A masterfully written vision and song about the end of time…
Paul Jameson delivers his unique writing style to tell a story laid out much like a song about the end of time. The language and style immediately pulls you in with its classic but modern feel over the many chapters and short verses that keep the pages turning.
Pace and rhythm take centre stage in the seemingly apocalyptic world this story takes place in. We see the events from the view of ‘Maggot’ who is just a boy while chaos unfolds. Just what does the end look like? The author does a fantastic job of capturing this demise through description and visionary language that stirs the imagination by walking readers to the door but we are then given room to fill in the rest – this is story telling in its finest form and alongside that unique style makes for a stand-out reading experience.
“The Monsters, their Respectable, the Commons, all drown in the storm that comes…”
While there are some darker tones there are also brighter moments because this journey is seen through the eyes of a boy who can perhaps see past that darkness. Even when there is Plague, War, Famine and Death there is still magic to be found and perhaps this is something adults forget. No matter what bad is happening there is always hope and ultimately there is some light to be found somewhere. Life of Maggot is a book I highly recommend and served as a wonderful reminder of how awesome reading can be.
5 Stars – Beautifully written and hands down one of the best books I have read in a long time.
Every day I see hundreds of authors on social media dropping the links to their works. Some even blindly drop them on other users posts without asking or even context. First off, no bad feelings to anyone who does drop links, sometimes it can be effective to generate sales but I have ten other things to try instead.
Based upon observations and experience over time here are 10 ways to sell a book without dropping the link on social media…
1. Create and share a book banner
You’ll find most of the methods on this list to be visual because visual is what a lot of marketing on the internet is based upon and it is very effective. While scrolling the various social media feeds every so often something does grab our interest and it is normally visual.
While people do judge a book by its cover, an opportunity to capitalise on that concept further is by using a book banner. In terms of scope, the sky is the limit and I would say any book banner that heightens the theme or visual-ness of a book cover is an effective way to grab attention on social media.
These days and with the world of online picture editing being easily accessible, anyone can put together an effective book banner. I’ve created most of mine through pixlr but I have even used Fiverr and paid for them like the one below. From experience, book banners do work for selling books especially if it is clear enough where to find that book.
Top Tip: If your book is easy enough to find, all you really need is to tell people where it is – that is what the majority of this list is based upon. So make it easy for potential readers, have a permanent link in your profile/bio or even encourage folks to search for it on Amazon. These days and on many social media platforms the algorithms tend to not push links as hard. If I can find a book after seeing an effective book banner, I’ll probably be inclined to buy it.
2. Share a Recent Review
There are so many reasons why sharing a review will positively contribute towards selling your work. First of all I would make sure it is a positive review and again the sky is the limit. You could quote that review in a simple tweet or Facebook status, you could even put it on your own book banner and share it on Instagram. As you can see from my billboard below I received a bunch of reviews just after release of ‘CCC’ and put them all together. Then I shared it across multiple platforms. You’ll see I even included each reviewers work because for this case they were all authors and so I was more than happy to plug their works also.
Top Tip: Quoting reviews and even giving a shout-out to the reviewer will get some positive attention – others might feel inclined to read and review your work if you are sharing their reviews in front of a social media audience.
3. Share a Screenshot of an Excerpt
While book covers and banners are awesome, sometimes a reader wants to actually read something, so how about a screenshot of an excerpt. A few paragraphs of a scene or even the introduction can fit into a screenshot sized picture and it makes for something different to share – variety is key when it comes to promoting a book. Because social media is plugged in to so many people scrolling you never know who could discover it, maybe your next reader.
4. Share a Selfie of Your Book
Those who know me will know that book selfies do sell books and this is a concept that I kind of accidentally discovered after releasing my debut novel ‘Open Evening’ some years ago. One of my readers shared a selfie and then someone else did until folks were doing it everywhere. Pets were even included!
5. Create a Simple Trailer
It may take a little more effort than a book banner but I consider a trailer to be a moving and perhaps even talking version of a book banner. I’ve created some simple but very effective trailers over the years using mainly free to download software. Here’s a recent one that I did for hopefully next years release.
6. Talk about your Books…
It might feel like your are just shouting into the empty void much of the time on social media but if you keep talking eventually somebody will answer. Talking about your works is a highly effective way to inform readers that they exist and the inputs for this are many. From putting together a thread on twitter to even discussing what inspired your works on a blog, sometimes a little extra information goes a long way to selling a book. To me, there is the blurb and then there’s what the actual story is about – confide in your social media following and they might be interested in your words.
Just recently I put out several twitter threads over the space of a week that contained fun facts about each of my works. I sold a copy of each book after – a good job done.
