How To Get An Agent For My Book – Part One: The Submission Letter
Thousands of writers submit their books to literary agents every year, but only very few are chosen. Why is this, and how can you give yourself the best chance?
Part One: The Submission Letter
Literary Agents are jumpy as all hell. Slip up on one aspect of your submission and you’re written off forever. Sounds dramatic, but it’s true. Agents are like this because they get literally hundreds of crappy submissions every week. They can only sign one or two people a year. That is why you must follow their submission guidelines to the letter because they will probably only […]
How To Rank Higher on Amazon Without Selling Books
Seems like a dream, doesn’t it? Rank highly on Amazon, but sell no copies of your book? This very simple method of moving your book into a much more prominent position with minimal effort is the perfect way to get seen and sold.
Drowning in your Category
So why is it your book has sold a few copies, and yet you are still in the weeds on Amazon in your category? Simply, there are too many books in your category to ever be seen. The most full categories in Amazon are typically Science Fiction and Fantasy and Romance, and all […]
How To Win A Book Contest – 7 Pitfalls To Avoid
This year’s SPR Awards has thrown up some points that we’d like to share with you to help you avoid the pitfalls when entering your book for a contest. You can take a look at the entrants here.
1. Book Covers
Time and time again we’ve said it, and time and time again, authors don’t listen. If you are selling a book, it needs to have a professional finish. If we are staking a reputation on a book by choosing it as a winner, it must have a well-designed book cover. That probably means not using a beloved drawing or […]
All About Book Reviews and Amazon – A Quick Guide and Rules
What reviews are allowed on Amazon?
There’s been some panic in the self-publishing streets about reviews being removed from Amazon and who is going to get sued for their reviews – and a lot of outrage blogging about Evil Amazon. Here’s a quick guide to why you should stop worrying too much and start understanding the different types of book reviews a little better.
There are three kinds of reviews on Amazon:
1. Customer Reviews
These are the reviews that Amazon is exercising their right, as a private company remember, to investigate more closely. What Amazon is trying to achieve […]
Self-Publishing Romance – Six Steps To Writing About Love
Six tips on how the best self-published romance writers make it work.
1. Niche it up.
The best romance books are those with a niche, that is, they have a definable sub-genre on Amazon. For instance, cowboy meets farm girl, billionaire meets poor girl, jazz singer meets music student, antiques dealer meets woman with an old mansion. You can also try going with a theme, such as clean and wholesome, time travel, cowboys, or even aliens… look at indie author Linda Cousine’s “middle-aged hottie” niche. It’s menopausal romance in her ‘wit lit ‘style!
2. Make your characters strong and
[…]How To Get Honest Book Reviews in 2020
Here are four simple methods to get honest book reviews in 2020. Authors are always looking for new ways to get reviews for their book, but most want an honest opinion. Attracting readers to buy your book is difficult enough, but getting them to leave a review is even harder.
Use a reader mailing list service. There are only two main services you can rely upon that result in Amazon Verified Customer Reviews (proof the reader actually bought the book) and sales within Amazon’s Review Guidelines. Both services have huge mailing lists of readers who buy, read, and review books. […]
How to Optimize Your Book’s Sales Page on Amazon
Your Amazon product page is your book’s final sales page. It is the page that will ultimately dictate which browsers become readers. That means, you need to make it as inviting as possible–you want to optimize your page and draw in more sales and ‘one-click buys.’ After all, authors are always looking to level up their book marketing strategy.
Luckily, Amazon does a lot of the technical work for you. If you were to create a sales page on your website, you’d have to do all the positioning and testing to see what works. When you sell on Amazon, […]