People often ask me how I managed to sell so many books without an agent or publisher to help me but, sorry, there’s no simple answer. A good cover, a good blurb, some buzz generated before you even publish your debut novel, and good early reviews from honest beta readers are all a good start. But you need luck too.
However, I’m always thinking of new ways to market my brand and my books and these are some of the Kindle books I’ve read to try and get ideas. I probably got them all for free, or no more than £1, so check them out. I hope you find them useful and remember me when you make a fortune!
This is the one I’m reading just now. I don’t find Twitter very useful but I’ve learned some cool new techniques thanks to this (using HootSuite to schedule Tweets and tweeting much more often being the main ones).
This is what gave me the idea to write a short story and offer it for free in return for people signing up to my Email List. It’s free! And so is that short story – get it HERE!
5 Minute Marketing For Authors
Can’t really remember much about this one to be honest. It’s currently £1.99 but it will no doubt be available free at some point so keep an eye on it.
I don’t remember being blown away by this. From memory it had a lot of ideas I was already doing, but Joanna Penn has a great reputation so some of you will surely find this useful. It’s currently £4.99 for the Kindle edition but I doubt I paid that for it so keep an eye out and, hopefully, it’ll be on a Countdown Deal or freebie at some point.
Social Media Marketing For Publishers
Don’t remember this one either, but it’s short, and it’s FREE so you can’t lose!
Of all the books on this list, I found this one invaluable. Seriously. One of the main things that attracts readers to your work is the blurb that appears on the back cover or on the Amazon page. If it sucks, no one will buy your book, right? But it’s damn HARD coming up with something short and snappy that hooks people in, and that’s where this little gem comes in.
There’s a couple of great techniques for writing that short kick-ass blurb, and I go back to this book every time I have a new book needing a description.
It’s priced at £3.83 and, to be fair, I might well have paid that for it but it’s worth every penny!
Those are the ones that are in my own Kindle library but if you have any you can recommend, please share in the comments section!
* I updated this today, May 29 2017, to take into account borrows from the Kindle Lending Library and Kindle Unlimited.
STEVEN A. McKAY - Historical Fiction Author 
useful stuff here. Very difficult to sell anything most folk want it for free.
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Thanks mate! Yes, it’s always an eye-opener when I do a FREE promo on one of the books and it gets hundreds or thousands of downloads. I just hope they all end up buying some of the other ones.
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difficult. the price of books seems to be zero.
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I’m not so sure about that. Since I changed the price of my novella from just 99p to £1.99 I’ve actually made more sales and more money from it. I can only assume some readers see a higher price meaning higher quality.
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I tried the “free” marketing. Most folks didn’t even read the books. They hoarded them. Sell the books at a discounted rate if you must “give them away.”
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Yeah I think you’re probably right. I’ve run a couple of free promotions in particular, on the German editions of my novellas and they always get a couple of thousand downloads. Yet I’ve never even had a single review from that!
So yeah, it’s probably more useful all round to just reduce the price for a time.
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It works differently for every person. but don’t think that I was down-playing your opinion. Yes. The higher the price, the more quality but unfortunately folks haven’t embraced it yet. Gotta keep trying though!
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Yeah, it’s hard to strike that balance. One good thing now though, Kindle Unlimited means people can borrow a book for free even if it’s £3 or £4. So they might not have paid out that amount but getting it free? It’s a more attractive option than something that’s 99c all the time.
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