Every time I share my book promo results on this blog someone buys the book(s) mentioned. Just name dropping them will sometimes drive interest and as long as they are findable, people will buy them. Just last week and the day before the launch of my latest book I wrote a rallying blog post and it resulted in multiple pre-orders. Get talking authors.
7. Share your Statistics
While being an author can be solitary experience you are not alone and a great way to bridge that gap is to share your results. Personally I find comfort in knowing that other authors are in the same boat as me and it is also inspiring to see when an author does well. That’s why I believe it is important to share your statistics sometimes. Authors who are doing well or even those who aren’t will only really benefit from sharing – someone will see your progress or struggle and may decide to lend a hand.
8. Share a Relatable Meme/Something with Common Interest
Those who did tune in to my previous book release results post will know that sharing content with common interest is an effective way to talk about your work and sell it without actually mentioning it that much. So what do I mean? Well, sharing something that is within the same interest as your book will drive interest towards it like a meme or even a story about something in the same genre.
9. Supporting Others
Ah, the pillar that holds up everything for me. You’ll even find the inner message to my recently released self-help authoring and blogging book is to support others because:
Supporting others feels good and makes the writing industry better for everyone.
Supporting others is the best way to earn trust.
Personally you can only earn trust with honesty, if you are dishonest even if you appear to be helping others you will eventually get found out. Trust is what you need for readers to invest in you.
I have learned over many years that supporting others will eventually support you in some capacity. This is a long game but mostly with all the things I do to support others, I hardly have time to post my own book link anymore.
But what can you do to support others?
Buy and review an authors book.
Retweet, like, follow and support a fellow author or anyone else on the tweet machine.
Engage in conversation on social media.
Share your experiences so others can learn.
Tell your friends about this blog post…
The list goes on…
10. Make an Author Video
Even though it might take some effort, making a video starring you is great way to promote yourself and that book of yours. Over the years I have kept my appearances to the minimum, in fact, I have only appeared on video once on Twitter and it was to celebrate reaching 10,000 followers. You can see that here.
From reading a book excerpt to just saying thank you, appearing in a video might feel daunting but with a few practice runs you’ll do great and appearing in person is a great way for people to connect with you. Be sure to mention that book of yours while you are on video.
Concluding Thoughts
All you really need to sell books on social media is to create an easy way for potential readers to find it after they know it exists.
The ‘exists’ part is doing all of the above to get the book in front of as many eyes as possible. While I am not totally against the idea of sharing links on social media I do find that they tend to get less engagement than anything else. There is a time and a place to share your link but just dropping it on someone else’s post without asking is not the way and also constantly dropping links doesn’t look particularly social on social media. On Twitter you’ll see a self promo post nearly every day, sometimes I’ll drop my link and sometimes I’ll just drop a banner instead.
The best way to sell books on social media is to find a way to stand out, do what others aren’t doing. While it may seem like everyone is dropping their links, do something different, it will work eventually.
Hopefully this post was helpful, if it was, be sure to share it on your social media feeds, whether or not you include the link, that’s up to you!
Further Reading/Listening
You can find the sequel to this post over on my Patreon which contains 15 ways to sell books online!
If you did enjoy this post and found it useful you might be interested in my Twitter Coaching Sessionswhich lays out how I regularly sell books using the platform whilst also connecting with thousands of awesome people. Sessions 1 and 2 are free to listen to and can be found right here.
Be sure to check out my self-help guide book for authors and bloggers which is available now. There are plenty of tips and guides designed to help a fellow creative.
Slowly I’m coming out of thunder dome. That’s the phrase I use to describe what has been the most intense three month period I’ve ever known as an indie author. From having my book thrust into the hands of 10,000 readers in one day to the arduous road of just releasing another one. Between that I travelled an immense but taxing journey to reach 10,000 tweet machine followers. All of this has taken a mental and physical toll but as I said I’m on my way out of that place. Pressure valves have been released and a quieter time has appeared. I’m now going to do what I have needed to do for a while; I’m going to live in the real world.
For everything awesome I have achieved recently, I feel like an immense amount of pressure has been lifted internally. The fight for the attention of others on social media is something that has diminished, no longer do I have to struggle because now I have an audience who are loyal and are there for me. While having an amazing audience is great, that doesn’t mean that I’ll take it for granted, I just don’t need to perform miracles to please everyone anymore. Yes, the pressure is off but the responsibility remains, these shoulders have taken on a lot recently and they will continue to carry anything else that may present itself. Just now, it is on my terms and my terms alone. My audience have made me and I’ll be doing everything I can to repay that.
