Let me save you guys a lot of time and just go through all of the points in all of these How to Indie Author books. I’ve read a lot and they are very repetitive. I will add a disclaimer here and say that these techniques do work if you follow them to the letter. It’s just that I’ve decided that this kind of success is ultimately not for me. Here’s what’s in every single one of these books:
Writing
- Write to market! Pick your market and write books specifically catered to that one. It should be a super specific niche market. We aren’t going to say this should be a highly profitable market, but we’re going to use examples of highly profitable niches to imply it.
- Write a series! Sellthrough is where you’re going to make most of your money, so make sure you write in series of at least three. Five is better, seven is great.1
- Write a lot! You’re going to want to release rapidly so that the Amazon algorithm is happy. A book a month is what’s generally suggested.
Listing
- Get a cover that looks like everyone else’s! You wrote to market, so make sure your cover also looks like the rest of the market. Market market market. Market? Market.
- Write a catchy blurb! What does that mean? No one can agree on that, but you should definitely write something that’s catchy and makes people want to read it. Also, use HTML and keywords.
- Price your books good! Use the same price as similar books to yours.2 Consider making the first book in a series a loss leader, which means pricing it to free3 which will increase the likelihood that someone will check it out.4
- Keywords mean search terms! Make these terms specific to what people are searching for. Remember when you picked your super specific niche earlier? That is what you should probably be basing these keywords around.
- Pick good categories! Be sure you pick the specific categories that will get you as close to your target market as possible, and make sure you don’t have too much competition in them so that you can raise to the top of the category. Amazon will give you 10 categories if you email them.
- List on Amazon! We aren’t going to say stay Amazon exclusive. But we’re going to go on and on about the benefits of it and give a couple token paragraphs to going wide.
Marketing
- Make yourself a brand! And by brand, we mean everything you say, do, and present online is now part of your brand. Make it as appealing to your target as possible. Make sure everything you do falls into whatever you have defined as part of that brand, which means you are now only allowed to talk about things pertaining to your niche genre and maybe some of the blander parts of your life now.
- Get a newsletter! Newsletters are a list of contacts that you can keep no matter what social media does. It gives you a chance to get directly in front of your audience and talk to them directly, so a newsletter is awesome. It also provides a lot more opportunity to let your audience see the bran-I mean, you! You as a whole person and not just a vehicle that sells books!5
- Create some exclusive content! Use bonus short stories, artwork, or books to entice people to join your newsletter. You can offer the first couple chapters as enticement, but this doesn’t work as well as exclusive content.
- Go to where your audience is! Where is your audience hanging out? Go there, join the community, and follow the 80/20 rule while you’re in that community. The 80/20 rule means that you talk like a normal person in the community 80% of the time, and 20% of the time you promote your own stuff.
- Social media is good! You can use social media to solidify your brand and talk to your audience directly, as well as meet other authors! Be sure you’re on the social media that your audience is on and be very active on it, including posting regularly and responding every single time someone talks to you.
- Get friendly with other authors! While the advice is positioned as a way to get to know people who you can talk to and rely on, it’s mostly about becoming friendly so that you can have access to their audiences.
Advertising
- Amazon ads are great! People are on Amazon to find Amazon products, so getting more eyes on your product this way is more likely to get you more sales. Be sure to target keywords, categories, and books that are related to yours to get the highest reward. Also, Amazon will not spend your budget, so don’t be afraid to set your bid caps high. But also, it has awful reporting on a several day delay, so keep track of how much you are spending vs how much you are selling outside of Amazon’s ad platform.
- Facebook is risky, but can have high reward! Facebook audiences are not there to sell, but you can target hyper specific groups of people with your ads, which can prove to be great. Facebook, however, will use your entire budget so be sure you set it to only charge you by click, not impression.
- We’re not mentioning how Bookbub is really not returning for people anymore, are we? You can buy a Bookbub ad! They are great, so long as you ignore the growing trend of people who are not making back their investment.
- Hey, newsletter swaps are a thing sometimes! You’ve made friends with other authors in your genre now, so here’s a great way to leverage your friendship and their audience! You can put your book in their newsletter in exchange for them putting theirs in yours. Itès mutually beneficial. Alternatively, you can use something like StoryOrigin to organize your swaps.
- You gotta spend money to make money! We probably won’t say it directly, but if you can’t afford to spend a lot of money on ads, you probably will never get the sales you are looking for. If you’re trying ads and not getting the sales despite a great cover and blurb, you probably need to spend more money on ads.
- Here’s the boring financial stuff and an explanation of ROI. ROI stands for Return on Investment, and this pertains a lot to ads. The total spent on ads vs the cut you actually make on a sale is what you should be counting, not the whole sale. If an ad isn’t making back the money after running it for a couple weeks, turn it off.
Also, taxes are a thing that exist.
Other stuff
- Americans need to buy ISBNs. Buy them so you can list yourself as the publisher, otherwise your publisher will look like it’s Amazon.
- Libraries exist. Go do readings and events at them. We’re not going to talk too much about getting things in the library, though.
- Conventions are also a thing! Sell your book at cons, do talks at conventions, make author friends at conventions! This is a great way to build your brand and meet people in person!
How they actually make money
So if you’re wondering how these guys who are selling the same how to guide over and over again with a new paint job.
Near as I can tell, it’s selling pricey courses and coaching to other authors. The books almost always have at the very least a link to a mailing list that will sell you their courses, if not a direct pitch for their courses. Doing the math on how much some of these courses and coaching sessions cost, I can see how they hit 6 figures. On top of that, books on how to be a successful indie sell well!
They follow all of their own advice. They write to market6, write a whole series of these books to put out quickly, and hang out with their target audience as experts in the field7. The techniques absolutely work in a lot of cases, but I’d argue that this is not an amazing revelation. This is largely Marketing 101 reframed for selling books on Amazon. And, as someone who has also made a thing targeted at authors, I can confirm that targeting authors is a good business decision.
- They love odd numbers, I do not know why [↩]
- But similar indie books, not the traditionally published ones [↩]
- Or 99 cents, which is less common advice [↩]
- Your sellthrough in this price range is horrible, though, fair warning [↩]
- I really hate marketing advice, can you tell? [↩]
- Indie authors [↩]
- These guys are constantly in indie author groups [↩]