Don’t let fear hold you back!
By: Ginger | Posted on March 26, 2021
Even the bravest among us are probably feeling a little bit more fearful these days. After all, when you’re being told that hunkering down in your house surrounded only by those you love and trust the most is your best strategy for pandemic survival, who wouldn’t be a little more afraid than usual? And from an evolutionary perspective, a healthy dose of fear is what kept many of our ancestors alive long enough to pass along their genes from generation to generation until we were born. But sometimes fear can do more harm than good, especially when it’s keeping us from achieving our potential. Sometimes, the biggest obstacle an author faces is themselves. Back in 2013, a line from Nell Scovell and Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In really stuck with me: Done is better than perfect. We’ve written before about how perfectionism is the enemy of the writer –… Read More >
BookBub Ads – Part Three: Building an Audience
By: Ginger | Posted on March 19, 2021
So now that you’ve decided that Bookbub advertising is for you, and you have your creative figured out, the final step in the puzzle is targeting the right audience. Bookbub works a bit differently than some of the other ad platforms, which means you may need to alter your current strategy. In this final installment of our Bookbub ad series, Ginger outlines his steps for successfully figuring out who should see your ads. In our last blog post, we wrote about coming up with creative that could be effective on BookBub. Of similar importance is the audience you show this creative to – and that’s where BookBub appears ‘deceptively’ simple in its targeting. One of the incredible things about BookBub is that it allows authors to target their advertising to an incredibly granular level – by selecting specific authors who are included on their platform and targeting the readers… Read More >
BookBub Ads – Part Two: The Creative
By: Ginger | Posted on March 12, 2021
If you’ve been thinking about trying to advertise your book on Bookbub’s relatively new advertising platform but aren’t sure where to start, this is the series for you. In part 1, Ginger discussed what the service offers and how to determine if it’s right for you, and this week he’s diving into what sort of images to use in your bookbub ads. What can, and should, you include? It’s all explained below, with a real example ad Ginger created and used for one of his own books to help illustrate his points. Last week, we pitched the idea of using BookBub to market your books. It’s an incredibly powerful serve-yourself advertising platform that has arguable advantages over both Facebook and Advertising on Amazon – but the interface is deceptively simple and a lot of authors get their fingers burned by jumping in without a strategy in place. Today, we’re… Read More >
BookBub Ads – Part One: Getting Started
By: Ginger | Posted on March 5, 2021
When it comes to advertising, Amazon isn’t the only game in town. Facebook is still a familiar favorite for those trying to drive traffic to their books, and some authors have even ventured into using YouTube and TikTok to promote their work. But have you given Bookbub a try? Once just a hard-to-get newsletter promotion, Bookbub now allows authors to place ads in front of their large readership. In this first installment of a three-part series, Ginger gives you the lowdown on the Bookbub advertising platform and what you need to know to decide if it’s right for you. One often overlooked but surprisingly effective advertising platform is BookBub – with many authors unaware they even run ads. For most self-published authors, getting a BookBub ‘deal’ is the only feature they’re interested in – often considered the Holy Grail of book promotions. But for a fraction of the cost,… Read More >
Increase your book sales by increasing your categories!
By: Ginger | Posted on February 26, 2021
By default, KDP only allows an author to select two categories for their self-published book, from a list that only exposes a limited number of very generic choices. Yet readers have much more varied and specific category options to browse through, with many using those lists as their main source for discovering new authors and titles. The good news is that Ginger is here to tell you how you can get your book into up to 10 of those more specific categories, and why it’s in your best interest to do so! If successful self-published authors have discovered anything by putting their books for sale on Amazon, it’s that readers really do judge a book by its cover. But not just the cover – also other seemingly imperceptible things that make a big difference. In my own experience, I’ve seen that a nice, shiny bit of flair over an… Read More >
Fiction Apps Can Increase Your Income
By: Krista Lakes | Posted on February 19, 2021
Most self-published authors sell their book on one or more of the traditional online eBook stores like Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, etc. Lately, however, a new option has emerged that is worth looking into, at least for those not tied to a long term exclusivity agreement. You may not have heard of Fiction Apps, or if you have, you may have brushed them off believing that they only exist to give books away for free and can’t be used to earn real money from your novels. Times have changed, though, with new apps emerging and gaining popularity among both readers and silicon valley. NY Times and USA Today bestselling author Krista Lakes uses them, and she’s here to let us know why it’s time for authors to start taking these apps seriously, and what some of the options are. I think I’ll be experimenting with one of them in… Read More >
Five Characters and Counting: How narrowing your focus can expand your story
By: Ginger | Posted on February 12, 2021
With most fiction, it’s the characters that make a story a success or not. Characters are what people remember, and when you’ve done a good job fleshing them out, you’ll find that your readers can’t get enough of them. They’ll read sequel after sequel, even when the plots are very different, just so that they can revisit the lives of the characters they love and continue to follow them on their journeys. And while it’s fine if your book has a large cast in general, Ginger is here to explain why you need to keep the focus on a much smaller set, and leave the rest as walk-ons, in order to strengthen your overall story. A couple of months ago, I wrote about having to go back to the drawing board on a novel I’d been working on for nearly six months. I’d written 160,000 words of it –… Read More >
Amazon ‘outing’ author pen names!
By: Craig | Posted on February 5, 2021
Many authors write under pen names to hide their true identities, and until now have done so under the perfectly reasonable assumption that Amazon would keep that identity secret. There are plenty of good reasons why an author would want to maintain their privacy, and no good reasons for Amazon (or any other publishing company) to put that privacy at risk. Despite this, late last week a number of authors started reporting that Amazon Ads had sent physical letters to their homes, addressed to their secret pen names for anyone in the household picking up the mail to see. Whether this breach of confidentiality was willful or simply a mistake is irrelevant, and Amazon needs to take ownership of it. So far, however, it is looking more and more like they’re simply hoping everyone will just forget it ever happened. Back before starting Hidden Gems I was a romance author,… Read More >
A Market You May Be Missing
By: Deryn Pittar | Posted on January 29, 2021
I noticed that many authors that use our beta reader service leave out the over 50 age group as part of their demographics and it got me to wondering whether that was a mistake or not. I’m sure there are cases where a book really is targeted at a younger age group, but I think that the majority of fiction books probably do not fall into that category. As someone closing in on 50 myself, I have a hard time believing that in a couple of years my opinions of a book will be any less valid than they are now. Deryn Pittar agrees, and as a 50+ avid reader AND author, her opinion on the subject isn’t one any author can afford to ignore. I’m not going to labor the challenges of marketing in today’s publishing world. As an author I’m only too aware of them. However, there is… Read More >
Fair Use FAQ – Your Questions Answered
By: Nate | Posted on January 22, 2021
Without the benefit of a publishing company’s legal team behind them, it’s important for self-published authors to have at least a basic understanding of what they can or cannot include in their works. Previously, Nate has discussed issues of copyright and trademark, and with this final installment he’s going over the idea of fair use. Wondering whether you can include that song lyric in your book, or whether you’re able to make reference to your favorite fast food joint? If so, this is the blog for you. And as always, if you have any further questions or need any clarifications, just leave a comment for Nate and he’ll do his best to find you an answer. Hello, everyone! Before we get the ball rolling with the last entry to this series, I wanted to mention that the same caveats apply as the previous two installments (copyright FAQ and trademark… Read More >