My motivation to support others remains and is the strongest pillar that holds everything else up. While I will be backing off for a short time, you can still expect this machine to keep turning but now I’m heading back into the real world!
To those who have supported my recent book release, thank you. You have made it what I hope will be my most successful release ever with just a few more sales!
Okay, this isn’t my first rodeo in releasing books and over the years I’ve tried to keep my expectations grounded but I have concluded that releasing a new book as an indie author in the social media age no matter how high your following, is like trying to draw blood from a stone… Great start right? But it gets better below…
Even with that engaged and loyal following it just seems we are fighting against the elements. The elements being the social media platforms who only push certain posts – that’s the true competition here, overcoming the algorithms to simply get the message across. In order to have a successful book launch – there are many inputs but above all you need to grind out sales in anyway reasonably possible. Remember the ‘reasonable’ part, we can only do so much that is regarded as sensible to try and sell.
This feature length post will dive into everything I did to overcome the algorithms and fight back with the methods I used to firstly promote that fact I had a book coming, then promote the pre-order and then the actual release for my 7th indie published book – a guide book about authoring and blogging. My hope is that a fellow author can take something from this to have a better or at least successful launch.
1. Initial Promotion
To me, the promotion of a book should begin as soon as an author begins writing. This has several inputs but the most important thing you can do is talk about the coming project via social media at the earliest possible moment. Even if you have just started drafting, most of the time us writer folk will know if we have a project that will become a book.
Of course this is also at your own discretion, perhaps sharing the full plot and main character arcs might be overkill and some authors won’t even share the title in fear of plagiarism which is okay. Share what feels comfortable to you. Use a placeholder title, hell, this time I even put together a mock up book cover. My advice would be to start slow, on social media, variety is key, so every now and then drop a hint that you have a book coming.
Common Interest
If you have a common interest with the book you are writing then perhaps think about sharing content that is related to it and not directly your book – writing a book about witches and vampires? Try sharing interesting stuff about that on social media while relating it to your work – maybe a few vampire memes or something fun. For me and back in August I started drafting my self-help guide book for authors and bloggers. This came from a blog post I wrote reflecting about blogging and I have always shared my book promotion results so I had a common interest because the project was going to contain blog advice and book promotion results. From August 2020 all the way up to April 2021 I shared my book promotion results, social media guides and every other type of resource I could – all of them relate to my book and lots of folks read them. You can find most of them over in the resources section via the menu above.
Quite early on I also envisioned a release date that would be in April/May and so then I booked my awesome cover artist for then. Now all I had to do was write the damn thing…
Ramp Up Social Media Presence
From August all the way to May I spent way more time on social media and specifically Twitter which is now my #1 platform. My motivations in writing kind of evolved during this time, I was already supporting fellow authors with reviews but now I wanted to go further and help them more by sharing my experiences from over the years. My belief now is that helping the writing industry will eventually help me in some way but if not at least somebody has got something positive from my social media engagement. Sales is not something that drives me, it never has, writing and now helping others drives me.
By December 2020 I hit 5000 Twitter followers, by January it was 6000 and by the end of April I hit 9000. That will tell you how much of an opportunity Twitter is to gain a following and I was at least doing something right. All I did was show up every day and try to share something helpful. Just sharing links and being sales driven will not work long term. Connecting with people on a personal level will.
I was also continually blogging with all types of subjects from those book reviews to various guides I put together. Readers always want new content and so I was providing that. The title to my guide book is ‘Consistent Creative Content’ and to me that is what you need for success. I really did put in the work for this and for much of the time I treated it like a job but importantly it was fun.
Having Other Books Will Promote Newer Books
Some of you might be sick of hearing this but my top book promotion advice is to write more books. Having more books as an author will entice readers to at least check them out if they enjoyed something you’ve written.
Between August 2020 and May of 2021 I promoted my other works through advertising and price reductions, some were even free. I had 6 of them to promote and the more works you have the more things you can do to promote them.
My super hero comedy ‘The Teleporter’ was even advertised with BookBub via a Featured Deal in February 2021.
10,000 people downloaded the book in one day and soon after it made Amazon best seller. Reviews and ratings poured in and soon reached over 100. All of this stuff worked as good advertising for my coming guide book as I shared it on social media. I also shared how I got the Featured Deal. All of this helped the cause for promoting an upcoming author guide book. Persistence and mostly hard work to stay present on social media basically convinced BookBub to say yes among some other factors.
You can see from the picture above that my book made it as a best seller with less than 30 ratings. If my book can get that, then yours certainly can!
