Create If Writing

This is a question I hear and get a lot: Why isn't my book selling? In this post, we'll dive into a simple checklist to help you look at why your book isn't selling and how you can get those sales moving.

Maybe you've been there. 

You put in the hard work and wrote a book. You carefully picked a cover and wrote a blurb and did all the things to push your baby book into the world. 

And... crickets. Or, at least, not the sales you hoped for. 

Let's look at some very simple reasons your book might not be selling by way of a checklist. Ready? 

Get the full show notes here: http://createifwriting.com/194

When you're publishing your books, you have a big choice to make: Should you publish your book exclusively with Amazon or put your book up on all the retailers? We'll break down the options in this post to help you make the right choice for yourself. 

Are you wide? Or exclusive? 

Uh, I'm ... unsure? 

These terms (wide and exclusive) are often thrown about in author groups, and I get asked about them a lot. Since I have books published that are exclusive to Amazon and ones that are available on wide retailers, I thought I could give an inside look at what these two choices mean, and why you might choose one over the other. 

READ THE FULL POST AT http://createifwriting.com/193

I've talked before about book launches and share a simple book launch framework. But I wanted to focus here on the tale of two launches: the big, splashy book launch and the low-key, chill book launch.

But wait, isn't there just one way to launch a book? Go big or go home?

No. I'm not really into one-size-fits-all for most things, and book launching is one of them. I'm going to go over some reasons why you might choose one over the other and end with some encouragement no matter which launch plan you choose.

Read more at http://createifwriting.com/192

We all have different ways of writing and planning. Learn to embrace what works for you! Pick up a free guide to help you plan: http://createifwriting.com/novelplanning

In a recent post, Nate Hoffelder shared four mistakes you might be making with your book covers. Because book covers are so important, I wanted to create a companion post on how to choose the right cover and give some recommendations. 

Why do we need to are about book covers? We're writers!

Right. But if you want people to READ your words, you need to get them in the door. The book is the MAIN way to get them in the door. The blurb, cover, ads, and other things factor in, BUT the cover is the very first thing. 

Did you know that humans process visual information in thirteen milliseconds? That's less than a blink of an eye. 

So, as we dive deeper into book covers, I want you to be thinking of your book cover in a blink. 

Read the full episode: http://createifwriting.com/190

This post is going to dive into how to get the most out of free book promotions or 99-cent sales (which will include KDP countdown deals). You'll walk away with a better idea of the strategy behind these kinds of promotions.

Two of the tools used frequently by authors are free book promotions or 99-cent sales. If you're exclusive to Kindle by being in their Kindle Select program, you'll have a free book promotion or a Kindle Countdown deal per each enrollment period. (The enrollment period is 90 days.) If you're NOT inside KDP Select, you can manually change prices or use a promotion tool from within your dashboard. 

But just making a book free or running a sale is NOT ENOUGH. There are so many free books and books on sale in the various retailers that you really need to have a strategy behind making this choice and a promotional plan in place. 

For the full episode's show notes, go to: http://createifwriting.com/189

In this post I'm going to talk about how to keep consistent book sales over time. You might also want to look at my post, Sustaining Your Book Sales... and Yourself, as well as my latest episode about getting a Bookbub ad, which will tie into this information. 

So ... you've written a book. Congratulations! For real. It's a big undertaking, and you should be proud of yourself. 

Then you launch the book--time for more celebration! (And if you need a simple launch plan, check out my post on a Simple Launch Framework.) Launching really is hard work. Definitely something to feel good about. 

And then comes the sales slump. 

Or maybe your launch didn't go BOOM. It just quietly happened ... with a handful of sales to show for it. 

How in the world do you sell books and then keep sustaining those book sales over time? Because the reality is this: if you don't promote, your books will continue to fall in the rankings until they're just lost in the Amazon (or whatever retailer) store. Let's talk about how to combat that. 

For the full episode show notes, visit: http://createifwriting.com/188

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I recently secured my first BookBub Featured Deal! There are a few options with BookBub--ads, new release featured deals, preorder alerts, and featured deals. Featured deals must be applied for and are the most expensive and most effective--or at least, they have been in the past. Are they still effective? Let's take a look!

Applying for a BookBub Featured Deal can feel sometimes like an exercise in futility. And frustration. Especially when you see some of the books that DO get chosen. Books that might have fewer reviews, weird or bad covers, or stinky blurbs.

After feeling the frustration and mostly forgetting to apply, I applied for book 1 and book 2 of my beach series. I got one rejection (for book 1) and one acceptance (book 2)! I'm going to break down the expenses, what else I did, and how the numbers played out.

For the full show notes, go to http://CreateIfWriting.com/187!

Formatting your book -- sounds boring, right? Turns out there are a lot of things to know when it comes to formatting your ebook and print book. This post will break down what you need to know!

Formatting doesn't have to be scary, complicated, or expensive! So, let's find out what you need to know. 

Formatting might sound boring. But it's super important and can be very simple. Let's dive into the whys and hows. 

First of all, formatting is usually the last thing you're doing, after your book has been edited or proofread. If you're sending ARC copies to a team of reviewers, you might need to format before this stage in order to send to them in a format they can read on an ereader. (Read more on beta and ARC readers.)

Formatting stresses us out, but it doesn't have to. So... what really matters? Ultimately, reader experience is king. Your main goal with formatting is to keep your readers centered in the story. The end. Readers want simple. Not distracting. Not fancy.

Don't think it has to be more than simple. Our goal should be to keep our readers in the story. Weird formatting or mistakes can pull the readers out and distract them from being lost in the fictional dream. Or, in the case of nonfiction, it might pull them out and undermine your authority.

Wherever you write your book (Word, Scrivener, Google Docs), you need to be able to export it into a mobi file for amazon and an epub file for the other retailers. There are lots of ways to get a finished product. 

• If you WANT to get fancy (for some genres, like epic fantasy, this might be more fitting), I'd recommend Bookly Style for custom images for chapter headings and more. 

Read the whole show notes at http://createifwriting.com/186 

I wanted to do a quick post talking about the two big ads platforms most authors use: Facebook and Amazon ads. There are some major differences between them, and it takes some work to figure them out. This is by no means a big overview, but a few key differences as well as some things they have in common. 

A lot of people will debate the merits between one and the other. Usually people don't champion both, but find one that works for them and then use that. For me, that's mostly Facebook ads, though I'm starting to see some traction with both.

If you give Facebook a budget of $100 a day, Facebook will spend that. If you give Amazon a budget of $100 a day, your ad may or may not get served at all. 

On Facebook, when you say you want them to spend an amount per day, they believe you. Amazon ads are really different in how they're set up and what that budget means. If you're setting a higher cost per click on Amazon ads, you might spend that. I know people who set up ads and accidentally put a decimal in the wrong place, spending a LOT of money very quickly. 

Be really careful when you're setting up BOTH kinds of ads, knowing that you could be really losing a lot of money if you're treating those daily budgets the same on both platforms. 

Read the rest of the show notes here- http://createifwriting.com/185