Today’s post is courtesy of guest blogger Jane Kalmes, a podcaster.

Jane Kalmes is the author of The Indie Book Podcast, a show that reviews self-published books and interviews their authors.  Visit The Indie Book Podcast for a new episode each week, including reviews of the novels mentioned in this article.

Marketing An Indie Book

If there’s one thing that running The Indie Book Podcast has taught me, it’s that the frontier of self-publishing is still being forged.  Authors are trying anything and everything to stake out territory in the amazing Wild West arena that is the new face of the publishing world.

Nowhere is this more true than in the marketing of independent books.  Since I’ve been running my show, I’ve seen any number of excellent marketing ideas used by the authors whose books I review.  In this article, I’ll lay out some of the best, along with the reasons I think they can help authors succeed.

Create a Loss Leader

Everyone has an opinion about the ideal price point for self-published books.  There’s a natural tension between the exposure you get from a low price—say, ninety-nine cents—and the profitability posed by a higher price, around three or four dollars.  Authors, understandably, have a hard time choosing between the two models.

So, don’t.  Do what Moses Siregar III did with his book, The Black God’s War.  He excerpted a number of chapters that told a compelling story on their own, and sold them as a novella for the stunningly low price of zero dollars and zero cents.  Doing this allowed him to gain a huge number of readers, without having to give away the entire work for free.

If your book doesn’t lend itself to excerpting, you can still create a loss leader by following the example of M. Louisa Locke, author of Maids of Misfortune.  She created a short story using the characters from her novel, so that she, too, was able to give readers a free taste of her work.

Ask for Reviews

That’s what author Nick Cole did.  At the end of his book, The Old Man and The Wasteland, an afterword prompts readers to leave a review on Amazon.  It goes on to promise the first one hundred reviewers a free copy of Cole’s next book, Fight the Rooster.

Here’s the genius of the offer:  it appears at the end of the book.  Which means it goes out only to those readers who enjoyed the book enough to read it all the way through.  Here’s more:  the offer only has value to people who are interested in reading another Cole novel.  By setting up the offer in this way, Cole has virtually guaranteed himself one hundred positive Amazon reviews.

Write Novellas

Whole books can be written on the subject of John Locke and marketing. In fact, he’s written one. But one technique Locke is particularly known for is turning out a large number of titles in a short time. The books in his Donavan Creed series, including the much-loved Saving Rachel, tend to clock in around one hundred and fifty pages—which means, obviously, that they get written a whole heck of a lot faster than traditional novels.
This technique allows Locke to fill the virtual shelves, giving readers a large body of work to become deeply engaged with. It also can’t hurt his bottom line, since a satisfied reader can easily leapfrog from one purchase to ten.
I’ll be honest: this is not a tactic I’m crazy about. I think most stories can benefit from the 80,000-or-so words that represent the traditional novel length, and I’m not too interested in shortening my work for marketing purposes. But there’s no denying that concentrating on novellas carries some distinct advantages.

Serialize Your Work

Seth Harwood is the author of the Jack Palms novels, including This is Life.  But instead of merely releasing them as e-books, Harwood serializes his novels in the form of podcasts.  This enables him to create excitement about his novels, by teasing readers with just a bit of information at a time.  Perhaps even more important, it lets him take his work to a whole new audience, those who love audiobooks and podcasts.

Which brings me back to myself.  I created The Indie Book Podcast because I’m wildly excited about the new ground publishing is forging into, and I want to be a part of helping its pioneers connect with their audience.  But is it also possible that it will help me sell my own novel, Kitty Carmichael’s Big Life, which I’m planning to self-publish in the next few months?  Only time will tell.

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