Independent author Gail Meath writes well-researched historical romances. She has summarised her first year as a self-published author in some detail, with plenty of practical tips and advice, and has kindly allowed us to post her thoughts below.
My First Year Self-Publishing:
All or most of these sites are probably familiar to authors, but my purpose is to share my experiences and, in part, to give great credit to some sites that have either been good promotional sites or simply because their customer service was so outstanding, I wanted to pay tribute to them for helping me in my self-publishing endeavor this past year.
(I compiled the following list from my own experiences during my first year of self-publishing. Everything listed should not in any way be misconstrued as advice, suggestions or any type of guidance to other authors. I am a new author, not a best-seller or veteran, and these are my opinions only.)
Goodreads:
A great place for both readers and authors. Actually, it is an excellent place for authors!!! My definition of this site, “The best place ever where Indy authors come together to help one another.”...through endless groups and discussions. There are also some great author blogs that help you promote your books even more. And, of course, a lot of fantastic readers!!
Thank goodness I found Goodreads even before I started publishing. I won’t go on as most/all authors know about the site, but I can’t believe how everyone has been so wonderfully helpful and I’m so grateful to all!
A couple things to remember:
Groups have Rules! Yes, I shamefully admit that I’m guilty of posting a link where I wasn’t supposed to (oops).
Don’t contact readers directly to promote your book.
Try not to change your book covers too much....you cannot get rid of the old ones!!
Sometimes, scammers infiltrate Goodreads, so beware. There is a ‘flag’ option for inappropriate posts (needed that once the past year).
I’m sure their giveaway promotions are great. The cost has been out of my reach.
AllAuthor.com: Free to upload books
I cannot say enough nice things about AllAuthor.com. First, it is an extremely professional promotional website for authors that includes creating your own marketing mockups of your books: even GIFs, if you’re premium, which is about $40, I think, for four months. Uploading and updating a book is a breeze, the author page is great with tabs for awards, reviews, etc. And free. They have several different promotional packages that are very reasonably priced and worth the cost.
While the site is run by a ‘Team AllAuthor’, I have only had contact with Mady Joshi, Business Development Head. He is fantastic to work with, answers all your questions, sends unique book mockups every week for premium and they have instagram and Facebook accounts that you can join for additional promotion opportunities. He is exceptional. If I were rating these sites, AllAuthor would by far surpass all others.
VoraciousReadersOnly.com: Free Intro/$20 Evergreen Program
This is a great site if you’re looking for an inexpensive way to reach new readers and gather some reviews...if you’re willing to give away books. For me, I limited my book giveaways and received more reviews from their FREE intro offer rather than their $20/month Evergreen program. They send review reminders to readers who receive your book, but during the six-week program, I received very few. Much more during their intro.
But Larry is wonderful to work with. He’s the man behind-the-scenes and he will answer all your questions quickly and personally. I was involved in this when I first started publishing and I was able to compile a nice start-up mailing list. I grew tired of giving books away, but it was a nice place to start
ReaderFavorite.com: Free to upload books and request reviews
I do love this site, too, although I believe that their ‘free’ reviews come few and far between. For $59 you can receive a professional editorial review, which is what I believe they hold out for. They do offer paid promos and contests...one of my books won their 2020 western, so that may explain why I’m partial to them.
But, despite that, I had a book that I worried wasn’t as good as my others and contacted them to see if I could pay for a review and write a message to the reviewer beforehand asking them for a brutally honest review so I could determine whether to publish the book or not. One of their reps instantly contacted me. He understood my dilemma and was willing to ask their top reviewer to look at it, knowing the person would be, well, brutally honest.
To me, he went above and beyond my expectations, so I highly recommend this site to anyone interested in what they have to offer. I don’t believe there is anything better than having internal people/reps who are willing to help authors in any way they can.
Bookbub.com: Free to upload books
Another very professional site and very easy to upload books with a nice author page. They also offer different promotion opportunities, from reasonable to costly. I have two complaints.
To change a book cover, description, etc., you need to send them a note then wait until the change takes place. At least a few days – AllAuthor, it is instant.
Also, I set up a five-day-promotion for one of my books and used their ad template, rather than uploading my own. My promotion began and within less than 6 hours, I received an email from them saying that I should halt my ad and change it as there hadn’t been any ‘clicks’ to it. Huh. I tried uploading my own ad template, but it kept getting rejected. I gave up.
