Rebelious rules by Kristina Gallo

Using Amazon ads as a way of promoting could be tricky. You might spend a lot of money but the results are not visible. It depends on your expectations. If you expect to sell a million books just because you paid for an advertisement, you will be disappointed. What do Amazon ads offer and how to use them? Visibility. There are chances your book will be visible to millions of readers. If you promote your book on promotional pages, they have subscribers, but not more than 300.000. You can catch millions of people who are potential buyers and readers. Some have Kindle unlimited to raise your KENP. Others will purchase your books. Objectivity . I got some bad ratings using those ads, but I don't regret it, my skin is thick. If you bought something from me and you did not like it, raise your voice. Also, give a compliment if you like it, with a good rating or review. Verified purchases. With Amazon ads, you don't have to share your books for free. Your ratings and reviews will be ...

  In 2018, I published a book by the name "Seduce her with a fist." It is a short story based on a real event. A girl, Valentina remembers her old crush when she scrolls on internet profiles. Going back to the past, she remembers how he injured her. When I first time put a link for this book, some readers thought it is an erotic novel about fisting. Some rejected to read this, because of vulgar insinuation.  After I could not use Amazon ads because of this title, I decided to break this confusion and change the title. The message of this book is not to promote erotica, abuse, or violence. That is a book for all women who like hooligans.  Petar, the main character of this book is a football supporter who lost his teeth in a fight. He is using women for sex activities. Valentina saw something bigger in his personality and wanted to change him. The book is available at this link. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B079VV5149/ref=dbs_a_def_rwt_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i8

2 million authors are available on Amazon. It is a huge number, and all authors compete for the circle of readers. Famous names will take advantage and there is a huge chance to stay invisible and without an audience. To get noticed, you should be ranked in the first 100 authors. For that score, your book must be in the top 100 with a certain number of reviews and good sales. How do accomplish it? Gain the reviews. This is a hard task. Your reviews could be deleted or rejected, if Amazon algorithms judge them as irregular. Sell the book. To get sales, you need to promote your book. Even if you paid for promotional sites, there is no guarantee for selling, but you can lose your money. How to stand out from the crowd? Tik Tok gave us a chance to make our own videos with nice filters and to promote our books in self-made videos. Grab your book in your hands and show it to the world. Make a funny and interesting video with special effects, to pull attention. The problem with promotion is o...

When you buy the book on Amazon, there is a deadline of 3-5 business days for your refund. So, if you don't like the product, if you think the book is poorly formatted or badly edited, you can ask to return your money. Everyone has a choice and the product is not always ideal. Some books are poorly formatted. Others are bad edited, or not edited at all. Sometimes, you will not like the cover or the title. Maybe a cover confused you about the genre. It looks like a horror, but..wait, it is fantasy or romance. What happens if the refund option is abused? The reader can buy a book, read it in 3 days and return his money. It is ridiculous if a book is 1.24 (like happened to me) and the reader asks for money back. If you think you can do something with this dollar, go ahead. Take care of your savings. The refund option is abused as a "free book " option. Do you want a free book this refund is a way to get it and return your money? To be clear, I can't make a profit of 1.24...

Many authors complain about bad reviews because that is an unpleasant experience. It is not comfortable when you read bad critics about your books, that could be mockery or insults.  However, bad reviews have a positive side, your book is getting noticed. Somehow you touched someone's nerve, or your book really needs work so the reviewer is right. It means you will have a direction on how to fix your mistakes. Unless it is trolling, bad reviews should not have always bad effects. Ignorance is another problem that indie authors face.  You can see it in a few ways: You promoted your book, and invested money, but your sales are low. You asked for reviews, but nobody answered you. You made a status about your book, but nobody clicked a link to buy it. Sometimes, you will get a promise. It would be a promise that will never be realized. It means a polite rejection. "Well, you will have to wait. Currently, I have no time to read it." When you were writing your book, you did not...

These days I was faced with intruders in my personal inbox. Goodreads and Facebook brought me messages from strangers. Shortly, they wanted a kind of education about sales and promotions, and to be a member of their groups. I am always fascinated by how someone can write to an unknown person, without checking her profile. What kind of genre do I write, do I wish to communicate with people I don't know, all could be clear from my profiles.  How do I answer these messages? With blocking, I don't want to waste time explaining what I want and what I don't want. This made me think, how many authors promote themselves in the wrong ways? I understand the desire to sell your book, but you can make a contra effect by forcing others to notice you. Social media are filled with book links. Authors are focused on numbers, they are automatically collecting followers, but a big number of followers doesn't mean selling by default. You will get a bunch of people on Twitter, Tik Tok, and...

