Guest Post: Sage advice from Julie Ann Dawson

As regular readers of this post know, I spend some time over at Kindle Board's Writer's Cafe (a great place of very knowledgeable supportive people btw). One of the people who "tells it like it is" is Julie, who like me, runs a small publishing company (Bards and Sages). She had a post the other day that I really liked so I asked her permission to guest blog it and she agreed...so here it is.

WHY YOUR SALES HAVE DROPPED

There have been a lot of threads lately about sales dropping, and many of them are pointing the finger at Amazon. It isn’t Amazon’s fault. Some of this may apply to you.

What you’ve done wrong.
You have depended too much on Amazon to find customers for you. Too many authors are 100% dependent on Amazon to do the heavy lifting. Your sales depend on Amazon algorithms in order for Amazon’s customers to find you, instead of you going out and finding your own customers.

How you can fix it.
Go find your own target market. Visit sites that cater to the type of people who would be interested in your book and start promoting there. Take advantage of services like Project Wonderful that allow you to place low-cost, highly targeted ads on sites frequented by the exact type of reader you are looking for. Use Facebook ads to build your author fan page using the demographic data they have available.

What you’ve done wrong.
You have kept all your eggs in one basket for too long. Your fixation on Amazon sales rank has led you to put all your efforts into generating sales at Amazon at the expense of other outlets. I’ve always said I would rather sell 50 books a month each on 20 different sites than sell 1,000 books on just Amazon. Spreading out your sales volume reduces your risk, so when sales slow in one location your entire business doesn’t crumble.

How you can fix it.
Get your books up on other sites. Smashwords makes it easy to get your book into wider distribution. Seek out smaller niche retailers that cater to your specific genre. Get your book available in print using a service like Createspace or directly with LSI so that you have print distribution through a variety of retailers outside on Amazon. Then people who learn about your book can shop and the stores they are comfortable with, instead of having to shop where you tell them to.

What you’ve done wrong.
99 cents doesn’t mean anything anymore. The race to the bottom has finally bottomed out. When most books were listed on Amazon at $9.99, selling a book for 99 cents seemed like a great deal to consumers who were not yet aware of the difference between indie books and traditionally published books. But with the surge in 99 cent books and the increased reader awareness that 99 cents = self-published, the only people buying 99 cent books these days are value shoppers that buy everything at 99 cents.

How you can fix it.
Raising your price may cause a temporary drop in sales, but will increase your overall profit. Particularly with genre fiction, the price has historically been between $4.99-$7.99. Pricing your book at the same level as your small press peers in the industry creates the impression that you are in the mainstream of your genre.

What you’ve done wrong.
You have spent too much time commiserating with other writers and not enough time looking for readers. Your blog, website, and sales pitches are all geared toward “indie writers” and use jargon the average reader doesn’t know about or care about. You spend too much time promoting “indie books” and not enough time selling YOUR books to readers, readers who could care less whether or not a book is indie or trad.

How you can fix it.
Take DOWN the bright neon sign that screams “self-published author” and just be an “author.” Readers don’t care or have any desire to actively support self-publishers. They just want good books. Your fixation on being indie means that the only people who will find your books are people who actively search for indies, which are usually other indies looking for places to promote. Rewire your presentation to think about what is going to interest the average readers without shoving in their faces your self-published status.

What you’ve done wrong.
You have spent too much time blaming “the industry” for your problems. It is Amazon’s fault your sales have slipped. The trads are up to no good. Nobody will give you a chance. Yada yada yada. While you may not realize it, your daily, public whining is seem by casual readers, who are put off by it.

How you can fix it.
There is an old saying in sales that goes “Fake it until you make it.” That doesn’t mean to lie. What it means is to stop placing blame and engaging in public baiting and start focusing on the positive in your business. Customers want to buy from people they believe are successful. The appearance of success gives a certain confidence to consumers that you know what you are doing and are producing quality books. Stop referring to yourself as an “unknown author,” which simply reinforces the idea that you are nobody important. Stop referring to people in the traditional industry as “the enemy” and refer to them as “peers.”

What you’ve done wrong.
Stop thinking “Outside the box” and look what is actually in the box first. You jump around from marketing gimmick to marketing gimmick without a clear plan or goal, hoping to reproduce someone else’s success without understanding all of the nuances and factors that went into that success. Further, people are so busy recreating the wheel that they have forgotten what the wheel looks like.

How you can fix it.
Any marketing plan takes time. It can take years to build a strong fan base. Like the cliché goes, it is a marathon, not a sprint. Think small and then slowly expand so that you not only gain readers, but retain them for the long haul. A strong marketing plan requires a consistent message and repetition. Instead of jumping from place to place, focus your efforts on two or three sites to start that are frequented by the type of reader you want, and then use the existing tools to read those people on a regular basis. Most marketing professionals will tell you that the average consumer needs to see something seven times before they even remember it, let alone act on it. So your goal is to focus on repeating your message to a regular audience in order to build your base, and then expand out from there.


MY TAKE
Julie makes a good point about an over dependence on the Amazon algortihms. Many authors (mine included) have benefited from getting some good numbers and having Amazon recommend their books. This is not a substitute for other marketing efforts, and it's getting harder and harder to make the big lists. The number of sales that used to get you on the top 100 won't get you in the top 300 these days - there are just many more books out there and the $0.99 ones that get some legs do take up a lot of the top spots. She's giving us a good kick in the pants to do good solid marketing elsewhere and I agree.

I also love that she gives specific recommendations to how to fix it. We don't agree on all points (I'm less likely to use paid advertising) but I love that she's not just pointing at the problem but giving good real world solutions for how to solve it.

I also love that she is another voice trying to get people out of the $0.99 ghetto. I agree that it creates an impression that you are mainstream in the genre it is the same strategy I've used with Ridan authors.

I also love that she encourages a thought out plan and giving it time to work. Reactionary thinking just ties you up in knots - yes you need to be flexible and adjust but don't chase too many things in too many directions.


I want to thank Julie for her great words of advice and allowing me to share it here. You can find out more about her in the short bio below.

ABOUT JULIE
Julie Ann Dawson earned a degree in English, Liberal Arts from Rowan University in 1993. While there, she also studied marketing, public relations, and sociology. Upon graduation, she worked as a Public Relations Assistant for the City of Bridgeton’s Department of Recreation and Public Affairs, writing press releases, creating marketing literature, and assisting with organizing special events. She honed her sales and marketing skills while working for a South Jersey Kirby vacuum distributor, first as a sales representative and then as a team leader and finally as a recruiter. While with Kirby, her sales efforts won five paid vacations, including trips to Hawaii and Montreal.

Her work has appeared in a variety of print and digital media, including such diverse publications as the New Jersey Review of Literature, Lucidity, Black Bough, Poetry Magazine, Gareth Blackmore’s Unusual Tales, Demonground, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and others. In 2002 she started her own publishing company, Bards and Sages. The company has gone from having two titles to over one hundred titles between their print and digital products.