How to market a self-published book: my strategies & summer plans
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- čas přidán 14. 06. 2024
- An overview of all of the most common methods for marketing indie-published novels, and my plan of how I intend to give y'all useful and detailed data on each method through the summer!
Patreon: patreon.com/user/about?u=34222724
Substack: lidiyafoxglove.substack.com/
Instagram: / lidiyafoxglove
THE BROKEN QUEEN:
www.amazon.com/dp/B0CTQY7XGM
(This book is in Kindle Unlimited for release! It will go on other retailers eventually!)
Read the books!
Amazon author page: www.amazon.com/stores/Lidiya-...
(also available on Apple, Google, Barnes and Noble, Kobo and other retailers and libraries) - Zábava
I feel like I have met you now from these videos, though I’d never approach you in real life because social anxiety, but you’re very relatable in these videos. It’s very refreshing. I also “hear” your voice in my head while reading your books now, like audiobook narrations.
Lol I hear Lidiya's voice when I read her books as well!
The really great thing about an automated welcome sequence for your newsletter is that the reader very quickly feels like they get to know you. And, yes, while you do "give a little of yourself away" to write those, you only do it once. (At least from your perspective.) Yes, it does require organization and a plan when crafting that sequence. But once it's up and running, it's bringing in and holding thousands of readers without you continually pouring energy and time and money into it.
I'm really glad your channel is doing well. You have so much wisdom and I don't think that has traditionally been rewarded here on youtube but more and more, I think people just want to learn from people who have been in the game a very long time because you guys have seen and tried so many things. I also love how matter of fact you are. You do everything with intelligence and intention, so succeed or fail you usually learn something from it and then you have the generosity of sharing it and that's a great combo! ☺
This video is so timely because I'm working on a cozy romantasy that will be my first release under my self-pub pen name, and marketing is what I was feeling the most lost about.
I am going to try Substack when I am ready. Thanks for the video.
Substack feels very user friendly to me. You lose some of the "marketing" features of other mailing lists but I was so intimidated by those anyway, like...oh well. Substack has other advantages.
Great information! I used to love writing when I was in elementary/middle/high school. Life became busy and I have written that much, other than dabbling here and there. My co-worker has self-published and I have always wondered what the process is like. I also love your humor - you remind me of one of my mom's eccentric college hippy friends from Maine :)
Looking forward to this series!
Lidiya I wish you knew how valuable these videos are. Thank you for putting the time and energy into these xx
I‘m really looking forward to this series! It’s very hard to filter out what actually works for oneself and seeing someone going through all the different motions can be really helpful. Thank you so much.
that pretty orange kitty is definitely blueberry the wyvern ✨
Blueberry was largely based on my black cat, Oskar, who died right around the time I started the channel...but they do have some of the same traits. Blue and Oskar are both squawk-talkers though, while my orange boy Reinhard is a squeaker. I'll have to write a squeaky little wyvern next!
@@lidiyafoxgloveauthor lol yes! Reinhard has the wyvern energy, you get my vote. ps Im sorry about Oskar, its nice that you have a portrait of him in your book though.
I love this direction for the channel. This is the part of the journey where I'm stuck on.
Fantastic video! Thank you for sharing your insight and great information!
Thank You for this video. Insightful as always.
Excited for the next videos in this series 🤩 It's great to hear some personal experience on the different types of marketing. 😄
Every video of yours is so ao helpful!!
YES I'm so looking forward to seeing future videos on how each of the marketing methods play out. Great series idea Lidiya 😊
I’m very interested in seeing how these different techniques work out
So far Facebook ads will be a video of me tearing my hair out, LOL
Thank you for this. I am in a similar spot: gearing up to release my second series in the coming year. For my first one, all I had the mental bandwidth for was Amazon ads. I challenged myself to learn and try one new marketing method per series, so I will be watching this with great interest.
I'm looking forward to this series a lot! Marketing is always so overwhelming that it's hard to know what to focus on.
It is SO overwhelming and I'm not sure how much I will de-overwhelm it, but I'm at least going to try!!
I'm now very excited about this mailing list idea. I HATE social media so hard and avoid for my mental health.
I have been trying to figure out how to market where I don't always need to be on social media and this is right up my alley.
Yes, I think if I wasn't doing CZcams I would probably focus on a mailing list now. It feels like you can just be a lot more thoughtful with it...and yes, you can largely avoid the stress and timesuck of social media (although some networking is a good idea for finding swaps...that is still WAY less time than putting your focus on a TikTok account). The biggest downside to mailing lists is that they are more slow burn marketing.
such valuable information and experience you are sharing,it is really appreciated.
Thank you! Fun and an education for me!
I love your videos. Every time I watch one, it’s a breath of fresh air. I am currently reading Fairy Tale Heat and loving it! Excited to read Doll Girl Meets Dead Guy next.
Good luck! I bought one of your books because of your videos. Cheers
As a new self pub author these videos really are great Lidiya, thank you. Also as regards marketing watching these I am thinking I like this person maybe I may like her books. I mean I am a middle aged man so I am not sure any of your books are aimed at me, then again I have met reverse harem people in real life so who knows. Do you have a video explaining your world?
