eBook Sales: If Your Sales Are Low, Discover Some Reasons Why

New eBook Authors must be proactive when it comes to marketing strategies.

Are you a struggling new ebook author that is having little to no success with book sales?  If you are, you may need to take some more serious and drastic steps regarding your ebook marketing strategies.  I felt the same way recently, and that is why I started my 60 Day eBook Marketing Strategies Video Series.

Every day, I rush and worry about recording and posting another video to make available like I promised.  But while I work hard to keep my word and not look like a flake, I'm realizing more and more that this video series really and truly is just for me.  I mean, other ebook authors can listen and hopefully benefit from it too, but I'm recording it for me.  I'm basically conducting an experiment that can potentially help me improve and master my ebook publishing and marketing skills.  The more I involve myself in what I'm doing, the more I want to do, but the best part of it all is the fact that it's actually working!

I started out looking for ways to expose, advertise and promote my new ebook "Shut Up and Write!"  Now I'm finding myself taking concrete steps to help not only my newest publication, but all my previously published ebooks.  So if your sales are low and you're a frustrated ebook author, why not start following my video series and see if it can help.  You may actually discover some reasons why your own ebooks aren't selling and even develop some successful marketing strategies.

For now, feel free to enjoy the following transcript from today's entry to my video series.

 

eBook Marketing Strategies DAY 6

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

Hello everyone,

This is Charm Baker and this video is for DAY 6 of my video series.  In fact, it’s actually day 8 and I’m a little behind in posting, but I promised to record 60 videos, in this series, plus the introduction, and darn it, that’s what I’m going to do.

So right now, I’ll fill you in on what I actually did on Day 6 so you’ll see why I’ve been too busy to post.  Then, I hurry and record the other two videos so I can be caught up tomorrow.  So without further ado, let me get into it.

Well, if you viewed DAY 5, you noticed that I was kind of bummed out by the events of the day, and even though I ended it by saying that I realized I still had a productive day, I still felt disappointed.  As a result, I wasn’t as focused on Shut Up and Write as I needed to be.  In fact, I was thinking more about my novel. 

Like I’ve already explained in previous videos, Shut Up and Write is my way of summing up the majority of my early years of online writing.  It’s packed with tons and tons of useful information to new online writers.  This is the kind of writing that I love because it’s what I know. 

But it was different with “Experimenting with Murder.  Writing my novel took me out of my comfort zone, and that’s why that’s the work that I’m most proud of, if for no other reason but that.  Since that’s the case, there’s no way that I can allow all the time, effort and hard work I put into writing it to go to waste.    So on Day 6, I spent the day taking a good hard, long look at the book.  In a moment, you can look at the screen and notice what all I did to the book, right after I tell you a little about this novel.

A brief discussion followed, directing viewers to the website where more book details can be found.

 Take a moment if you want to read about the characters from Experimenting With Murder

 You can also click the image and get details on the beautiful island setting of Experimenting With Murder

The following show the activities performed on DAY 6, in behalf of the novel:  Experimenting With Murder (Available now – exclusively at Amazon)

If you've been experiencing problems with marketing and selling your ebooks, perhaps some of the same issues could be the reason for low sales.  The only way you'll know is if you go and check it out.

eBook Marketing: Don't Let Setbacks in Your Routine Get You Down

Marketing activities can benefit you in more than one way.

Day 4 of the eBook Marketing Strategies video series got off to a good start in the earlier part of the day, but unfortunately, after a full am writing session, I experienced a minor setback.  But as you’ll see from the following information, all was not lost and I ended up finding an awesome writing resource.  Check it out in today’s transcript.

TRANSCRIPT:

eBook Marketing Strategies Video Series – DAY 4

Greetings YouTube viewers,

It’s Charm Baker, and today is DAY 4 of the eBook Marketing Strategies video series.  Today I jumped right into my regular daily activities, so I want to touch on what those are.  First, I took a peek at my Hub article that I posted yesterday, just in case there were any comments to respond to.  In the past, I would wait too long to return and do this, and find that several people had left comments and questions, but by then, it was too late to respond.  So I made a note to check my hub comments, and later on, I’ll even post a few myself.

Of course another one of the first activities I decided to do in the morning is to check my email religiously.  I did that today, in hopes of some responses to my discount coupon offers.  So far, nothing yet, so I guess I need to start pushing the coupon offer more. 

