Archive for category Promotion
Smashwords Coupons
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Promotion, Self-publishing on October 18, 2016
Self-publishers who have opted out of Amazon’s KDP Select are free to distribute their e-books via other platforms, as well as Amazon.
As I’ve mentioned previously on this blog, Smashwords offers an easy way to make your e-book available through many retailers such as Apple, Barnes & Noble and the library supplier, OverDrive.
Individuals can also purchase e-books directly from Smashwords, from where they can choose to receive the e-book in a variety of formats, for example .mobi for Kindle and epub for Kobo, Nook and tablets.
In order to encourage these individual purchases, Smashwords lets authors create money-off coupons to distribute directly to selected readers (such as book reviewers, competition winners etc.) or more generally via social media. The author selects the discount percentage (up to 100%, thus making the book free), the expiry date and the number of redemptions (for example only the first 100 customers using the coupon will get the discount). Smashwords then generates a discount code for the author to distribute as he chooses.
I’ve been playing around with the Smashwords Coupon Manager and have created a 50% off coupon code VZ95D for Bedsit Three. It’s valid until 31/10/2016 or for the first 50 people – whichever comes soonest.
So, if you’re fed up of Amazon’s supremacy, try buying your Kindle e-book from Smashwords and save some money too!
Rosie Amber – Book Reviewer
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Books, Promotion, Self-publishing, Successes on September 7, 2016
Rosie Amber is a reader extraordinaire, in August alone she read and reviewed thirteen books, ranging from The Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out Of The Window And Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson through The Honey Trap by Mary Jane Baker to Wild Boys After Dark by Melissa Cooper. Rosie also has a team of reviewers and book bloggers whose reviews appear daily on Rosie’s blog.
So last month I approached Rosie and asked if she, or her team, would like to review Bedsit Three. She agreed to offer it to her reviewers and three .mobi files (for Kindle) went off to her team. Two of those reviews have now been completed.
Both reviewers awarded four out of five stars.
If I was doing my sales pitch now I’d just quote you the good bits but I’m going to be honest and quote the constructive criticism too – criticism that I’ll be taking particular note of as I work on my second book.
On the positive, Terry Tyler said, “… the characterisation is extremely good – I loved the parts about the increasingly disturbed Ignatius, and Sandra and Ian are both real and likeable, the sort of characters you root for. The plot is perfectly paced, alternating between the three main characters, with no boring bits; I was not tempted to skip read at all, and read 80% of it in one sitting.”
On the negative, she said, “On occasion I felt the dialogue was a little unlikely, and I thought Ian’s story was too speedily and rather drearily wound up in the epilogue (I hoped for so much better for him!), but these are my only complaints, and they are but minor.”
On the positive, Judith Barrow said, “I really enjoyed this novel, it’s a good psychological thriller that steadily builds in tension until the end. Sally Jenkins’ style of writing is easy to read without being cosy. Her words take the reader steadily through the plot without revealing too much, yet there is also subtle foreshadowing. .”
On the negative, she said, “My only disappointment in the whole of this book was with the dialogue. Sometimes, with all of the characters, I thought the dialogue was stilted (perhaps a little contrived?) and didn’t fit their portrayed personalities. Every now a then a section of speech felt as though it was there, not so much for exposition, but for explanation to the reader.”
Thank you very much Terry and Judith for your comprehensive and helpful reviews (I’ll definitely be watching my dialogue next time!). And many thanks to Rosie for setting the whole thing up and tweeting tirelessly!
The Questions Asked of Writers
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Events, Promotion, Self-publishing on July 28, 2016
Earlier this week I gave a talk to a local neighbourhood forum group. They are a mixed bunch of people who meet every couple of months principally to discuss what should be done to improve our locality. But before their business meeting they often have a speaker – hence my visit with my pile of books to speak about my experience of self-publishing.