I do know that Bookbub is supposedly a great place to market books. Unfortunately, I am one of the few where it was not.
Amazon KDP/AuthorCentral:
Like Goodreads and Facebook, all/most authors are already using these sites so there isn’t a whole lot more for me to add. I use Kindle Create to upload books to Amazon Kindle and it’s a breeze, including paperback. I had changed some book covers and a month later, I ordered author paperback copies so I could have a copy of the new cover and I received the old cover copy. I contacted them and their rep was so very helpful. They tossed the leftover old cover paperbacks and assured me that only the new ones would be sent in the future. They were great.
I do like Author Central’s new ‘author page’ setup. They’ve been very helpful to me a couple of times. Lately, I keep trying to bold the first line of my book descriptions and once that’s done, their fine for a while, then bold disappears again. I need to contact them about that, but otherwise, I have enjoyed working with them.
Draft2Digital.com/Books2Read.com: Free marketplace for books
Only recently I discovered these sites. They go hand-in-hand...Draft2Digital to upload books, Books2Read to connect to different retailers. It was extremely easy to upload my books and kind of fun to watch all the retailers accumulating.
I did have a little trouble (surprise!) after customizing my UBL (universal link that gives buyers a snapshot of all retailers/costs for your books), I ended up with 2 UBLs each. Their rep was super helpful, corrected the problem, walked me through each step and sent me a cool easy reference page of instructions. I love great customer service people.
I haven’t been on this long enough to say much else, but I was so very impressed by them.
Smashwords.com: Free marketplace for books
I have a few books on this site. Uploading books is easy, until it comes to being approved for the premium version. This was pretty time-consuming and confusing, at least for me. I struggled a ton with the Table of Contents. You can download a huge file of instructions, but I finally contacted them. One of their reps responded and was very helpful...apparently, there were hidden bookmarks in the Table of Contents and I finally, after a great deal of time, was able to fix that.
They have a nice reporting system. And promotional opportunities at a reasonable cost.
Facebook:
Well, this one is universally known, so I cannot add much about it. They do offer reasonable promotions where you determine the cost and choose targe audience. I also belong to several other FB groups that focus on my genre of books and those are great to meet other authors and promote your books to readers.
Pinterest.com: Free to join and post
I use Pinterest for book specials/promos only. You can set the amount you’re willing to spend and choose your target audience. I usually do a $10-20 ad for a few days. I don’t have a huge following there, but I know I have sold several books every time I advertise there.
Alignable.com: Free to join - Local business contacts
I believe this is available nationally, I’m not sure. It is a sort of local business yellow-pages, although you have your own ‘page’ and can earn other business’ recommendations. I’ve been using to connect with people in my area. I’ve made a lot of friends there and I post my book promotions for free under ‘events’. They also offer a paid promo through their weekly newsletter. It’s an additional site that doesn’t consume a lot of time.
RWA.com: Contests & Membership - For Romance Authors Only
I was first introduced to RWA through entering one of my books into their 2020 contest. I was not a member and the cost for me was $35 to enter. After I won for the historical genre, I joined the group. The cost was $124/year (I hated to spend the money, but...I was so thrilled to have won! I received a really cool plaque and supposedly, I will be invited to an awards ceremony in FL next spring.)
This is a huge group and for a more social romance author, it’s probably worth the cost. They do send out a booklet with a lot of great writing information, but it does seem to me as though they spend way more time deciding upon/voting for new admin people, than anything else. And all their conferences, contests, etc., cost additional money rather than being included in the membership fee. Which I kind of resent.
BookSirens.com:
In this site, you request approval of your book before any cost passes to them. All I can say is, they have quickly rejected all my books without any reason or explanation or even an email informing of the rejection. I needed to go back onto the sight to find out, so I gave up on them. Honestly, I would have thought at least one of my books deserved inclusion. But that’s me and obviously not. I would not rule them out until you try!
There are sites like Netgalley ($$ over my budget) and Bookviral (over $200), and several others, that are too expensive for me to even consider their promotions. They are probably super sites for authors, but I cannot afford the cost.
Several ‘smaller’ sites that offer Twitter-only to promote:
I have not had any luck with these, but perhaps other authors have. I didn’t want to post specific sites here, but I have been, shall I say, suckered into paying $20-50 for a few of these in the past with zero return. Again, other authors may have had better luck.