indieBRAG Blog

FOCUS ON WHAT REALLY MATTERS AND LEAVE THE ALGORITHMS TO OTHERS!

At The Media Briefing's Digital Media Strategies conference in London recently, it was reported that less than 3% of book sales on Amazon came from buyers who were simply browsing, and only 10% were derived from their "bought this/also bought" recommendations. These pale in comparison to 48% of sales from buyers who already knew the author or book they wanted, and were simply buying it online. The obvious conclusion is that most indie authors spend entirely too much time trying to get their title ranked higher by Amazon's algorithm! Instead, authors should focus on gaining name recognition. How? By connecting with their target audience: by reaching out to the people who are interested in their genre - bloggers, genre-specific websites and Facebook pages, as well as other relevant social media forums. Another interesting fact cited in London was that 17% of book sales were influenced by a book being listed on "Bestseller" or "Top 100" lists. For those indie authors who are fortunate enough to have their book placed on such a list, but find it near the bottom, another way to stand out is by having an appealing cover. This is true even if the book is only available…

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How To (Really) Sell Your Novel – The Shocking Truth

Re posted with permission of John Yeoman Originally posted on The Wicked Writing Blog Friday, April 5, 2013 Under: Libels & Wickedness   How do you sell a novel? That's the number one problem for every self-publishing author and it probably accounts for all the other numbers too. Unless your novel sells, you may well be a writer but you're not a novelist. Here are four ways that don't work. 1. Banner ads don't work. Many sites will sell you a banner, in a choice of sizes, to promote your book and each at a fancy price. None will yield a profit. You might not even get a single click-through. Why? The average click-through rate for banner ads is just three tenths of one per cent or 0.3%. That's the industry average according to imedia connections.com. So only three in 1000 people who see your banner ad will click on it. And only about 4% of those people will buy your book. (That's the average conversion-to-sale ratio at Amazon.) So you'll make just one sale for every 10,000 people who see your banner. How much will you be charged for that banner? Anything between $100 and $1000. Result: you'll lose…

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Happy 1st Anniversary indieBRAG!

  It is hard to believe that we launched indieBRAG and the B.R.A.G.Medallion one year ago! We will continue to shine a light on worthy books and tell the reading world that if they want a good book worth their time and money, to pick one with the B.R.A.G.Medallion. Our reading team now numbers 100 and live in 10 countries. We would not have been able to honor the books we have without all their dedication and support. They have considered nearly 1000 books and chosen 100 to carry our medallion. What a great job! Thank you all for joining our team. It is our great pleasure to be working with such a talented and hard working group – both authors and readers. I personally can say that I consider them my friends. All of us on the indieBRAG Team will continue to bring attention to our honored books and we have some new plans for the coming year which we hope will bring even more attention to these gems in the avalanche of self-published books. We all look forward to a successful and exciting 2013- Geri and the entire indieBRAG Team

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A conversation with Bestselling Author Colleen Hoover

COLLEEN HOOVER Colleen lives in Texas with her husband and their three boys. She released her debut novel, SLAMMED, in January 2012 and the follow-up novel, POINT OF RETREAT, in February, 2012. Both books have been optioned for film as of October, 2012. Her bestselling Romance novel Hopeless has been on the New York Times E-Book Best Sellers list for 20 weeks! indieBRAG: Thank you, Colleen, for spending this time with us. Colleen Hoover: Thank you so much for having me. iB: You have written three very successful books in the Romance genre. I wonder if an author sets out to write in a specific genre or do they just write the book that is in them? In your case, did you choose the genre first and then create the book, or was the story already in your mind and it just happened to fit that genre? CH: When I began writing SLAMMED, I didn't even think about where it might fit if I tried to sell it. I wrote the book thinking I was going to be the only one to read it besides a few family members. Once the book was complete and I decided to upload it…

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Bob Mayer, bestselling author, talks audio books-

Bob Mayer is a West Point Graduate, Former Green Beret, CEO of Cool Gus Publishing and a NY Times Bestselling Author. He has had over 50 books published. He has sold over four million books, and is in demand as a team-building, life-changing, and leadership speaker and consultant for his Who Dares Wins: The Green Beret Way concept, which he translated into Write It Forward: a holistic program teaching writers how to be authors. He is also the Co-Creator of Cool Gus Publishing, which does both eBooks and Print On Demand, so he has experience in both traditional and non-traditional publishing. Thank you so much Bob for giving us some of your experience and wisdom on audio books. The latest sales figures tell us that ebooks significantly out number print books and that the latest trend is to have audio books. You have stated that this has been quite successful for you. We really appreciate you taking the time to share your thoughts with us and answer some questions. 1. Why do an audio book? It can be rather costly. I use the ACX program, which is a really well run system. I've invested over $50,000 in producing 30 audio…

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Book Trailers- are they worth it?

