I get excited when I hear indie author's frustrations about marketing. We get slammed for self-promoting, and we get bashed for over-tweeting our books. But there's one thing that we do well that no one complains about...cross promotion.
This single practice is very evident on Twitter. If you tweet, you know what I'm talking about. We see retweets and reviews and cross promoting and book pimping all the time.
But the reason I get excited when indie authors vent their frustrations about book marketing etiquette, is because we all have unique skills that we can creatively use to benefit each other.
One example of this is how my friend Al Boudreau (@threecifer) comes up with helpful #hastags on twitter. So far, to my knowledge, Al has created the #novelines tag. With #novelines, authors can tweet a favorite line from their work so readers can scroll through and if anything catches their eye they can find the book with one click of a link. He also created the #blogtaxi tag of which I will use when I post this to twitter.
Some authors interview authors in their genre. Some read and review books in their genre, which is something that I'd like to do more of but time won't allow. We have 4 kids, so I don't get as much time reading time as some of you.
What I did, was start a blog called The Kindle Book Review. The KBR is a site that highlights indie and small press authors who are doing well and getting great reviews. The point of the site is to "pre-screen" indie authors by posting books that already have 20 or more reviews with 4.0 stars or more so kindle readers can discover, with confidence, how talented indie authors really are. And since I don't get as much time to read as I'd like, I found six really nice reviewers that love reading and will review the books we highlight on my behalf, giving indie authors "The Kindle Book Review" stamp of approval, a great marketing tool to add to their "product description" on their Amazon book page.
My point is, we all have something to offer. We all have a gift beyond writing. So instead of complaining about how hard it is to market your work without going out of the accepted boundaries, try brainstorming to figure out how you can uniquely cross promote other authors or indie service providers.
We might have different books, but we all have readers, and from my experience, they enjoy finding new talent. Don't be stingy. Share your readers with other indie authors and you just might find that other indie others will share theirs with you.
By the way... here's a list of the winners from my recent Kindle Book Review Indie Awards.
And now for the Winners!
The following awards are based on a numeric score (stars x number of reviews).
First Place~> The KBR Literary Excellence AwardMonique D. Mensah's INSIDE RAIN
Monique gets this award because she had the highest KBR score, calculated by multiplying total star rating by the number of reviews. Monique had nearly 200 more points because she has received so many rave reviews. After collecting 112 reviews and still maintaining a 4.7 star rating, Inside Rain is obviously a winner and the The KBR Summer 2011, Literary Excellence Award Winner. Monique can be found on Twitter @MoniqueDMensah and at her website
Second Place: The KBR Mover & Shaker Award
K.C. May's THE KINSHIELD LEGACY
K.C gets the mover and shaker award because her ratings and number of reviews have sky rocketed since I highlighted her book this summer. This is sort of like the "most improved" award, adding thirty more reviews and a wonderful new cover! You can find K.C on Twitter @GASciFiAuthor and at her website.
Third Place: The KBR Bestseller Award
Cheryl K. Tardif's WHALE SONG
Cheryl gets this award because Whale Song is the veteran of the bunch. First published in 2003, this book was collecting rave reviews long before the ebook revolution and still continues to do so today! You can find Cheryl on Twitter @cherylktardif and at her website.
Like most of these authors, Michael has a long list of well reviewed books. Michael can be found on Twitter @KreelanWarrior and at his cool website
Fifth Place:
Gary Ponzo's A TOUCH OF DECEIT
...is deceptively captivating. As the first in a series, A Touch of Deceit is exactly what thriller readers are looking for - a great book with great reviews! Gary can be found on Twitter @AuthorPonzo and at his blog.
Jeff Bennington
Author of Reunion & Murdoch's Eyes
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You are so right. The indie authors are so supportive of each other. It is very impressive. Excellent post.
ReplyDeleteI would absolutely agree. The generosity of other indie writers on Twitter, Blogs and now Triberr (wink) is fantastic. Nice to have you in the tribe. I have RTd this post for you via @karina_cox.
ReplyDeleteI want to learn how to get into the indie writing. Do you have somewhere on your sites that explains that? Thanks, you're awesome!
ReplyDeleteJamie, Why don't you email me through my contact form on the left and tell me where you're at with your writing and any questions or concerns you have about publishing and I'll take over from there.I can definitely help you get started.
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