Gradual is Key
The key to this initial stage is to take it gradual, even with my tight schedule of initial draft in August to release in May, I wasn’t spending every hour of every day tweeting about it. I consider Book Releases a big time one off event every year like Christmas – the rest of my endeavours like blogging and even individual tweeting is like a weekend in that sense. That’s a weird analogy but the key to this is to spend more time being a person on social media as opposed to being sales focused. Sales will come naturally if you go about your day on social media with an aim to just connect while producing regular content – there are so many awesome people online who just want to talk – even as an introvert I value talking and many of them will also appreciate your content – whether it is blog stuff or just tweets. .
Gradual is also important to you can avoid the ‘b’ word – burnout, which is a real and sometimes a crushing thing. I try to stay busy and do the work – this way I tend to avoid even thinking about being tired. There is no finish line so I just keep going gradually. When I do get down about this deal I take a step back and stay off social media for a while. Even a few hours away and a nice walk will clear my head.
Nuts and Bolts
This post won’t really focus on the details of what goes into putting a book together. I’ll call them the nuts and bolts for the purpose of this one but this stuff is basically the editing, beta readers, cover artist organisation and release date decision which is all part of the initial section because you need it before the next section.
Initial Reveals
So let’s say you have a completed, edited and polished manuscript that is ready to be uploaded to Amazon or your book retailer of choice. You also have a professional looking cover. At this stage I firstly published a blurb reveal on this blog and then when the cover was ready I published a cover reveal but on this occasion I used that reveal to also launch the pre-order…
Top tip: Using a cover reveal to also promote a pre-order is good little surprise for potential reviewers and in my sense drove some early pre-orders. Consider it a two in one type of deal.
2. The Pre-Order
Some of you might be thinking, why a pre-order? Why not just launch the thing and be done? Who the in the hell actually has any demand as an indie author to get someone to pre-order my work? Well friends, that’s the opportunity a pre-order presents.
To me running a pre-order is a vital middle stage of a book’s release and you only really get one chance with a book release so why not do something before to ramp up further promotion – that’s my thinking anyway.
Amazon allow you to set up a pre-order for your ebook and this is something I strongly suggest you take advantage of. Why? Well firstly you’ll have an Amazon product page to share and play with – this is huge for driving traffic towards your work. Normally after 12 so hours of setting up the page will be live on Amazon, all you really need is the cover and blurb – you can upload the manuscript file later. Having an actual Amazon URL means you can also bring the book promotion advertisers into play. Consider running a pre-order as opening a door of opportunity.
The most vital reason why you should set up a pre order is because when somebody does order it, you’ll be able to climb the charts. After launching my pre-order late on a Friday night this gave me opportunity to start sharing it on the weekend and weekend social media pre-pandemic days is always busy so there’s plenty of opportunity. This is a break down of the days leading up to release I spent promoting the book.
Day One
Pre-order goes live on Amazon. Its a Saturday so I utilize the shameless self promo Saturday hashtag and put out a tweet. I attach the link to the cover reveal/pre-order launch to that tweet.
With Twitter in play and my blog (for the cover reveal), I now put out a post via Instagram and Facebook. Fly my pretties! Some of my followers are only present on one platform so this guarantees extra coverage.
By the end of day one, my book hit’s #1 in the hot new releases chart on Amazon UK for Writing Reference. As you can see there are a few big names around the top of this chart.
Total Pre-orders for Day One:
9 – an exceptional start!
Day Two
For the time this book is on pre-order I’m doing my best to try and share stuff about it with variety and not just sharing the link all day. As far as I am aware Twitter and Facebook do their best to bury your posts if they contain links – this is just from my experience anyway. Day 1 started really slow but picked up later on and became quite phenomenal. So by Day two, I made sure to share the chart above to my following which drove a few more pre orders. Again I spread the posting out to other platforms – Instagram and FB.
I then put together a book banner because book banners just add a little more to the visual appeal of a book. During this day I also replaced the placeholder book cover with the actual cover in all of my guides on this blog. My longer term plan was to share one of these posts every day (common interest).
In terms of tweeting, I did tweet about the book a few times but my focus was on sharing the free content on this blog and so on this day I shared my ‘Building an Algorithm of Trust‘ post about Twitter success.
Total Pre-orders for day Two:
2 increasing the total to 11 (this is such a grind but those numbers are great)
Day Three
The reason I say this is such a grind is because although I am putting in every effort not to directly share the link it is still hard and I’m not sure whether or not my stuff is visible. Are my followers seeing my posts? Is the algorithm stopping me? Just have to keep going.
