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Tuesday, 25 October 2011

E-book marketing and promotion

I'm still waiting for approval from Apple for Carved which is taking longer than I anticipated for launching my book but is due any day now, I somewhat underestimated the time for approvals since I wanted to get carved out on the 10th anniversary of the event it covers.
In the meantime I've been looking into the ways in which I need to think about marketing the book, as a novice author I have a lot of work to do to make Carved stand out the best I can on a minuscule budget. First on the list will either be a small website page promoting the book or a Facebook fan page to build up the awareness.Content wise I'm a bit wary of the Facebook direction because I need to make sure there's enough going on there to engage the audience.
With a hosted mini site I need to factor in the cost of hosting per month against sales, I could very well be paying more to host the promotional site than I'm actually making on the book. I looked at hosting options with various companies but wasn't looking to spend major amounts with email and functionality I didn't want, two companies stood out at offering a bare bones basic package and both had excellent write ups, one was Go Daddy and one was Blue Host, Go Daddy was £4.49 per month unlimited whereas Blue Host offers me the same service for £4.45, I buy much of my domains from Go Daddy and run airsoftinfidels.com with one bought from Go Daddy, my wife's forthcoming Tiara business launch also has a domain bought from Go Daddy. The book domain I bought through Go Daddy but I thought it was worth giving Blue Hosting a try in hosting the site to promote my book.
The first thing I need to do is figure out all my meta data, the keywording thats going to get people flocking to my web page, a daunting task for a mini site, I've dabbled with Keywording on Zazzle but its an area I know I need to improve on. if I get it wrong then it'll have the reverse effect and much harder to rectify further down the line.
Additionally to that I need to think about if I should engage prospective buyers via my Twitter link, this will detract from what I use it for currently so I'm not sure yet and people hate being sold to on Twitter. Facebook ads are also on the list since I know I can set a target audience with a PPC campaign but now I'm starting to accumulate costs so I need to tread carefully, advertising, hosting will all add up over time. The fact I can set a budget limit for Facebook ads and target who views them is reassuring that advertising wastage will not be much of an issue.

I'm confident my Blurb about my book is tight enough, I reworked this several times over until I was happy with it so I know that the concise information is going to drive forward the message of what the book is about.
But how much will I be spending against what I can make?, difficult to say, hosting with a reputable company is an important investment but all in I'm looking at the region of about £53 for that, another £50 for targeted Facebook click ads and possibly another £24 on printing up some coloured novelty business cards over at Moo to promote the book its getting pricey. I figured the Moo cards were a good idea, that way if I'm out and about I can just slip someone a card that promotes the book and web page in one hit which drives both traffic and awareness. That takes me to around £130 give or take a couple of pounds. That means I need to sell  in the region of 75 books a year since my book pricing is £1.99.

To be honest I might be mad, I'm on Kindle boards and so many people have done a lot less for a lot more gain so I'm borderline confused on what is the best route is, marketing ebooks I'm told isn't a science but I'm convinced that if anyone is going to buy it they at least need to know about it first.

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