Skip to main content

Basic mistakes in promoting your book in social media






You wrote a book. The next step would be to promote it on social media if you are an independent author.

Promoting books is the way to reach visibility and potential buyers. This is important to find your reader's circle and get reviews.

You are hungry for success, I know it.

A huge desire to make sales could result in a negative effect. You might be blocked and deleted, even reported if you force your sales and annoy people.

These are basic mistakes people do in promoting books:

Randomly tagging people with your links.

Who are you and do you know these people? You can't tag someone you don't know and offer your product.

Sending private messages to unknown people.

"Hi, I wrote a book and I would love to review or purchase. Click on the link, go and read it."

Spam your page with the same links every day. 

This is annoying, you are repeating yourself. Repeating the same things as parrot will not help you to reach a potential audience.

Try to ask for money for your reviews. This is beggaring and people hate it.

Make negative reviews to your competition. You try to knock down your rival, but Amazon can punish it. 



You will ask me, what to do then, how to promote yourself?

Try to be original and promote your product as a professional. "Hello, I am the author, can we cooperate? I am offering you...Nice to meet you. "

Make an interview. Many authors are doing interviews, some are video interviews, audio links, and written, with the same purpose to spread the word about your book.

Post the reviews you got. This is good for marketing your book and the way you show gratitude to the reviewer. 

Respect other authors. It means, if you are promoting your book in groups, don't post your link under other's links. This is rude and amateurish.

What you do, talks a lot about you. Nobody will cooperate with a person who is spreading negative energy. If you see a troll around, ignore it and block. 

Remember: many people who are trolling your book could not write even a normal sentence. Spitting on other's work show frustration, and you are above it. 



Comments

Eva Pasco said…
Sound advice all-around.
JanisL said…
Thanks you, very helpful advice. I may have made some of these mistakes already as a debut, indie author. Appreciate the advice.
JanisL said…
Very helpful. Thank you.

Popular posts from this blog

Should we respond to negative reviews?

Recently I had a discussion in my social media about negative ratings. There was a situation in Goodreads, where I got two negative reviews on my two books. The point was in the way how the ratings were set up. First rating for my book "Body in the waves" was placed under 5-star review from another reviewer. While the reviewer praising my book, the troll came under to say "This is really bad book." Second rating was described as " Poor author needs writing lessons." Both reviews broke standards of reviewing, because there is no visible evidence that book was downloaded in Kindle unlimited or purchased. It was a clear troll act from a new page, without a profile photo and with a nickname. I reported this to Goodreads and they responded me they are processing this. Meanwhile, I heard from other authors that Goodreads failed to do anything about trolling.  In these terms, Goodreads should delete such profiles and forbid the access because of breaking rules. T...

Swapping books - a devil's deal

  "I will read your book if you read and review mine." This is an example of author's deal when it comes time for reviews. Reviews is hard to get. If you sell books, it is still not guarantee you will get reviews. If I could get a review for every book I sold, it would be great. People will buy book to collect it on the shelves and leave it un-read. Or, they will read but not rate it. Many reasons are for not getting reviews, but some people don't know where and how to write reviews or are not eligible. That is the reason why authors will turn to other authors, with a proposition for review. The danger of such review is on Amazon rules: author can't review other's author books on request. I love to read indie authors and they inspire me, but I have my circle and I never accept offers to read someone I never heard about. Once I got a proposition :" Hey, I saw your review for XX author, can you write it for me, too?" I ignored it. When you have a deal ...

Why is refund damaging indie authors?

I understand someone can be disappointed with a book. It is like I was disapointed with my trousers online and returned it. What makes a difference, my trousers were 40 euros. The book was 2.49 cents. This makes return funny, because what can you do with this money? Some readers don't understand story behind the refund. The author will get minus royalties. - 0.13 c in my Kindle report, that will vanish when someone else buy the book. The situation happens. Someone accidentaly clicked and bought a book. A random customer wants a refund. Maybe it was not a random move. Maybe the customer clicked, bought and did not like the book. When you don't like the book choose another options, instead of damaging authors. Write a negative review. Write negative one star rating. Don't purchase another books from this author. Or, maybe to reconsider and read it, again? If you write negative reviews or rate it with 1 or 2 stars, you are making a favor to authors. You are moving algorithms i...