When Books Fly: Social Media Secrets for Bestselling Books

By Erin Ann McBride

With millions of books screaming for readers’ attention, authors must find ways to win readers through—you guessed it—social media! This book helps navigate the social media overload and makes it possible for authors at all tech-savvy levels to use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, blog tours, and more online avenues to market and sell books. Understand social media and sell more books than you thought possible!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cedar Fort Publishing & Media
• Release date: Feb 4, 2023
• ISBN: 9781462126682

Book preview

To Commercially Publish or Self-Publish, That is the question

Congratulations, you wrote a book! From one author to another, I can appreciate how much hard work goes into the writing process. For better or worse, you are about to find out that writing the book was the easy part. Now you have to get it published, and you have options to choose from. But it doesn’t stop there, because you will have to market the book. That’s what this book is for—to help you decide which publishing options to take and, regardless of your publishing path, to help you understand how you can increase and improve your sales.

Not all authors will have thousands of dollars to spend to promote a book after it is written and published. Understanding the tools available to authors—whether commercially published or self-published—will help increase and improve the visibility of your book.

Over the last decade, the opportunities available to authors have changed tremendously. Getting published was a pretty straightforward, cut-and-dried situation. You wrote a book, shopped it around to publishers, and maybe worked with an agent. Vanity presses (a publisher that is paid by the author to print a book) were an option and began to pave the way for commercially viable self-publishing.

Authors used to spend hours looking up different agents and publishers and mailing out manuscripts. But then the Internet and different technologies advanced to make it all a little bit easier. Publishers changed to allow for electronic manuscript submissions, and authors no longer had to spend hundreds of dollars to mail their manuscripts out (just to get rejected). Now authors are in control of their own material and have the option to submit to commercial publishers, self-publish, use vanity publishers, or even contract for distribution. It is important to understand what each of these options offers to an author.

Commercial publishing is the traditional form of book publication. An author writes a book, creates a pitch, and sends a manuscript to a publisher (possibly via an agent). They land a contract, and the book is published and sold online and in bookstores. This continues to be a competitive field, and not always an easy one to break into. In this book, we will not address the methods or best practices required to succeed in landing a commercial publication contract. But the tools and strategies we will discuss on how to promote yourself as an author, and your books, apply regardless of whether you are commercially or self-published.

In commercial publishing, it can take at least a year from the point a contract is accepted to when it gets printed. And that’s if the publisher has the room and ability to make it move that fast. From the point a book hits the retail shelves, the general publishing contract allows for royalty checks every six months. It can be eighteen months to two years before an author sees his or her first income from a book.

The self-publishing process can go much faster. An author can have the book uploaded into e-book format and sold in a matter of days. With the advent of print-on-demand (POD) technology, a paperback book can be printed and in hand in just a week. Royalties are generally paid sixty days after sales begin.

The next detail is control, or lack thereof, in commercial publishing. An author spends months, even years, working on a manuscript. The labor of love is obsessed over and perfected before it is sent off to a publisher, with a ruthless red pen, and hacked to death. Whether the potential reader would agree that the original or changed version is better remains to be seen. Either way, more than one author has walked away from a publisher’s editing process with a sense of lost creative control and a deflated ego.

When an author decides to self-publish, they assume responsibility for all aspects of the publishing process—proofreading, editing, cover design, printing, marketing, and distribution.

Many authors choose self-publishing over commercial publishing because of time and money—and to some extent, creative control.

The pros and cons of both commercial publishing and self-publishing must be carefully considered before an author commits to one. Self-publishing comes with the pros of complete control over the creative content and sooner royalties. But it comes with the cons of self-promotion, lack of distribution, and poor visibility.

A dedicated self-published author can achieve commercial success. There are many stories, on the verge of becoming urban legends, of self-published authors who hit the big-time and were able to sell thousands or even millions of copies. The success of 50 Shades of Grey, Eragon, and The Martian—which each began as self-published books and went on to become bestsellers and Hollywood blockbuster films—has given hope to thousands of self-published authors.

But the truth is that most self-published authors will sell hundreds of books, not thousands. That’s just the reality of self-publishing. But with the right tools and knowledge of how to market, all authors, regardless of the type of publishing, can sell more books.

The decision whether to self-publish or commercially publish is a personal one, unique to each author and book. No one can tell you what is best for you and your book. But the information in this book will help you make an informed decision on whether you are up to the challenge of self-publishing and, regardless of the method you choose, help you boost your sales.

A vanity press is also an option for some writers. This is for writers who do not intend to sell their books in stores or online, but just want to print a few copies for friends or family members. (This is an excellent option for personal memoirs or cookbooks.)

Under the umbrella of self-publishing, there are several options, including different e-book publishers (such as Kindle or Nook), paperback and hardcover publishers, distributors, and vanity presses.

Amazon’s Kindle is the most well-known of the e-book self-publishing companies, followed closely by Barnes & Noble’s Nook. But the truth is that there are at least a dozen e-book publishing platforms available to authors. Amazon has a firm policy of not releasing numbers on e-book sales, so all information about their sales tends to be anecdotal. But speak to any self-published author who has published across multiple platforms, and he or she will tell you that the overwhelming majority of e-book sales come in from Kindle. Amazon has created several features to assist authors with sales (which will be discussed in chapter 3: Amazon Tools for Authors). Barnes & Noble made changes to the Nook platform that makes it far more confusing for authors to use and understand, which has not helped its cause.

Self-publishing platforms for e-books include Kindle, Nook, Smashwords, iBooks, Kobo, Google Play, Lulu, BookBaby, Vook, e-bookIt, Pressbooks, and more. New sites pop up all the time. When deciding if you want to go to the trouble of putting your book up on all of these sites, ask yourself these most important questions. Have you ever purchased a book from that site? Have you ever heard of it before? If you have never heard of the site, what makes you think others have and regularly buy from it?

Each site has its own set of features, which can make one more appealing than another. For instance, the appeal of Smashwords is that not only does Smashwords sell your e-book for you directly to the customer, but it also puts your book on Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and iBooks on your behalf. A central hub to manage all of the platforms is a definite plus. But the downside is that if you ever want to run a promotion on Kindle, your book cannot be posted on any other site. And once you realize how many more sales you get on Kindle than all of the other sites combined, you will wonder if there is any point at all in being on those other sites.

As was mentioned before, Kindle and Nook do not publish e-book sales numbers. There is no hard evidence to prove how many more books are sold on Kindle than on Nook. But speaking as an author, I can offer this information: I published my first two books on Kindle, Nook, and Smashwords. I promoted my books with links to all three sites. I did not promote sales on one platform over another. (Though it was tempting to push people to Smashwords, where I would have received a higher royalty rate.) I sold 98 percent of my books through Kindle, and 1.5 percent on Nook. A small handful were sold on Smashwords.

I own a Nook. I am a big fan of my Nook. I read almost exclusively on my Nook. Yet I don’t bother to put my own self-published books on Nook. (My commercially published books were put on Nook by my publishers.) Please do not think that I am trying to sway you against publishing on multiple platforms. But be informed about the realities of self-publishing.

Self-publishing paperback or hardcover books have fewer options than e-books. Amazon provides a convenient, all-in-one option with CreateSpace that can concurrently publish to Kindle. Other popular