The problem with indie authors is about the visibility of their books. Your book can be interesting and great, but it is not important if nobody is seeing your book. Indie authors are millions on Amazon. We are drowning in the crowd, hoping to get some crumbles in selling our books. How to jump out from the crowd? The main step is to create your community. If you think you will publish a book in Kindle and wait for sales, you will never sell the book. Some ways how to make your book visible? Create a newsletter. Your newsletter needs subscribers, and if you have many subscribers, you can notify your subscribers every week about news in your writing, interviews, videos, reviews.  Make an interview. I made four video interviews with various writers who were hosting me. Make a group for writers . Nothing connects people more than talking about common interests. Gain many followers on social media . Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. You never know how will read your books. Promot...

  Here we are, I am continuing to feature awesome authors. S. M. Revolinski is a “baby boomer” born in Wyoming but moved around. He studied physics at Rice University in Houston, Texas, and Nuclear Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, before settling on a career criticality safety. He is now a retired engineer living in Florida and spends as much time as possible on the beach. When he is not entertaining his grandchildren or trading stock options, he enjoys writing. While not exactly science fiction, most of his stories are connections between the supernatural and the real world – what if ‘this’ really happened? His recent “Tales From Wyoming” series is a collection of interconnected short stories of the Old West.  Each story is a standalone adventure based upon some fragment of a story told during childhood growing up in Wyoming. To enjoy more of his stories, look for: Ashes Into Stardust –https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079M2C9HY After The L...

Today I am featuring an awesome author Martin J. Best. His stories about ghost hunting captured my interest. A short biography: Born in 1965, Martin J. Best is a native of Torquay, on the UK's English Riviera, where he grew up in an actively haunted house. He has had a varied work life, including many years running his own mobile disco business, and is now fulfilling a life-long dream to write full-time. When not working, he enjoys listening to a wide variety of music, ghost hunting, and walking/trail running with his dogs Shadow and Raven – a Northern Inuit and a Groenendael.   Much of the action in Martin’s character-driven paranormal stories are set in and around his hometown, the use of genuine locations giving his meticulous world building an unpretentious authenticity. The Moth Trap - https://1books2read.com/u/b5QLak A Step Aside – https://books2read.com/u/4AxNPK The Novice Ghost Hunter - https://books2read.com/u/47X827 Ghost Hunter I: A Matter of Faith - https://books2re...

You wrote a book. Today is publishing day. Impatiently waiting, nervously expecting a miracle, every writer will watch his Kindle report. He will check every ten minutes if is there a noted sale.  How many sold books do you expect this month? Ten? Hundred? Thousand? Every indie author is faced with obstacles to book sales. Here are 7 kinds of obstacles: Competition. It means millions of other authors who want to reach the same score as you. Why should buyers buy your book? What makes you different from others? Tax system. Believe it or not, some countries have an impossible tax system for indie authors. They have no contract to avoid double taxes so guess who will get a smaller profit because of this law regulation? The indie author will pay 30% of his profit if he lives in a country with bad financial laws. Trolls. Negative people will try to ruin your sale with bad ratings or reviews, but unless the book is not rated with a mark of 3.00 incomplete rating, it will not affect the s...

If you are an indie author, you will do everything alone. Writing a book is an easier part. You will do promotion, editing, marketing, choosing cover creators, and your editor for a final manuscript. Indie authors are aware of this so they do the best they can to look professional.  There are some exceptions, those are people who are just starting or they are naturally egoistic so they think everyone will listen to their demands. What kind of mistakes do indie authors do in approaching their audience? Send private messages to unknown people.  Tag unknown people with their book links. They post above-pinned tweets of other authors their book links. They post under other authors' links their book links. Underestimate other authors, trying to make laugh at their work. Selling a book means you need to find a market. If you are lecturing others, you will not be popular. If you try to use others, it will come back to you. Here are three tricks that some indie authors use: Fake promi...

Today I am introducing an awesome indie author Eve Koguce. Her novel “Neglected Merge” - book one in the Neglected Merge trilogy - is a fantasy futuristic romance set in a utopian-style world.  She has  a confession to make. She doesn’t read fantasy. The main reason for that is that books in this genre tend to be rather grim, but since life has shown her all its faces, not only light and carefree, she seeks additional emotional stirring neither in literature nor in movies/TV series. The Neglected Merge trilogy explores the challenges of universal happiness rather than those hardships we envisage to befall us after some kind of apocalyptic event. Limitations are always suffocating, even if they’re intended to limit your choices to make you miserable. She has been in love with books for as long as she remembers. The typewriter her first attempts at writing had been made at still sits proudly on its shelf in the basement, and when she goes down there, she always has an urge to sa...