When I’d finished my spiel there was time for questions. This can be the point when things go awkwardly quiet because no one likes to be the first to speak. But the forum chairman was great at getting things started. He’d been scribbling as I talked and had noted several points to raise with me. His questions got the audience relaxed and soon everyone was asking things.
I’m pleased to report that no one came up with the old chestnut ‘where do you get your ideas’ but here are some of the things I was asked:
- What do you think of ghost writers? (in relation to books by celebrities)
- How many words can your write in one hour? (I’d told them about NaNoWriMo)
- Could your book be made into a film?
- How many books have you sold?
- How much did it cost to have the novel professionally edited?
- Would I consider writing a historical novel?
- Could I make my book available in Waterstones?
- Did JK Rowling and EL James find it difficult to get published?
- Would I be willing to go and talk to two reading groups that a couple of the attendees were members of? (Yes!)
It was great to get people engaged, pass on the message that self-published books can be just as good as traditionally published works and sell some copies of Bedsit Three.
Catching Up
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Promotion, Self-publishing, Writing on June 30, 2016
Over the past couple of months I’ve mentioned a few of my writing-related activities and I thought it was time to give an update.
At the beginning of April, I announced that I was going to use April as a ‘private’ NaNoWriMo and try to write a rough first draft of my next novel. This actually took longer than planned. Partway through I realised that one of my minor characters had much more potential than one of my main protagonists. So I had to re-work much of what I’d done. I killed off the boring main protagonist (when he was only a baby!) and brought the minor character to the fore. I now have 58,000 words and a LOT of work to do.
At the beginning of June, I wrote that I’d uploaded Bedsit Three to Smashwords in order to get it into the Overdrive store, from which many public libraries purchase e-books. Once I could see it available in Overdrive, I went to my local library to ask for the contact details of Birmingham’s e-book buyer so that I could make myself known as a local author. Unfortunately, I was told that there was no budget at all for new books – not even e-books. On the plus side, they were receptive to the idea of an author event and (fingers crossed) will be contacting me in September when all the school holiday activities are over.
A couple of weeks ago, I launched a price promotion on Kindle for Bedsit Three. I reduced it from £2.25 to 99p for 2 weeks. I calculated that I needed to sell 4.5 times as many books at 99p as at £2.25 to make it a viable long-term price point. That number of sales hasn’t materialised so, barring a sudden surge today (30th June 2016) the price will rise again tomorrow.
And finally, I was pleased to receive a gift from Iain Pattison this week – a paperback copy of That’s Why The Lady is a Vamp. It’s a collection of off-beat comedy tales, full of unexpected twists and lots of humour. Plus, the high spot is a guest appearance by yours truly! If you’d like a free e-copy of one of Iain’s books pop along to his website now.
So that’s me. Anyone else got any news?
Grab Yourself a Bargain!
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Promotion, Self-publishing on June 16, 2016
The psychological thriller, Bedsit Three, is now 99p/99c on Kindle until the end of June!
Since publication last October the e-book has been priced at £2.25 and I’m experimenting to see how price sensitive demand for the book is. As the price falls to less than half-price will sales rise sufficiently to make up for the vastly reduced royalties I will receive?
Bedsit Three is not in KDP Select because it’s also on sale via other e-book channels such as Kobo (where, surprisingly, it sells better than on Kindle) so this is not a Kindle Countdown deal. I have simply dropped the price across all Amazon territories.
Selling at 99p, I will receive 29p per book royalty compared to £1.29 per book when selling at £2.25. So I need to sell at least 4.5 times more books at the lower price to make me keep it at that price point. I’m interested to see what (if anything!) happens.
Extracts from Amazon UK reviews for Bedsit Three:
“A psychological why dunnit reminiscent of Barbara Vine/ Ruth Rendell. Highly recommended!“
“I picked Bedsit Three up late on Friday evening. I had finished it by the following Sunday lunch time and I absolutely loved it. The last book that held my attention like that was Stephen King’s Misery.“
“Believable, empathetic characters and exciting tensions and resolutions in the fast-moving plot.“
Publishing on Smashwords
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Computers & Technical, Promotion, Self-publishing on June 2, 2016
This week I spent a few hours uploading the psychological thriller Bedsit Three to Smashwords.
