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Let's Get Digital Bonus Publishing and Marketing Resources

Let’s Get Digital • Self-Publishing Resources

Well hello there! These are all the self-publishing resources I mentioned in Let’s Get Digital, and a bunch of extra ones too (affiliate links throughout): If you have stumbled across this page without downloading your own copy of Let’s Get Digital, I recommend you do that. It is free after all! Writing Putting all those words in the right order is harder than it looks! Here are all the writing books I spoke about in Let’s Get Digital: And then a couple of novels I mentioned: Finally, my favorite productivity tool is a nifty little site called 4TheWords which rewires your brain and makes writing the most compulsive thing ever. It costs a $3-$4 a month, depending, and maybe it’s Read More…

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13 Ways To Increase Your Email Open Rate

Updated by David Gaughran 31 January 2021. Marketing, Resources • 12 Comments.

Having a big email list is great, but utterly pointless if your open rate is in the toilet. Quantity might get the headlines but it’s quality which pays the bills.

You need engaged subscribers, ones that care about getting your emails, people who open your messages and act on the contents. If you are putting effort into growing your subscriber count but not proactively taking steps to assist open rates, then all you’re really doing is bailing out your boat with a leaky bucket.

People often say things like “it’s natural for open rates to fall over time” – and that’s true… if you do nothing about it. Also, there are plenty of practices you might inadvertently engage in which might accelerate the natural wastage you tend to get over time. But there’s also plenty you can do to address falling open rates and even reverse them. Read More…

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Coming Soon: Big Facebook Ads Changes

Updated by David Gaughran 17 May 2021. Marketing, Resources • 11 Comments.

There is a huge change coming to Facebook Ads which could have a profound effect on the performance of all new and existing campaigns from next month onwards. You need to start getting your head around this now as the change is quite unpopular and the solutions for managing it are all a bit… fiddly.

In short, the new feature that Facebook is rolling out is called Campaign Budget Optimization. You might have seen it in your account already – it’s a feature which allows you to nominate a budget for your entire campaign and then hand the reins over to Facebook’s friendly neighborhood AI and allow it to determine how it should be spent.

Campaign Budget Optimization has been available as an optional feature for several months now so lots of people have been experimenting with it and sharing data – which we’ll get to. The big change is this: from next month, it will start being compulsory. Read More…

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BookBub Ads – What the FAQ?

Updated by David Gaughran 27 May 2021. Marketing, Resources • 22 Comments.

BookBub is a wonderfully passionate community of over ten million book buyers – and its ad platform is the only one at this scale which is exclusively made up of readers. BookBub Ads is unique in lots of other ways too and I’ve received hundreds of questions from authors over the last few months who are confused about one aspect or another. Today, we’ll look at the most frequent issues… and give you solutions to all those problems.

I’ve been using BookBub Ads for two or three years, I’ve been covering the platform in some depth for my mailing list for well over a year at this point, my dedicated book came out a few months ago, and the course… I can’t quite remember when that launched. Around the same time?

I’ve also run some giant campaigns for authors in a range of genres, as well as my own ads, and compared data and strategies with hundreds of other authors writing every kind of book imaginable. These are the issues and questions which come up most frequently. Read More…

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BookBub Ads Expert – Resources

Welcome to the bonus resources page for purchasers of BookBub Ads Expert. If you haven’t yet purchased your own copy, well, congratulations on getting past security – pick up your copy of BookBub Ads Expert here. (You’ll need it!) For everyone else, we’ve got a gallery of winning images, followed by a step-by-step guide to ad creation – with some handy screenshots, I’ve got some up-to-the-minute information on the Also Bought situation at Amazon – with some useful workarounds for those affected, tons of detailed optimization advice – with some talk through my own process, links to a bunch more tools and resources – including some great case studies, a place where you can ask questions and get help, and Read More…

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7 Ways To Market Children’s Books

Updated by David Gaughran 22 January 2022. Marketing • 13 Comments.

When I discovered self-publishing back in 2010 it was, as for many, a dream come true after the familiar cycle of sending out manuscripts only to get a rejection six or seven weeks later. At last I would be able to get my children’s stories out and take the world by storm!

Except, of course, it doesn’t work like that…

As we all know, books don’t sell themselves and Amazon and the other platforms (not to mention bricks and mortar bookshops) won’t sell our books without our help. Of course, a great story, great cover, compelling blurb, appropriate metadata and category selection are all critical to get us off to the right start. However, to introduce and sell your title to your target market – and, crucially, keep it in their line of sight – you also need a robust marketing plan that includes a mix of social media, advertising, email marketing, traditional PR, and (for some more than others) live events.

For authors who just want to be writers, this is a tall order at the best of times. And, for children’s authors, it’s even taller… Read More…

Chance Carter And #Cockygate Collide

Updated by David Gaughran 7 April 2021. Amazon, Bewares • 90 Comments.

#Cockygate has been rolling for a month now and is quite multifaceted — touching on some pretty existential issues for writers, and indeed all creatives. This post from lawyer Marc Whipple tracks the beginning, in case you have been in a coma for the last month. The story also broke out into the mainstream briefly where it was covered by Vox and The Guardian, among others.

More recent developments are as follows. Multiple authors made creative stands against Faleena Hopkins’ extremely questionable trademark and even more dubious attempted enforcement of same, in the form of various Cocky-themed books and parodies. Hopkins responded with a video — which she since took down, presumably in case it destroyed her acting career — as well as a series of equally ill-advised posts.