The books set in my fantasy world are not reverse harem and are pretty low on the steam scale. This video is somewhat of an overview: czcams.com/video/fq1RYNFkdr0/video.html
I see so many events in this area (asheville) that feature local authors. Do you ever do those types of events for marketing? Just asking for your audience,and my own curiosity.
Last question is Goodreads, does that work? I know quite a few people who post books they’ve read on there. I mean to, but always forget to do it.
I have done some events in Florida and Maryland and I'd say they are things you really only do to make friends/network. So if you are really good at mingling with people and making use of connections, and particularly if you have any book or service that benefits from word of mouth (examples: a local history book, or a side business coaching other writers) then multi-author events & book festivals might be a good idea. Other reasons you might consider it:
1. Just for fun if you're an extroverted type
2. Turning a vacation into a tax write-off
3. To give off the perception of being "big" (if you actually are, or are on your way)
Doing them to sell books has never been anything but a waste of time for me. And since I'm more of an introvert I would probably only consider it if the event was both local AND well targeted to my genre, if some author friends I just wanted to hang out with were also there, or I was getting paid to speak or something.
Goodreads is a site for readers, so...many authors avoid it like the plague. It's a great place to see how much people hate your books and exactly why and go into a doom spiral, haha
Can you make a video on your views on often repeated advice Show, don't tell" ? A lot of people have differing views about what this means in fiction writing, curious to know what yours is and how you interpret this in your own writing.
cats!
hey, Lidiya, how do you feel about people making suggestions about topics for videos? I might have one 🙊
Yes, a lot of videos have been because of viewer suggestions, so go ahead!
@@lidiyafoxgloveauthor So, as per your experience, you're obviously very good at teaching yourself stuff. I am as well (and I'm also too old to pretend to be modest, sorry not sorry). But what I've seen in life is most people for whatever reason are not very good at this, particularly when tackling big subjects (not the same to google "how to boil an egg" than "how to write a novel"). I'm not even sure this is a skill you can even teach, or rather is one of those you have to sorta _experience_. I remember my college classmates being astonished by the fact that the way I had made it in that difficult test was by reading more stuff than the books in the program, which neither of us could understand. But then I could understand them, because I realized what knowledge I was missing, found resources to fill in the gaps, and did the reading, which is my normal process for learning whatever "oh shiny" caughts my eye at any given point. Aaaanyway, this is too long, but I thought it could be a good/interesting idea for a video talking a bit about how you self-teach yourself stuff. I don't think even in this era of abundant access to knowledge/information this is a common skill.
@@elisabasta Fair enough. I think about this now and then. I kind of wonder if it's just how some people's brains work but it might at least make a good clickbaity sort of video at some point...
@@lidiyafoxgloveauthor It's probably the school system, they teach you to expect guidance for acquiring knowledge. Speaking in particular of learning how to write fiction, there is a lot going on. I'm just doing the reading now (that's also how I found your channel). Smart(ass) me, the first book I picked up was "The Western Canon", by Harold Bloom. Of course, it was useless for me right now. But being able to asses “this stuff is way over my head atm” vs. “I’m going to suck forever and I’m also too dumb to learn this” is one of the skills involved in autodidactic learning, in my experience.
Hi! You're wonderful, just gotta say! I really love watching your videos and you seem very honest and open. I was wondering, have you ever struggled with starting a youtube channel knowing that people will see you and maybe figure out where you are and who you are? I would like to start a channel but I'm very afraid of the internet :/
Thank you! I worry a little bit, I think everyone does, but...as soon as you sell a book someone knows who you are and could find you. I just think this is like worrying about being mugged. It could happen, but I'm not going to never walk down the street again...
I had the same reaction to your steamy romances ;-) ..yeah, nice but ... when can I get the next Hidden Lands book.
To be fair, I am not the target audience for se*fest romances, and I love the stories and worldbuilding overall AND the steamy scenes didn't make me fall laughing from the couch (believe me, high praise. Most se*-scenes I find rather ridiculous). So.. I didn't waste my time with them, but for purely selfish reasons, I am all for "Hidden Lands" from here on out.
Good, because me too! It's just taken a long time to get here, phew. Basically every decision and all hard work I've done my whole life was with the ultimate goal of having enough financial freedom to write these books, and it was still dependent on having CZcams do decently well, which is a little crazy when I think about it that way, but it seems the time has finally come.
@@lidiyafoxgloveauthor Yeah, eating and not dying of exposure is awesome, so I completly understand writing to market. I wish you all the success and luck you can handle ;)
Is this your first book in this series? I’ve been trying to keep up through many of your videos but I’m not sure if I’m clear on whether you’ve actually ever published a book set in the world/story of your heart, 30 years of endeavor and dreams and waiting..
Yes, actually one of my videos this upcoming week is just going to be chatting about what I've done & where I'm going with this world since I realize it's not always clear, especially across so many videos, but the published books in the world of my heart so far are:
The Broken Queen (book 1 of a planned 2)
The Cursed Soul Trilogy (complete)
Doll Girl Meets Dead Guy (standalone)
@@lidiyafoxgloveauthorthank you so much for addressing that. I’ll look forward to this next one!
That's a fat chair! I need that.
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Marketing is terrifying.