So day three is here and it is a Monday which means business as usual. Twitter is a different landscape during the week, users are at work or just busy so trying to get the attention of them is harder. I share a guest post on this blog and dive into the tweeting. In my head more ideas are forming on how to share more of my self help book to entice more pre-orders. Because the Amazon product page is currently in pre-order nobody can preview the book so I decide to put the first few pages into a blog post excerpt and I’ll share it on day four. Of course this post will include links. I make a point of telling my following to expect the excerpt tomorrow – it is well received.
I spend my day tweeting and confiding in my followers. This post was my mood…
Total pre-orders for day three:
4 increasing the total to 15 (this has now beaten the pre-order total for my last release!)
Day Four
The excerpt goes live on my blog and I wait. Of course the tweet about it doesn’t get the best amount of attention, I even put the link in the comment below as opposed to the main tweet but still it got swallowed up I think. This is the grind I’m talking about. You build an engaged following who are interested in you personally and are willing to buy from you but then you share a link and its a ghost town. Being the little person sucks sometimes…
To add more to that concept of being the little person, today I attempted to run a Facebook ad and had my account suspended for doing so. I’m not sure why. Perhaps they thought it was someone else trying to advertise my book on my account…
At the close of Day four I put out a tweet sharing a guide on how I got 5 thousand tweet machine followers. Again the reception isn’t great although this is a dated guide. The grind continues but I’ve still got a few more tricks up my sleeve. Just have to keep going.
Total pre-orders for day Four:
2 increasing the total to 17
Day Five
Today I have a masterplan to get more eyes on my tweets. Of course my mantra is to share stuff that someone can find some value in, whether it be something helpful or even fun. My plan is to first share my greatest statistic as an indie author to just show others we can be successful and secondly I am going to change my pinned tweet.
Top tip: After changing your pinned tweet ask your following to retweet it and do the same for them. Guaranteed exposure that will push your tweet around with little effort.
The statistics tweet and pinned tweet thing went quite well. After that I also shared my recent sales figures which had the best daily sales average ever and included a tip in that tweet.
My greatest statistic
Total pre-orders for day five:
2 increasing the total to 19
Day Six
Todays masterplan includes advertising the pre-order to include a free book. See my tweet below.
Now I thought of this little deal overnight and personally I think its an awesome idea. The only problem is nobody else seemed to think so. Was the algorithm blocking me from getting this to my following? Thinking about it further maybe sending me screenshot of the pre-order is just too much effort and maybe most of them have already downloaded the Teleporter. Either way its good to try new ideas, if they fail so be it. Nothing lost.
Today I gained a single pre-order keeping what is now referred to as a streak, alive.
Total pre-orders for day six:
1 increasing the total to 20
Day Seven
Today my sights are firmly set on celebrating the milestone of 10,000 Twitter followers which eventually happens early afternoon. For a while I’ve been thinking of what I’m going to say and so I take a wild stab at recording a short video.
The reaction was positive and supportive. 10k is going to take a while to sink in and for my efforts even a single pre-order came in. The grind continues and I can’t help but be thankful for the support!
Total pre-orders for day seven:
1 increasing the total to 21
Day Eight
Saturday again and I intentionally set up the pre-order to run through 2 weekends as for me they appear to be busier for traffic and engagement which in turn drives sales. Of course I run a self promo post on Twitter and drop several links in the comments for the various guides you can find via my resources section. I share the excerpt again. It has come to the attention of some authors that Amazon seems to not be working – some books including mine aren’t searchable on their site. Great – more odds stacked against me.
Total pre-orders for day eight:
1 increasing the total to 22 – this is now double my last pre-order run!
Day Nine
The grind continues, this is becoming quite a slog but I’m hanging in there and remain hopeful that those who haven’t pre ordered might show up for the release day. That would be awesome and special to me. I would really like this to be my best release ever. Today I tweet quite a lot and speak about book selfies which in fact do sell books from experience. Of course I run a self promo post because Sunday is a good day for that and I link a book promotion results blog post to it.
Amazon seems to be working again now and the book is searchable.
Somehow and with odds against me we get a single pre-order which keeps my hope and the ‘streak’ alive.
Total pre-orders for day nine:
1 increasing the total to 23
Day Ten
Monday is here and it is the week of the release! Work is priority today (my day job) and it is a long day. I’m unable to find much time to spend on social media and there is no blog post today either so eventually I share the post about getting a BookBub featured deal – I’m kind of just waiting for the release now. The streak will probably end today although I am keeping the faith and after work I dive back into tweeting. It is looking like the awesome and flawless run of order is over.
Somehow we get a surprise…
This wonderful author Emma Jordan arrived at just the right time and saved the streak! Therefore I happily paid it back and added her book to my TBR list. After promising to give a shout out to anyone who pre-ordered the book I then get another pre-order on the same night! Faith restored – this is becoming quite an exceptional thing. I’m looking at the perfect pre-order run – maybe I do know what I am doing!
