actually sold, the number was closer to 1 in 25 (about 4%).  I’ve seen multiple recent bestsellers at Smashwords where the conversion ratio is 50%.  That’s amazing!  Use these numbers as rough guides.  If you have multiple books at Smashwords, you can see how the numbers compare across your list.  Compare with your friends.  If you’ve had 150 sample downloads and zero sales, such as in my Tip 6 example below, it’s fair to say readers are sending you a message.

Makeover Tip #5 – Are you targeting the right audience?  As a writer, you’re never going to satisfy every reader.  That’s okay.  Don’t try.  Readers who love horror novels may not love romance.  Know your target audience, and then make sure your title, book cover, book description, categorization and marketing are all aligned to target that audience with fine-tuned precision.  If you send the wrong messages, you’ll fail to attract the right readers.  Instead, you’ll attract the wrong reader, and the wrong reader will give you poor reviews.  Again, I’ll use my own novel as an example (since I’m not afraid to illustrate my mistakes!).  Early in our novel, a dead body is discovered, so there’s a bit of a mystery about who did it.  It’s a minor plot point, and the book isn’t categorized as mystery.  However, at one time in 2011, our book description played up the mystery surrounding the murder.  For at least one reader, after she read the description she downloaded the book thinking it was a murder mystery.  It’s not.  It’s a book about the dark side of Hollywood celebrity.  

As a result, we disappointed her, and received this one-star review:

“If you want to read about drug use, masochism, naive behavior leading to wrecked lives and truly disgusting eating disorders, this book is for you. If you were looking for a murder mystery, look somewhere else. I got more than 50% into the book and no one was calling the death a murder. So, no investigation, no questions, none of the things that make a book a murder mystery.” 

Following this review, I removed the murder-mystery subplot from the description and focused on the top themes.  So take a fresh look at your description, cover, categorization and marketing and make sure you’re targeting the right reader.  Avoid the temptation to target a broader-than-necessary market.

Makeover Tip #6 – Pride goes before the fall.  It’s tough being a writer.  You pour your heart and soul into your words, and then lay your words bare before the world to judge.  It takes bravery and confidence to publish.   Speaking from personal experience, it’s heartbreaking to receive your first one-star review.  We all get them.  

Over at Amazon, where I have the most reviews, I received this about Boob Tube:

“A total waste of my time. As another reviewer said, the best part was when I decided to stop reading it! If I could give it a minus star, I would.” 

OUCH!  Nothing’s worse than when the reader hates the book so much they don’t even finish it, and then they leave a review like that just to drive the knife deeper.  What if the book got better later?  What if everything started making sense on the next page?  Readers are a fickle bunch.  

To press forward as a writer, we have to decide what we can learn from, and what we can ignore.  Find your strength from your five-star reviews (we have those too!), and carefully find your inspiration about where you might improve from the negative reviews.  I try to learn something from every review, even if I don’t agree with it.  Some writers, after receiving such scathing criticism, might feel inclined to curl up in a fetal position, unpublish their books, and give up.  Never give up!

The opposite response to reader feedback, however, can be equally destructive, and that’s to let pride leave you deaf and dumb to the bread crumb clues your readers are giving you.  If you want to be a successful writer, you have to be willing to listen to the judgment of readers.  Your readers, through their word of mouth, will determine how many other readers you reach.

I think the chat transcript below serves as a good case study in pride (in fact, it was the spark that led me to write this blog post).  The author contacted me on my personal Facebook page.  As much as I try to separate my personal life from my private life - and I discourage Smashwords inquiries over my personal page - at Facebook it’s difficult to divorce the two without coming across as a rude ogre.  If someone messages me, I try to respond.  I omitted his name, country and other details to protect his identity.  I made minor edits for typo fixes or clarity.  Warning: There's not a happy ending.

http://blog.smashwords.com/2013/03/six-tips-to-read-reader-tea-leaves-how.html