Anyway, after I didn’t receive any related mail, I clicked over and signed into my Google Analytics account.  I’m not really all that savvy when it comes to reading the reports, but I AM able to tell if I’m getting any kind of traffic at all to my website, and sort of determine where the traffic is coming from.  My website was only launched this year and I thus far, I haven’t really developed any kind of consistency to adding content, so my visitors are scarce.  But according to the analytics, at least I am getting a few daily visitors, so I need to do something to bump that up.

I do know that one good way to bump up your website traffic is through regular posting on your blog.  In the past, that has been one of my main obstacles to blogging – I just can’t seem to stay consistent.  If you’re like me, and you have that problem also, maybe you can use this video series to help you work on it. 

Since I’m posting the transcripts from the video to my blog, that means that I’ve committed to posting consistently for the next two months.  So maybe you might want to do the same thing, by following the video series daily, and posting any new information you might pick up along the way.  Of course, while you’re at it, I’d love a plug about my new ebook:  Shut Up and Write! as well as any of my other publications available at Smashwords.com.

While we’re on the subject of Smashwords, I want to mention another thing that I added to my “To Do” list for later in the week.  Since I opted out of having Smashwords distribute my new ebook to Amazon, that means I have to publish it on Amazon Kindle separately.  But here’s the thing you future authors need to keep in mind when you have a full length novel or non-fiction book that is eligible for print format.  It’s best to set up the print version first to make sure that your book cover will be the same as your Kindle cover.  On my novel:  “Experimenting with Murder,”I made the mistake of trying to format a cover at Createspace for the print version, after I had already published the ebook with a great looking cover.  It turned out to be a nightmare, and I finally had to enlist the help of my know-it-all son.

Createspace is one of the more popular free publishing formats for your self-published print books.  The upload process for your digital covers at Smashwords is much easier than creating one or uploading a book cover file to Createspace. Since Amazon and Createspace are joined, if you do your print book first, they will actually generate an ebook version and send it to Amazon for distribution. 

Okay, so I posted a note to myself to be sure and upload a file for a print version and I think I’ll let the book release date stay the same for Amazon and Createspace.  Amazon has a different policy when it comes to pre-releases, so I didn’t bother with it, but maybe I’ll try it for my next project. 

Several days ago, I came across some information about creating an author guest post about yourself and your ebook.  Somehow, I seemed to have save everything but the link to where to submit the post.  I can’t even remember for sure if it was on the Writer’s Digest website or Goodreads.  That same day I saw the information, I had been browsing both sites, one of which I was already signed up for.  Well today, after I spent the majority of the day writing the guest post according to the questions they supplied, I ended up not even being able to submit it.

Now if you’re anything like me, this is the kind of thing that could potentially make me have a setback.  After I spent about twenty minutes bouncing between the two sites looking for the link, I finally gave up.  So I currently have this awesome guest post with nowhere to post it.  I was really ticked off at myself and about to give up in defeat and stop working for the day.  But then I decided to view at least one writing related video before shutting down.  I came across one called:  “How I Wrote My First Book Self-Publishing Tips” I was curious about what the author had to say, so I checked it out.  As a result, I discovered an awesome website for authors called Scrawl.  You can visit my blog for a transcript of today’s video and you’ll see the link included.

I think that the Scrawl website might be just the thing that I need to try and get some feedback on my writing – not just “Shut Up and Write”, but for my novel:  “Experimenting With Murder.”  I’ve already did a little browsing to see what they have to offer, but tomorrow I’ll actually sign up and upload an excerpt from one or more books. 

That pretty much wraps up what activities I’ve been up to today, aside from the fact that I tried to check my mailbox at Fiverr.com to see if the provider completed my gig.  I selected someone who’s supposed to help get one of my promotional links out on social media.  Even if the $5 gig purchase helps drive just a little traffic, I think it’s worth it.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to log into Fiverr today due to yet another glitch.  I honestly don’t know what’s going on with Fiverr.com the past week or so.  Yesterday I solved the problem I was having with purchasing gigs with my debit card by simply funding my PayPal account and using it instead.  The payment went through fine, and I sent the requested details to the gig provider.  Now, today, I can’t even log in to check the results. 

As you can see, I’ve had a few minor setbacks today.  Even my blog page views went from 89 views yesterday to just 8 views today.  At least sharing my results in this video somehow, it makes it all not seem so bad. 

Okay, as always, I invite you to check out my website and feel free to click the Join List link if you’d like a discount ebook or any of my free promotions.