Late that night I get a message from a fellow author and blogger who wants to interview me, of course I say yes.
Total pre-orders for day ten:
2 increasing the total to 25 (ten straight days of pre-orders! I’ve never known anything like this…)
Day Eleven
With a spring in my step after yesterday’s awesomeness I set out to put together a twitter thread on how I got ten consecutive days of pre-orders – this is a great opportunity to share and help others while advertising my efforts – a win win situation in my eyes.
Although this thread is well received, no pre-orders are coming in so far and it is starting to get late. By the late afternoon I know that the US followers are online and so I push the semi-panic button – I put out a tweet asking for RT’s for my pinned tweet in exchange for RT’ing theirs. The notifications come flying in… My pinned tweet – a video of me celebrating 10k follows from last week spreads around the twitterverse.
The interview I did for a fellow author and blogger Megan Hinde goes live and does rather well in reaching indie authors. I talk about writing and where it could go – this was nice to talk about. You can read that here.
It is getting late and no pre-order, maybe the streak is about to end. A perfect run would have been awesome but 10 days in a row is still fantastic. In one last ditch effort I ask and…
Pre-order 26 arrives at the very end of a day well spent promoting and tweeting. The support from my followers is truly exceptional and this is proof that I am able to sell books to the individual and if you can do that, then you can sell to multiple individuals. Of course I then gave this awesome follower a shout out!
Total pre-orders for day eleven:
1 increasing the total to 26
Day Twelve
And so the final day of the pre-order run is here. I’m part-excited, part-jittery, part-tired and just want this book out there now. 26 orders is better than I imagined. If I can get just one order today then this would have been a truly historic moment. This whole time I’ve just been leveraging social media and blogging – no adverts, just socials. My plan today is simple, do some light tweeting and put out a final rallying blog post on here.
My Weekly Ramble post goes live and almost instantly a single pre-order comes through.
We did it. We fu**ing did it. A small time indie managed to get a perfect score on a pre-order! An order every damn day since launch. But then the truly incredible happens, 3 more come in.
Reflection
Just under 2 weeks for a pre-order with 2 weekends is just about the right length in my eyes. I’m almost dead but as someone once said ‘superstardom is close to post-mortem’ and so yes it was taxing but overall worth it. Now with the release on Thursday that gives me room to promo and leverage the blog and social media until the weekend in 2 days time.
3. The Release
Having now released seven books in the last six years I firmly believe that no matter what happens at release it is never too late to sell a book or find success. The release to me is day one of a journey in which that book takes. At the point of this book’s release I am physically and mentally done. While the support has been phenomenal and the graphic above proves that, I need a vacation and more importantly I need to go away from promo mode and write – that’s what truly matters to me, the releasing of books and everything that goes into it is such a grind but from what I achieved it is possible to find success. This is especially so for anyone who starts this journey from zero – I’m talking to you fellow indie author and please use this post as hope and inspiration that you can find success as a creator. This journey in the latter stages was paved by some wonderful supporters who I will continue to engage with everyday on here and through my other social media channels. They were the true power in all of this and my will to never ever give up.
This section will be quite short because at the time of writing the release has only just happened and to me the life of a book only really starts then. Where it will go is governed by time and the support is has got through a fantastic against the odds pre-order run.
The good thing about having such a great pre-order run is that I’ve already done the work to sell my books to readers who now already have the book on their devices. This meant that on release day I focused more on celebrating than actually pushing to sell more. To me, the work is done and an almighty amount of pressure was released on this day. We all have expectations and now everything begins to subside.
That kind of wraps things up for a post that is rather long. Below you shall find some concluding points to use as reference for a successful launch. I wouldn’t be an indie author if I didn’t try to sell you something so you can find pretty much everything it took to get to this point in the main subject of this post; my book which is out now.
If you type ‘Consistent Creative Content Lee Hall’ into Amazon, it should come up.
Peace out, thanks for reading.
Concluding points of everything above in short form:
Talk about the project at the earliest possible time. Start slow and ramp up.
Use a placeholder cover and working title if necessary.
Common interest – share stuff that has something in common with your book, even a meme or something fun.
Ramp up social media presence – gradually being on there more will eventually drive results if you post and engage with others. This might interest potential readers.
Promote other works if applicable – more books sells more books…
Launching and running a pre-order is good for ramping up promotion of a release.
I incorporated the cover reveal and pre-order launch in one go.
You’ll have an Amazon product page to share and use for advertisement and chart placement if you do get orders.
