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You'll need to figure it out yourself. I suggest you browse the
category you're book will be listed in and see what all the other
books there are priced at, then price yours in the same general
range.
But remember, prices are not set in stone! If you price your book a
certain way and find that people aren't buying it...change the price!
You can easily do this from the Bookshelf page of your KDP
account.
All you have to do is click on the title of your book in the
Bookshelf, then navigate to the pricing page.
If one price doesn't work, try to fiddle with it a bit. If that doesn't
work, change it dramatically.
So if $.99 cents doesn't work, try $1.99 or $2.99.
If that doesn't work, jump up to $9.95.
I think you'll be surprised at the price you can charge. Lower
prices have a lower perceived value. Because of that, it's easier to
charge higher prices than you might think.
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SECTION THREE:
EXTERNAL MARKETING METHODS
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So we've talked quite a bit already about Internal Marketing. In
fact, internal marketing is meant to be the most important part of
this book.
Why is that?
Because it's the low hanging fruit! You can do virtually all the
things I talked about in the previous section for little to no money,
and by spending very little of your time.
Sure there are a few things you can spend money on, like having
your book cover designed at Fiverr.com but by and large the things
I've discussed so far are free types of things.
That's not to say that free is bad...it's not! One of the great things
about publishing for Kindle is the fact that you can go so very far
without spending much (if any) money.
And to tell you the truth, I know many people who only do the free
Internal Marketing things I discussed in the last section and find
quite a bit of success with them.
But some people want more. They like to have more control of
their marketing and to do that you really have to turn to more
external sources of marketing.
And that's what I'm going to talk about in this next section. It
won't be as long as the section on Internal Marketing because I
could honestly write an entire book on just about each of these
external topics.
Since I can't do that here, I'll need to just give you a brief over
view of them, then you can go learn about them more in depth
elsewhere. But you'll definitely get a leg up from what I have to
say.
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CHAPTER FIVE
CREATING AN AUTHOR BLOG
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The very first external marketing step you should take is to create
your own authors blog.
Sure, Amazon will let you create a pretty nice author profile page
right there on Amazon.com itself, and you should definitely do
that, but you also need your own website dedicated solely to you
and the books you write.
Why?
Because so much of publishing is about creating a loyal following
of readers. Once people get to know you and grow to like what
you write, it's much much easier to sell them additional books in
the future.
With the state of the Internet these days, it's never been easier to
build your own website. You simply MUST take advantage of that
fact!
Don't worry! You don't have to know anything about programming
or web development in order to start your own blog. It's really as
easy as point and click, and I'm going to walk you through it right
now.
Setting Up Your Blog
There are two main ways to set up a blog these days, either by
yourself using webhosting that you pay for, or by using one of the
free blogging platforms out there.
Some of those free blogging platforms include:
- Blogger.com
- Wordpress.com (not to be confused with wordpress.org)
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- Tumblr.com
- LiveJournal.com
- Blog.com
Basically these are places that you can sign up for a free account,
and then you just log in and start typing blog posts. They take care
of the rest.
Of course, you lose all sense of control of your blog. You have to
choose a look and layout for your blog from a list of generic
themes, and your website address will look generic as well,
something like yourblog.wordpress.com or something like that.
Further, you are limited as to what sort of information you can post
on those blogs.
Unless you are completely broke financially, I HIGHLY
recommend you stay away from those free blog platform websites.
Instead, I recommend you take charge of your blog and host it
yourself via webhosting.
Webhosting works like this...for a nominal fee (usually $9-$25 a
month depending on how much space you need) you get a
webhosting account that allows you to host your own website.
Take LillySage.com (my website) as an example. My webhost for
that website is Hostgator.com
They have webhosting plans that start at just $3.95 a month,
though I recommend you beef up to at least their "Baby Plan"
which is currently around $7 bucks a month, or their "Business
Plan" that costs around $11 bucks a month.
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Both plans let you host as many websites as you like!
Besides webhosting, you'll also need to register your domain name.
A domain name is the www.yourdomainname.com thing.
In my case, my domain name is LillySage.com
It costs around $10 a year to register a .com domain name. I
recommend you use a registrar like Godaddy.com
You can head over to Godaddy.com and find out if the domain
name you want is available. I suggest you try to use your name as
the domain name because as an author, that's what people will
identify the most.
If your name is taken already, try a variation.
For instance, if LillySage.com had already been taken, I might
have tried Lilly-Sage.com or LillySageAuthor.com or something
along those lines.
Be creative, but remember; the shorter the better. The easier it is
for someone to remember your domain name, the better.
Once you register your domain name and order your webhosting
plan, you need to set up a blog.
Wordpress is the most popular blogging software in the world.
Hostgator makes setting up a wordpress blog very easy.
You just log into your hostgator account with the login information
that they provide for you. Then click the "Fantastico" button.
Fantastico is a sort of installer program.
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Next, you'll see a list of things that you can install using
Fantastico. Look for blogs, and then Wordpress. Click the button
and follow along with the prompts.
That's it! In seconds you should have a wordpress installation
installed and ready to go!
You can verify this by typing in your website address into your
web browser. You should see the basic wordpress installation.
Next you need to customize it to make it look the way you want it
to. In wordpress, this is done by installing "Themes".
There are tons of free wordpress themes out there, you can run a
Google search to find them.
Personally, I like to use the paid WooThemes from
Woothemes.com They're a little expensive (around $70 each), but
they really look nice.
Installing a theme is as simple as clicking a few buttons. But I'm
not going to get into the mechanics of working with wordpress
here. There are tons of free resources out there that you can find to
show you everything you need.
I'd check out wordpress.org first, they have extensive help
resources. And if you need personal help getting your blog set up,
be it in the form of setting up webhosting, registering a domain
name, setting up your wordpress installation, adding a theme, or
making blog posts then why not consider my Kindle Club?
Helping members set up all this stuff is one of the major things that
I do at my Kindle Club. As a member you're entitled to my hands
on help with whatever you need!
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Why Is Having A Blog So Important?
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