I have read a lot about book trailers, and I have watched my share of them, and here is my final thought on whether they are worth it – I don't know! There seems to be little evidence that book trailers help sell books. I enjoyed watching some of them and a few actually got me interested in taking a look at the book. However, in general, most looked amateurish; they were just a slideshow with music. They were more helpful if I went to the book's website first and then watched the video. In other words, they did not grab my attention on their own; rather they simply added to my overall interest in the book. But the point is I'm not sure they would encourage me to actually buy the book. Obviously, I am biased but I do enjoy being able to click on a book trailer when I go to one of our B.R.A.G.MedallionTM Honoree detail pages. But, there again, I have already sought the book out and I know it is well worth the investment of my time and money. So here is what I think- A book trailer is a nice enhancement to all the…

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Hot Air Balloons during the Civil War

By Christopher Zuniga The Union and the Confederate armies both used Hot Air Balloons for spying during the Civil War. The first person to receive an order to build an Hot Air Balloons for the Union army was John Wise. In April of 1861 Murat Hasket wrote a letter to the U.S. treasury Salmon D. that the U.S. should create a balloon corps to use as a spying devise under Thaddeus Lowe's command. On July 17, 1861 Abraham Lincoln agree to form a balloon corps. During this time the opposing side tried to shoot down the spying balloon. After Lincoln heard that, he ordered Lowe to build four more additional balloons. The balloons that Lowe made were measured to be from 32,000 ft to 15,000 ft and were also able to climb up to 5,000 ft into the air. One of Lowe balloons was shot down on November 16, 1861. Lowe was not keeping orders so he resigned from balloon corps on May 8, 1861. By August 1861 the corps disbanded. Lowe also designed an aircraft carrier that was used to transport hot air balloons and allow them to be used in areas closer to the battles. They would launch…

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# Authors, Reviews, Trolls and the fight goes on!- Part 2

Our previous blog on "Reviews" triggered a great conversation. In this, the second blog on the subject, we offer authors some thoughts on dealing with negative reviews. I hope you will join us again and share your thoughts and experiences- 1. Take negative reviews into consideration. The reviewer just may be right! Well-¬written and thoughtful critical reviews can be helpful – painful, but helpful. Be open-minded. Listen. Read. Be willing to consider the opinion of others. In the end, you may still disagree but you may also gain some valuable learning. 2. Respond to fair-minded reviews. It is always nice to thank someone who takes the time to read and critique your book. You should do this even if you disagree with the review but be gracious, and NEVER enter into an emotional, heated discourse. No-one benefits and more times than not, it turns personal and ugly. 3. Consider reviewing books for other authors. This is the best way to create the "word of mouth" buzz that all authors want. In turn, your reviews may encourage others to review your book. But always be objective and professional. Never gush or attack; both are equally amateurish. 4. Ignore the "trolls". Unfortunately,…

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Authors, Reviews, Trolls and the fight goes on!

Wow! It seems the entire literary community is on fire about reviews and alleged "troll" attacks. First, let me say that indieBRAG does not depend on reviews for several very good reasons. A well-written review by a reviewer who genuinely cares about books is a valuable source of information – favorable or not. However, there are more than a few people out there who use this venue just to be mean and disagreeable. Others try to show their higher level "intellect" by picking any book apart. They believe that to critique means simply to find fault. As evidence of this I should note that even the universally acclaimed book, To Kill A Mockingbird, has received one star reviews! BLOG #1 We will be offering some information about writing a respectful and responsible review. BLOG #2 We will also be offering authors some advice and, hopefully, help in dealing with negative reviews. So here we go, be sure to join the conversation- Reviewers first- Our B.R.A.G. interviewer and a book reviewer from www.layeredpages.com Stephanie Moore: The most important thing to do when reviewing is to read the book first of course. You must understand what you are reading in order to…

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