By Kat Flannery
It’s a
little frightening to consider the long climb up a list with more than 750,000
books on it, and to be quite blunt I had my doubts I’d ever do it again. My
first book CHASING CLOVERS,made Top 100 in 2013 and every time I tried afterward ended in failure. I am
not Stephen King, Nora Roberts, or Margaret Attwood whose name is reason alone
for fans to buy their books…I’m just a small time author desperate to make a
living doing what I love.
How did I get to #68 on Amazon
Top 100 Paid?
Two
months before, I’d been given my rights back on some of my books from my
publisher. I decided to place new covers on them, a rebranding of sorts, and
published them on my own. My assistant suggested I do a sale for the first
book, LAKOTA HONOR in the
BRANDED TRILOGY to showcase the new covers, and get more sales. It was a great
idea and I was excited to show them off.
On a
whim one evening I decided to try for a BookBub. If you haven’t heard of
BookBub you need to research them. They have one of the best advertising out
there for any author. Keep in mind it is difficult to get approved, and it is
expensive.
To my
surprise two days later I received an email from BookBub telling me LAKOTA
HONOR would go out to their thousands of readers in three weeks!
Crunch time!
Let me
be clear; to market your book will cost money. You do not need to spend
thousands of dollars, but you will need to purchase ads. I have done this
throughout my career whenever my book was placed on sale. Some have been
promo’s I’ve gotten for free, others were articles, or blogs and cost me
nothing, but for ads where you can potentially reach thousands of readers, you
will need to spend money.
I had a
budget of $900. I suggest setting a budget because it is easy to go over. I
knew the BookBub would be the
majority of my money. So I purchased a few smaller ads, Kindle Nation Daily, BookTweeters,
and ran a Facebook
ad. I blasted it all over social media, asking people to share and thanked
every single person who did. I placed the sale in my newsletter, blogged and I
was everywhere online I could be.
Within a
few hours LAKOTA HONOR started to drop drastically on Amazon.com’s Top 100 Paid
List along with Amazon.Uk and Amazon.ca. LAKOTA HONOR even dropped down to #10
on Kobo, which I’d never done before. Even more startling was my author rank.
It went from over 600,000 to #15.
Be still my beating heart!
What
made this experience so rewarding was not only that I made the Top 100 and
stayed there for three days, but that my readers, friends and family all
shared, posted, tweeted, and were excited right along
with me. If it wasn’t for them, I wouldn’t be able to live my dream of being an
author, and for that alone I will forever be grateful.
Kat Flannery’s love of history shows in her novels. She is an avid reader of
historical, suspense, paranormal, and romance. A member of the National Romance Writers of America (RWA), and
other writing groups. Kat enjoys promoting
other authors on her blog. She volunteers her time teaching writing classes and
giving back to other aspiring authors. She’s been
published in numerous periodicals throughout her career, and continues to write
for blogs and online magazines. A bestselling author, Kat has been on
several bestseller lists. The BRANDED TRILOGY is Kat’s award-winning series. With seven books published, Kat
continues to produce up to two novels a year. Creativity is in all aspects of Kat’s career. She co-owned Prairie Dog
Publishing from 2008-2013 where she published anthologies giving proceeds to
local charities. She does Social Media and Marketing for her own career and
businesses; writing ads and other content. Kat is the CEO and owner of Picco
Press where she writes, publishes, markets and mentors other authors. Visit
Kat at: www.katflannerybooks.com Find her on
Facebook: Kat
Flannery, author Follow her on Twitter: @KatFlannery1 Get Kat’s Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/cQmCzL
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