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Interview

Jennifer Lancaster p2

Some platforms and websites worth checking out to help marketing your self-published book...

Authorcentral.amazon.com allows you to fill out an author page with your profile. You should include links to social media accounts, like Twitter.
Smashwords is an ebook publishing and distribution platform used by Ms Lancaster. See smashwords.com .
Amazon also had a tool to recommend ebook prices. She said from about 2.99 to 6.95 is best, as there was a 70 per cent royalty paid to authors if their books fell within that range.
Goodreads was a good way to market books. It’s a site owned by Amazon where people go to find books, and read ratings and reviews and ask questions.
You had to have a marketing plan. What tactics will you do, and for how long. Three months before your book launch you had to start Facebooking, and instagramming and start your own blog. The blog had to have useful facts. It couldn’t just be about what you were doing that day, for example. It could be about something related to the general topic of your book.
You should research keywords that people use to follow certain topics. Find similar books as yours and see what categories they use. That way your book or website might come up in their search as well.
Ask for reader feedback on your book. Get their views on cover design, book title. Give them a couple of choices. Ms Lancaster said it was good to get the readers involved in your creation.
You can speak at industry expos, which are author expos, but these were very competitive. Everyone is trying to sell a book.
A media sheet was important. These are to give facts about you and your book, and to help prevent mistakes in interviews and stories. The media sheet includes the book title, the front cover, a photo of the author, a short description of the book, an ISBN which is a number that every book has, a publisher’s imprint or name, a biography of the author, an excerpt from the book, or a story idea, some selling points of the book, and the on sale date. You can put this in an email to news outlets and bloggers.

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