Hopkins then filed suit against three parties: Kevin Kneupper, the author/lawyer who is formally challenging her trademark; Tara Crescent, an author who had published books with Cocky in the title previously; and Jennifer Watson, a publicist for an anthology raising funds to cover legal expenses of authors affected by all this. Read More…

Is ReviewMeta reliable?

Warning: ReviewMeta Is Not Accurate

Updated by David Gaughran 17 May 2021. Bewares, Resources • 47 Comments.

ReviewMeta works very hard to position itself as some kind of independent arbiter of Amazon reviews, but an examination of its methods proves two things: 1) ReviewMeta is not very accurate and 2) ReviewMeta does not like being reviewed.

An article from the Washington Post a while back suggested that Amazon is undergoing a fake review crisis. There are problems with Amazon reviews, but this article is based on some pretty flawed data – at least in how it pertains to the world of books, which is what I know, and what I’ll focus on here. I can’t speak to the world of diet supplements or fake tan or giant tubs of lube… alas.

The article’s claims are largely based on a flaky site called ReviewMeta, which seems far better at getting publicity for itself than correctly analyzing the trustworthiness of reviews, which is a pity as it would be a wonderful tool if it was in any way accurate. Read More…

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Innocent Author Rank-Stripped For Third Time

Updated by David Gaughran 4 April 2021. Amazon, Bewares • 134 Comments.

Kristi Belcamino is really being messed around by Amazon. Yesterday morning, she was rank-stripped for the third time, and it appears to be happening every time she puts a book free – even before she hits the promo sites or moves up the charts. This post is from 2 January 2018. It has not been updated except to clean up broken links but the comments remain open. Back in September, Kristi was one of the unfortunate (and innocent) authors who were unfairly rank-stripped by Amazon for several weeks. She had a BookBub promotion which catapulted her up to #3 in the Free charts on September 18, was then rank-stripped, and didn’t have the sanction lifted until October 22 – over Read More…

Wide vs. Exclusive: A Tale of Two Marketing Systems

Updated by David Gaughran 25 February 2021. Resources • 80 Comments.

Lots of people right now are asking themselves whether they should leave Kindle Unlimited. I’m generally agnostic on it, and I think writers should do what is best for them and their books, but there’s no doubt this is the big question of the moment. That’s partly down to falling pay rates, Amazon’s inability to deal with scammers and cheaters, or the increasing concern about having all your eggs in one basket when something like this (or this, or this) regularly happens. But I think authors are asking themselves the wrong question. The real issue, I suggest, should surround how you are going to find readers on these retailers (or on Amazon, if you have decided to swim in the Read More…

Rank Stripping - Unavailable at Amazon

Amazon’s Hall of Spinning Knives

Updated by David Gaughran 27 March 2021. Amazon • 235 Comments.

Rank stripping strikes again, and this time it’s someone I know: Phoenix Sullivan. And Amazon’s handling of the situation has been terrible. This post is from 20 October 2017. It has not been updated except to clean up broken links but the comments remain open. Phoenix is well-known in the indie community; I’ve known her myself for ten years and consider her a close friend. Aside from being exceptionally generous with her time and knowledge, tirelessly sharing her insights on marketing and algorithms, Phoenix is also well known as a vocal campaigner against scammers and cheaters – particularly on the current big issues of book stuffing and clickfarming. And now she is being targeted. When Rank Stripping Strikes Phoenix made Read More…

You Can Win Without Cheating FFS

Updated by David Gaughran 2 March 2021. Amazon • 45 Comments.

Most self-publishers will agree: it’s getting tougher out there. If you are in KU, then you’re pretty much dependent on one income stream and if Amazon sales dip or you run afoul of the Hall of Spinning Knives for whatever reason then you are totally boned. And it’s getting so competitive in KU that it seems to take more titles and quicker releases, along with multi-pronged marketing campaigns – which can be complex and/or expensive – to get any real traction or stickiness. If you”re not in KU, hitting the charts on Amazon is increasingly difficult and holding on to position is near-impossible – especially when your book is being leapfrogged every hour by thousands of borrow-boosted KU salmon running Read More…

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Scammers Attack the Amazon Charts

Updated by David Gaughran 22 May 2021. Amazon, Bewares • 71 Comments.

Once again, scammers have swarmed the Amazon Best Seller list. It was only last month that Amazon was caught up in a crisis at least partly of its own making when bungled attempts to deal with a growing Kindle Unlimited scammer problem resulted in the sanctioning of innocent authors. This post is from 15 April 2016. It has not been updated except to clean up broken links but the comments remain open. Amazon has since apologized, and has also pledged to beef up its response to the KU scamming mess – but questions very much remain about whether Amazon is taking the problem seriously enough. A quick check shows that some of the main scammers are still operating, under the Read More…

The 20-Year Overnight Success

Updated by David Gaughran 26 February 2021. Writing • 87 Comments.

You might assume that Michael Wallace has led a charmed existence as an author: his first book hit the Top 100 right from launch, and the hits just kept coming, especially when Amazon Publishing picked him up and gave him a real push; he has now sold over a million ebooks and seemed to do it without breaking a sweat.

But like many “overnight” author successes, Michael Wallace’s story is one of hard work, persistence, and making the most of an opportunity when one finally came his way.

Michael Wallace took the time over several days in September 2013 to answer my questions about writing, marketing, and the book business, and the dialogue is presented in full below and is still hugely relevant to being an author in 2021.

Read More…