Smashwords is the world’s largest distributor of independently-published e-books. It also sells directly to the public in a variety of e-book formats. I decided to use Smashwords in order to make Bedsit Three available for libraries to add to their e-book collections. Many libraries worldwide use Overdrive to source their e-books and the only way for an indie author to make a book available on Overdrive is to go through Smashwords (as I mentioned before in my post about the 2016 Self-publishing Conference).
Smashwords accepts a Word document which it then puts through its ‘meatgrinder’ to change into .epub format – so no great technical knowledge is needed on the author’s part. However, I hit a couple of snags during the uploading process.
Firstly I tried uploading a .docx document, this was rejected because Smashwords only accepts .doc documents i.e. those created by older editions of Word. So I had to use the ‘Save As’ function to save my document and change it from .docx to .doc.
Secondly, when I previewed the .epub produced via the ‘meatgrinder’ there was a blank page between every chapter. It took me a bit of fiddling and Googling to solve this one. I had to remove the page breaks between chapters (which Amazon and Kobo had seemed quite happy with) and replace with a few carriage returns. I think this is because Smashwords automatically inserts its own page break when it comes to a chapter heading.
The Overdrive catalogue is updated from Smashwords each Tuesday, so Bedsit Three should appear there by the middle of next week. If you’d like to read Bedsit Three for free please ask your library to add it to their e-book collection.
Incidentally, authors don’t receive PLR on borrowed e-books, they only get the one-off royalty for a single sale.
Click to preview
A girl has been buried in a shallow grave. Rain starts to wash away the earth covering her.
A used pregnancy test and a scrap book about a suicide are abandoned in a bedsit.
Every mother tries to do her best for her child. But sometimes that ‘best’ creates a monster.
Bedsit Three is a tale of murder, mystery and love. It won the inaugural Wordplay Publishing/Ian Govan Award and was shortlisted for both the Silverwood-Kobo-Berforts Open Day Competition and the Writing Magazine/McCrit Competition.
Available on Amazon, Kobo and Smashwords.
Tips for Hand Selling Books
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Markets, Promotion, Self-publishing on February 8, 2016
The benefit of making a book available in paperback (instead of e-book only) is the ability to ‘hand sell’ copies i.e. sell direct to the reader. Since the publication of Bedsit Three I’ve been taking my first steps in this direction. As well as selling to friends, family and acquaintances, I’ve done two small-scale book-signings linked with local charity events and last week I practised my ‘author speech’ for an audience of 6 writers (who all bought a book).
It’s hardly the big time but I can now celebrate emptying my first box of 50 paperbacks and starting on the second. 
There are a couple of events lined up for March – and it feels good not to depend on Amazon for all my sales!
I’ve learned a few things along the way too:
- Get a foot in the door at charity events by offering to make a donation for each sale
- Don’t be surprised if people proudly proclaim, “I never read books”
- People will buy books for odd reasons – I made one sale to a lady who wanted it because we share a surname and another to a lady whose daughter’s married name is Sally Jenkins
- Decide beforehand what dedication you will write in the books – will it just be ‘Best wishes’ or something else?
- Take a pen that writes smoothly
- Take a float of change
- Don’t be disheartened if you only sell a few books. Keep that smile on your face and be pleasant – every event is a networking activity too and you never know where it might lead.
It’s important to make the most of all sales channels but in my opinion selling by hand is far more pleasant than dreaming up clever things to put on social media.
What does anyone else think?
Kindle Instant Book Previews
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Computers & Technical, Promotion, Self-publishing on January 25, 2016
Thanks to Nick Daws of the Entrepreneur Writer for bringing this new Kindle marketing tool to my attention.