All you need to provide on the simple little form is your email address and choose one of the promotions I’m offering.  Then I’ll send you the coupon code and you can redeem it at Smashwords where my books are published.  Since my novel is currently exclusive to Amazon/Kindle, “Experimenting With Murder” is not part of the promotion.  Of course, if anyone is interested in a copy, just drop me an email and I’ll work something out for you.

Don’t forget, you can always follow me on social media so be sure to drop me a comment when you see the name Charm Baker.  If you want to specifically tweet a comment on this video series or my new ebook, just hashtag #shutupandwrite and I’ll be very appreciative.

Okay, that’s it folks.  Once again, thanks for listening everyone.  This is Charm Baker on the Just Charm YouTube channel.  Thanks for joining this eBook Marketing Strategies video series.

Talk to you tomorrow.

Scrawl website Link:

http://www.stwa.net/scrawl/publicpage.php

“How I Wrote My First Book Self-Publishing Tips” Video Link:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yw3RBdNERzY

eBook Marketing Strategies - Getting the Video Series on Track

Daily marketing activities are easier to keep up with than to catch up to doing!

This is the third video transcript of my new video series, and although it is labeled as Day 2, it actually covers several days.  As the following information will bring out, I am finally getting this series on track.  It was a little shaky getting started.  But now that I'm caught up on posting the first few videos, along with the blog post transcripts, it should be a lot easier to keep up with things.  The last thing I want to do with this 60 day marketing experiment is to miss the whole point.  My focus needs to be on the actual marketing activities that I perform each day, NOT on spending time creating the videos.

For anyone who is just tuning in to this blog or the YouTube video series, please be sure to visit the following links and you can get up to speed.

VIDEO SERIES INTRODUCTION

eBook Marketing Strategies Introduction

VIDEO SERIES DAY 1

https://youtu.be/AaAHu1pqgH4

VIDEO SERIES DAY 2

https://youtu.be/Zny-37U9AYo

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT:

eBook Marketing Strategies (Video Series - DAY 2)

Since this is Day 2 of the 60 day video series, I assume everyone viewing has already listened to the Introduction video and also Day 1.  If not, I suggest you view both those videos if you plan to follow the series for the duration.  You should also check out the video Intro. to the ebook I’m trying to market so you’ll have a point of reference when I refer to something in it during this video series.  The ebook was created for new writers who need quick writing related income, but there  are some points that even new authors can benefit from.  Anyway, I’m not going to spend any more time on that, because those three videos say it all.

So let me jump right in to what I’ve been doing since the last video.

I want to explain something real quick about how the days are numbered.  I call this a 60 day series, because the series will consist of 60 different videos, summarizing my activities and results.  But so far, if you do the math, you’ll see that things are a bit off.  The book’s release date is April 9^th of this year.  I had planned to monitor the first 30 days before the release date, and the first 30 days after the release.  So my first day of this video series should have been on March 10th because March has 31 days in the month, and the last video should be on May 8^th instead of the 9^th.

Based on those figures, I should already be on Day 9 of the video series!  What happened was, I’ve been too busy getting caught up in how to format this series and make the content look interesting to view, as well as listen to.  The only problem is, it’s very time consuming trying to create nice visuals to read or look at, plus line them up with the audio.  I’d much rather be able to concentrate and focus on the main objective – discussing my ebook marketing activities.    

I decided that from this video onward, I plan to save all the commercials and anything else that I need to show you until the end.  Then, I’ll roll the credits and provide a quick text summary and all other information.   

So let me bring you up to speed on what I’ve actually been doing up until today, then I’ll still make the next video Day 3.  That will push the 60 day mark to May 17^th and no matter what, I plan to stay on track.  

*** The video concluded after a list of the following activities was briefly touched on ***

• Created a Smashwords 50% discount coupon for the "Shut Up and Write!" ebook and also coupons for free ebooks as a promotional lure. 

• Created a simple email signup form at Wufoo.com in order to capture emails of potential customers for future book sales.

• Created visual help aids and cheat sheets (such as keyword lists, names of resource websites, hashtag ideas for Twitter, etc...) and printed them out for posting around my work space.

• Set up social media accounts so automated shared posts will be generated after every tweet. Be sure to view the following video and read the related post about the IFTTT.com website 
  
  
  IFTTT Related Blog Post
  http://bit.ly/1VhH3pP
  
  
  IFTTT Related Video - PART 1
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZttSTpHRZ20)