Around 14 or so days works well for promotion of the pre-order with a couple of weekends included in that time. This is plenty of time to create a couple of pinned tweets on twitter and ask your following to RT them.
Share an excerpt of your book via your blog if you have one. The Amazon product page doesn’t allow potential readers to ‘look inside’ a book on pre-order.
It will be a grind, but keep going and keep trying to find different ways to overcome the algorithms and get your book out there to readers by just being social online. You can do it because I did!
We are finally here after what feels like one heck of a journey paved by the incredible support of this blog’s wonderful following and wider social media support. Everything I have learned to get to this point has been laid out in a book which I hope helps change the way indie creatives and bloggers are seen.
Our works and our words are valid. Our creativity deserves to stand shoulder to shoulder with every other generation of creatives in history. This is my labour of love to the wider writing community and to everyone ever thinking of picking up a pen to create.
What I have laid out, I hope serves someone as a guiding light into the unknown to find success. It is my belief that helping others, will make the writing industry better for the greater good and this is the book that I am going to use to do that. It has been a long but overall rewarding journey to see this book being so well received, especially so with the perfect pre-order run – thank you everyone.
This is Consistent Creative Content: A guide to Authoring and Blogging in the Social Media Age. Out now!
Tomorrow everything culminates. It has been a journey and an experience like nothing else I have faced in writing. My belief has been galvanised by good people who have continually supported me through so much. Right now we are facing the concept of a perfect pre-order run with at least one order every day since launch – a truly incredible feat that not only inspires me but tells me that I must be doing the right things to get them. I need just one more pre-order for this run to be perfect – something I’d never imagine happening but also proof I have the tools for it.
Those who have been around a while will know this journey has not been easy. The reverting to zero – something that still happens now to even seemingly shouting into an empty void. There are so many reasons for a creative to just give up and walk away but now I can give you hundreds of reasons to keep going, to keep creating and keep chasing because that is all I have ever done. Not once in the past few years have I given up or stopped. This journey has become part of me and I am the journey in some senses. I’m invested now, in helping others, shining a light through the dark of the unknown for others and not just to look like some hero. There’s no cape or crown in my story, just a pair of sleeves rolled up and an attitude that is ready to work hard. Anything worthwhile takes time and hard work.
Anything worthwhile in writing or blogging takes Consistent Creative Content. How do I know that? Because I have lived it and that’s the title of the book I have written on it. That book arrives tomorrow. Just one more pre-order would be amazing but we have already achieved with this book has been exceptional. Thank you for the support always.
‘It’s all fun and games till you end up with an ability and the calling ‘to do the right thing’. Despite your lack of interest or ambition. The Teleporter is a funny, entertaining comical trip into an unforeseen superhero world. A sit back put your feet up entertaining read.’ -My Review of The Teleporter
I have found author Lee Hall to be one of the few genuine people on social media. His approach to helping other aspiring authors find their footing has been refreshing to watch unfold over the last year. With that said here is an author interview with Lee Hall.
Why do you write?
Because I enjoy being immersed in stories above all. That concept of immersion is something I am always seeking while reading and eventually the love for that evolved into creating my own stories. To be able to go absolutely anywhere with the words I…
Book banning, a form of censorship, occurs when private individuals, government officials, or organizations remove books from libraries, school reading lists, or bookstore shelves because they object to their content, ideas, or themes.
Now that we have established a definition the following are authors on my shelf whose works have been challenged or banned. In looking these up and reading about censorship in general I’m saddened by the current on going list of challenged and banned books of today. What I meant this little write up to be and what it became of course are of two different worlds. The following six books are on my shelf, I’m also adding in links to the current challenged/banned books of today. My two cents from looking at these authors, write what you know, ‘speak the truth and shame the devil’ which is a line of dialog that I picked up…
10,000 Twitter followers is a huge achievement. That’s 10,000 reasons to keep going. 10,000 reasons to not give up. 10,000 reasons to be thankful for the support I have. While it is an exceptional and somewhat numbing moment, right now I feel as if a huge amount of pressure has been lifted. Having that many people behind you means that I no longer have to fight for attention or tolerate things that would effect my following if I reacted in a particular way. It has been a journey and it is now paying off.
Since even before my rise on Twitter I’ve been incredibly lucky to be supported by good people on here. The day-in day-outers who show up and click like on my posts, folks like me trying to make it in this world that is full of challenges. You guys were here before that and during it. I never forget those who have helped me and this celebration is just as much yours as it is mine. Inclusion has always been my mantra and probably why I am so successful at social media.
