Ok, for those of you just dropping in, I want to mention that this post is part of a little series where I’m talking about things I did that helped me make it from a complete unknown to the Kindle top 1000 within 8 weeks of self-releasing my first novel, Hush Money. The first post is…here.
You know, I think I mostly covered the “friends” angle yesterday when I talked about social media. So for review, we’re talking about sphere’s of influence. I’m not the most motivated blogger, nor am I great at developing a large following on social media sites. But I have friends who are good at these things, who maintain quality networks with followers who trust them. And because my friends believe in my work, they’ve mentioned my book to their friends, who sometimes even mention the book to their friends. So it doesn’t HAVE to be about who has the most followers. Sometimes you can just be yourself, a good writer and good person, and that will get things going.
Moving on to cross-promotion. This is largely for indie ebooks. While at the 70% rate on Amazon, there’s a little bit of fee involved in how long your book is, for the most part, you can put in as much extra material at the back of your ebook as you want. When someone finishes the ebook version of Hush Money, they can go on to read excerpts from two other indie authors in my genre whose work I recommend: Imogen Rose and Stacey Wallace Benefiel. In addition, I have promo for some other indie authors I like in a related genre. (I have promo, not excerpts, because these friends write adult PNR and I write YA. If it were the other way around, I’d excerpt away.) I also have informational blurbs for all these favorite authors at the back of my print version, and I have a line at the end of my Amazon product description, recommending these authors.
In exchange, I have the beginning of Hush Money at the end of Portal and Glimpse, and I have a line of pimpage in the product description of Glimpse and Forsaken By Shadow.
Does it work? Check out “Customers who bought this item also bought…” on those pages. And look at this category list that Portal and Hush Money hang out on. We’re often very close together, sometimes with no books between us.
A lot of the time, when you read a book, you want more of the same. Right freakin’ now. When a teen paranormal book junkie finishes Portal or Glimpse, they can go right on reading the beginning of Hush Money, without even getting up. Until they get to the end of the excerpt and are forced to buy it because they’re a junkie and they’re hooked on another book already. And yay!ebooks again for giving them instant gratification on that.
So how do you get yourself in someone’s back matter? Um, carefully? How did I ever get the nards to approach two authors I didn’t know about doing this is a better question, but maybe not as important and I still don’t know that anyway. While it’s cool to do this while you’re in the final stages of getting your stuff ready to go, you can do this at any time. Find those books that are most similar to yours. You’re looking for books that will be enjoyed by the same reader. Portal, Glimpse, and Hush Money all have teen characters, supernatural elements, and romance. (And they’re all vampire-free, but that’s more by coincidence than design.) They’re all books that could be enjoyed by the “Twilight crowd.”
I only chose books I had read all the way through, books I enjoyed and believe in. Books I feel good recommending to the people who are paying my author salary. And that’s in terms of quality, but also in terms of genre.
I cold-contacted both of these authors before Hush Money was released. I had put up an excerpt on my site, just for this purpose, and linked them to where they could start reading. That way, I wasn’t a stranger trying to send them an attachment, and they could check out the quality of my writing and decide if they wanted to spend more time on me. In the email, I was clear about what I wanted: I would include excerpts of their books at the back of my ebook, and they would do the same for me in exchange. I was polite, and business-like. I didn’t wheedle, pressure, or sales pitch. I left it open to them to contact me if they were interesting in reading the full manuscript, and I was clear that I would completely understand if this offer wasn’t for them.
And I meant that.
Both authors were completely gracious and enthusiastic about the idea, and I’m sure we’ve all benefitted.
When looking for books, beyond looking for books similar to yours, I would also recommend not looking at the top of the charts. Notice that, even though “Twilight fans” is in my head as an audience, I did not ask to trade with Amanda Hocking. Yes, I would love to ride that comet, but I also wouldn’t have asked Stephanie Meyer if she were an indie. That just seems a little too “poor relation,” if you see what I’m saying. Amanda was already so far ahead of me. (Imogen was farther ahead than uneducated me realized at the time, but lucky for me she’s awesome and nice to me!)
Once you find these authors, consider yourselves a team. You already believe in their work. Promote each other. Do not keep score as far as who’s got a line in their description and who doesn’t, whether you’re in both their Smashwords AND Kindle editions, etc. Do EVERYTHING you can to help your teammates succeed. Be a friend.
Steps for Cross-Promotion:
- Find authors who write books like yours, those which will appeal to the same readers.
- Read the books and make sure you can recommend them without reserve.
- Approach authors in a no-pressure, business-like manner.
- Do what you can to support your indie team, don’t keep score– bad karma
- If you approach an author who is not interested, be cool. If you can’t, don’t do this.
I was going to talk about pricing in this post, but it went on longer than I thought it would, as things always do, and why am I surprised by this? We’ll do pricing next time. Thanks for stopping by.