Amazon has introduced a new feature to help authors generate book sales from their websites and social media activities. A Kindle Instant Book Preview can be embedded into a webpage using HTML or shared as a link via email, text and social media. This enables readers to preview a book (in a similar way to the ‘Look Inside’ feature found on Amazon product pages) with only one click and without leaving the webpage they are currently browsing.
Try clicking on the book cover image below left and you’ll see what I mean.
Click Book Cover to Read Free Sample
If the reader likes what he sees there is a direct link to purchase the book from Amazon. A Kindle Instant Book Preview retains traffic on an author’s website because books can be viewed without diverting your website visitor to Amazon.
To obtain the Preview link, search for the book on Amazon.com (not UK), click the ‘Embed’ link on the right next to the other sharing options, copy the URL or embed the HTML code onto your website.
N.B. It’s not possible to embed the HTML into a wordpress.com site (like this one) because wordpress.com doesn’t allow certain HTML codes such as ‘iframe’. So I’ve displayed the book cover image with the Preview link behind it.
Full details can be found at http://www.amazon.com/b?ie=UTF8&node=13489836011&tag=viglink20273-20
If you’d like to read more on Nick’s original post, you’ll find it here.
January Sale!
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Non-fiction, Promotion, Self-publishing, Short Story on December 28, 2015
Hands up if you got any of the following for Christmas:
Kindle
Tablet
Smartphone
Amazon Gift Card?
Or do you already own any of the above?
I can see you all madly waving your arms in the air and I guess you’re all itching to download a bargain book. So, from now until Sunday 3rd January 2016, A Writer on Writing and House Guests are both only 99p each (or 99c if you’re in the US).
A Writer on Writing
A writer who earns money from his work is not merely a wordsmith. 
A profitable writer knows how to manage his time, produce ideas from a blank mind and create a web presence, plus many more things besides.
A Writer on Writing will introduce you to these and a range of other skills useful to anyone hoping to make cash from their words.
House Guests
A cornucopia of contemporary short stories about modern life. 
Enjoy a plethora of twist endings, some humour plus a tiny bit of romance. There’s also a special guest story by prize-winning author and writing tutor, Iain Pattison! So make yourself a coffee, grab a sweet treat, put your feet up and indulge.
Happy reading and very best wishes for a happy, healthy and successful 2016!
Generating Publicity
Posted by Sally Jenkins in Promotion, Self-publishing, Successes on November 24, 2015
It’s a universal truth that marketing and publicity are difficult skills to master. If an author constantly shouts ‘Buy my book! Buy my book!’ then people get irritated and start pressing ‘unfollow’ or ‘unsubscribe’ (No! Don’t all rush to do that now!). But if the same author says virtually nothing at all then very few people know that he has a book available or how good that book is.
The key is subtlety. And in my own subtle fashion I have been popping up in different places this week.
Gadgette.com is the smart woman’s guide to tech, style and life. Because I am a smart woman, I was invited to give them 6 Easy (and free!) Steps to Publishing Your First Ebook. It’s only a two-minute read and worth it if you want to find out what this e-publishing lark is all about.
Kobo Writing Life is the self-publishing arm of Kobo (similar to Kindle Direct Publishing) and has a very useful blog. As many of you know, Bedsit Three was shortlisted for a competition partly organised by Kobo, so when the novel was published they invited me to do a blog post for them.
Birth of a Novel explains how Bedsit Three emerged from NaNoWriMo 2013. If you’re struggling with last few days of this year’s NaNo, you might find some encouragement in this post.
Readers’ Favorite is a US book review website. It’s readers review books for free (sometimes there is a long wait). The review isn’t posted on Amazon but it can be quoted from in book descriptions and it appears on the Readers’ Favorite website. Here’s the Readers’ Favorite verdict on Bedsit Three.
I hope I haven’t irritated you too much – and keep your finger OFF that unsubscribe button!
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