Sometimes the good guys win and sometimes it all just works out. I’m nothing special but what I stand for and those who stand beside me are exceptional. All I have ever done is carry on, regardless of bad results and being in the company of my old friend zero, I’ve kept going and the rewards are finally presenting themselves. Resilience in the face of adversity is probably the one thing I know, everything else I’ve just picked up along the way. If you do head over to twitter in recent times you’ll see a video at the top of my profile which outlines everything I feel right now. My determination to support and prove that indie authoring is viable, continues…
Introducing Danielle Larsen who shares an insight into her journey as a writer.
I never really thought of myself as a writer. Even now, with a published book, it’s still something I struggle with. I think it’s because I’ve always had this image in my head of what a writer is “supposed to be.” I picture Charles Dickens or Jane Austen sitting by candlelight hunched over pages and pages of handwritten stories. I see Jo March from Little Women feverishly writing into the night until her hand cramps up. I never thought that simply writing about myself was enough to consider me a writer.
Looking back, writing has always been part of my life, but it probably wasn’t in the way that most of my peers came to it. I was the teenager with endless journals and diaries, pouring my heart and thoughts into pages but struggled with writing assignments in school. If there was an opportunity for an alternate assignment that didn’t involve writing a paper, that’s what I was going to do.
When I was in college, my school had a habit of “personal reflection essays.” At the end of each semester, you had to write a paper for almost every single class reflecting on your journey and time in that class. Writing these small essays got me into the habit of looking inward and really putting my thoughts into something coherent. I fully believe this is what eventually led to my current blog, The Mindful Fight, which has been up and running for about a year and a half now.
But writing a memoir, even though people had told me that I should, wasn’t really anything that I thought I’d ever be able to accomplish. While writing any kind of book is a never-ending process of revisions, edits, and late-night writing sessions, when it comes to memoir writing you have to look so deep within yourself that the process itself is extremely exhausting. I knew that writing about my own story, which involves domestic abuse, would be something that would take a lot of strength and courage.
Even as I started writing, though, I doubted myself. The stories and words were pouring out of me, but diving into things that I’d long since buried was extremely difficult. I was finding that if a story was in my head ready to be written that I had to get it down or I wouldn’t be able to sleep. I spent many nights writing until the crack of dawn because of this. The process of tapping into these memories was exhausting enough, and I was burning the candle at both ends.
It’s been 6 months since my book came out and, if I knew then what I know now, I would have taken my time. I would have paced myself instead of subjecting myself to a constant flow of difficult memories. I had friends telling me to, but I simply couldn’t stop writing. This sounds like a good thing, but in hindsight it actually made the process harder. I would write a difficult story and then jump right into the next one. Then I would go back a few days later to reread it and it was like a severe form of immersion therapy: being constantly throw into the deep end hoping that I would swim.
Writing a memoir, no matter the subject, is something extremely personal and unless you’ve done it, it’s hard to explain how difficult it really is. Many people see memoir writing as self-indulgent and I simply don’t think that’s fair. It’s a weird thing to say, “Hey, this book is about me,” and hope that people will read it, but we wouldn’t tell our stories if we didn’t think they were worth telling. My story isn’t unique at all, but many abuse survivors never find their voice. I was able to find the strength to tell my story and my hope is that it can help others in similar situations find theirs. That’s why I called my book From Voiceless To Vocal because I went from being silenced to speaking out in the ultimate way.
As I sit here, with my book on a shelf over my head, it’s still hard to think of myself as a writer. Most of my peers are fiction writers and a lot of the time I feel as though I’m on the outside looking in within the writing community. It’s hard to consider yourself a writer when those around you are promoting their multi-book series and you have a 140 page book about your own life. But at the end of the day, I am a writer. I’m a published author regardless of what exists between those pages and even if I never sell another copy, I’ll always have that.
My advice to anyone struggling with their identity as a writer is to not compare yourself to your peers. Trust me, I know how difficult that is, but we’re all struggling with the same things. Even if you never publish a book or you have 20 by the time you’re finished, simply writing things and committing yourself to the page, regardless of whether others see it or not, makes you a writer.
Maybe some will disagree with that, but that’s part of being a writer too. Not everyone is going to love everything you have to say… but say it anyway. If you have a story you want to tell, tell it. Write the stories that you want to write because you love them and don’t worry about what might happen down the line. It might live in your computer forever or maybe you’ll become a bestseller, but you’ll know that you put those words down and that alone should make you proud.
Danielle’s inspirational memoir ‘From Voiceless to Vocal’ is available now and you can find out more information here.
Click on the book below to see my recent review and be sure to check out her website The Mindful Fight here.
Lee's Hall of information 
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