Indie authors are underestimated and our life is hard. When someone hears you are an independent author publishing on Amazon, a person will say: "Oh, well you are not a real author. You don't have a publisher, you have self-made covers and you are not famous." That could be partly true, but a real talent could be hidden under millions of books on Amazon. Why should not we give it a chance? Some authors on social media make the basic mistake of promoting books of famous authors on their pages. They will share, retweet, or brag about "Fifty shades of grey", "The Stand" or "1984." We all hear about these books. Their authors sold a million copies, movies are based on books, and extra promotion is unnecessary. Why do people do this? Remember high school. Girls wanted to date popular guys, to be seen with them. That guy needs to be more intelligent, but he has the fastest motorbike. He is not an intellectual type, but he is famous because he is a...

I got a review.  Every author will be delighted by reviews of his book. It means someone read it and posted an opinion. Reviews are hard to get because competition is big. Also, readers in Amazon read books from famous authors, and we, indie authors are getting a piece of cake. Probably you heard about this magic number of reviews. 20-25 reviews, your book will be marked as "you might also read". 50 reviews will bring you to mention in the Amazon newsletter. It looks tempting and authors are struggling to get a huge number of reviews, but in reality, things look different. 7 myths about reviews: Bad ratings mean that book is trash, the same as bad reviews. It is not true, as tastes are different. Someone can spit on your book because of the genre you write, or because this person doesn't like the author. Also, many trolls are around, who can't wait a chance to ruin someone's rating. Excellent reviews mean that book is a bestseller. It is hard to please everyone, a...

Your book is done. You wrote your story, but it is not ready for publishing. Why not? You need an editor. Before you assume it is easy to find, I offer some tips to save you from liars, cheaters, and opportunists. What kind of qualities a good editor should have? It must be an American or British editor. Don't think you can find a good editor in your country if you are not a native English speaker. Those who are Americans or British know the best about their culture, habits, phrases, and they will make a benefit for you. Your editor must have a testimony. It is praise from readers, usually made on their website, about their work. A good editor will communicate with the author. It is not like, I have done your book, give me the money. No! You must talk to your editor about your sentences, emptiness in your story lines, things that are not logical, and make a common agreement on what is missing in your book. It means, your book should go to the editor at least twice. A good editor...

Jealousy and envy are followers of success. When you hear stories about friendships that broke because one friend is successful and the other did not manage, that is not a surprise. Marketing your book might lead you to some dark waters, where you can meet people who don't want your success. These categories you can meet: People who offer you to promote the book on their sites for a high price. You will just make your wallet empty. People who want your book free in exchange for a review. Many people will take a book, but you will not get a review. People who offer "favor for a favor" but there is a trap. You can read their book and they will never read yours. Trolls. Those people will rate your book with negative stars just to ruin your sales. You wonder, where is the cause, why this happens? It can explain by various reasons. Many people wish for success, and sabotaging their competition is their way to clean their path. Many people did not manage, so they wish the same ...

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 r...

I want to sell many books. This is something that every author dream of. In making this score, authors will use promotional tools, and some of them are not useful. Accord my experience, here are traps that suck your wallet and waste your time. Review promises. It is not once that someone promises me a review and it never happened. I asked twice, and it stayed the same. When you realize that a person is not giving you a review, give it up. Some people are just like that, giving empty promises they don't want to realize, or they wanted to be kind, without real intention. Paid promotional sites. Be very picky when you promote books on paid promotional sites. Many of them are just taking your money and you will not make a good investment. For example, I paid 40 dollars for my book promotion and sold only 10 books. Next time I paid 25 dollars and sold only 6 books. You will never see me again. Potential buyers. The best buyer is a person who buys your book and sends you a message or ...

Let's assume people want to support your books. There are some genuine souls who really want your success and they would love to help you. Good intentions are not enough, you need to know are those people are your readers or this support is only formal. What kind of readers you can meet? Some people will share your book links but never open them. There is no use, they do it automatically. People will congrats you, but they are not interested in what are you doing. This is a usual phenomenon, people want to support you for some reasons, but your books are not interesting them. Maybe a guy wants to approach you to flirt, maybe your friend wishes to support you, but their real intention is to be close to you, not to read your books. People will support you expecting you to do the same. "Read my book I will read yours" is a common deal, but not always recommended. You read his book, he never returned. Or he pretended to read, but you can see from the review it is only formal....