What is the one thing you wish you had known before you started your own magazine?

If you are a self-published author, you may want to consider publishing via both options. I just remembered a survey I did with US-based readers when I published my book. I initially wanted them to just be on print versions to hold a special offering for the books. However, 80% of the readers say they rarely read print books nowadays and most of them consider continuing the books via Kindle. Though, one answer struck me the most. One guy said, it's not up to us to decide the definition of "reading." It's up to your audience. So, if you're thinking of publishing your book, it's better of have it either way because the end goal, aside from profit, is having your books read by your audience. Whether it's on kindle, android or live book, they should have the option to choose.

While you might be able to expect initial sales from family and friends who know about it, actual sales from people stumbling upon your book depends on a few factors when you upload it. 1.) Have you chosen the correct keyword phrases and categories? 2.) Are these categories extremely competitive? 3.) Did you incorporate these specific keywords and categories in your title, subtitle, and book blurb?(Note: not everyone can finagle a way into putting the word thriller in their title, but some can do it in their subcategories although at times that may seem too sales pitchy, not that anyone but authors who know what you're doing would notice or even care). 4.) Do you have between one-hundred to three-hundred people ready to buy your book when it is released? (family, friends, subscribers) When you can sell around that many copies the first three days of your release, Amazon's free marketing kicks in. Hot New Releases List, Those Who Bought This Book...etc. That's pretty much awesome sauce if you can manage it. 5.) Does my amazon page look inviting? 6.) Is there too much front matter before the actual sample chapter begins, thus impeding your readers from getting into the book right away? If the answers to these questions are a big fat no,(or a big fat yes to questions 2 and 6) then uploading your book and walking away from it is going to get you nowhere. You essentially need to take your writer's cap off and get serious about marketing. An indie author doesn't get to be complacent in that respect. Becoming a book marketing guru can be daunting and overwhelming when looking at it as a whole, and figuring out where to start has made many authors give up before giving it a chance. Which is why I am super happy to be answering this question for you. Not that you asked how to market your book. I suppose I've basically answered your question, but I'd like to take it a step further and give you a place to start so you aren't flailing around in the deep quagmire of marketing do's and don'ts. Amazon's search engines are designed to find books listed under popular categories and niches so keywords are going to be your best friend. One book that is absolutely stellar at explaining the process behind researching keywords is a book called Making a Killing on Kindle(Without Blogging Facebook Or Twitter) and another book called How to Sell Fiction on Kindle. The Reader's Digest version is this: go to Amazon.com and start typing in your genre in the search tab. The goal is to take your main genre and find subcategories that are popularly searched on Amazon. So when I type in the word Thriller I get "thrillers in books, mysteries and thrillers new releases 2016", etc. Now type in "thrillers a" and you get "thrillers and suspense books" etc. these top key phrases are the ones that are searched the most by people interested in that genre. Now try typing in "thrillers b" and you get "psychological thrillers books" and other key phrases, but this is an important thing to discover. Many people are searching for psychological thrillers. Does your book fall under that category? Is it a psychological thriller, a serial killer thriller, or possibly some other type of thriller that can be narrowed down to a specific niche? This can be a long and arduous way to research keywords and phrases, which is why I think grabbing those books that I mentioned above and memorizing the very dickens out of them is a great beginning for your marketing guru journey. Why? Because most of the research has been done for you, and you get a list of the most highly ranked keyword phrases for your specific genre...all current. You are also given instructions on simple html coding to help make your amazon page sparkle. I hope this information is helpful for you, and good luck with your book. I hope you are able to get it uploaded and visible on kindle as soon as possible. If you’re interested in learning more about the best practices on marketing your books feel free to visit me on my website at The Blond Guerrilla: Guerrilla Marketing, Writing, and Self-Publishing Your Book. http://theblondguerrilla.com Or set up a call and we can work on a plan to help you sell your books. I’m always excited to help fellow authors in their quest to get their books discovered. Happy marketing my author friend!

One approach would be to (1) Create a website from which your product can be purchased and downloaded; (2) Enable easy social sharing from the website so that happy customers multiply at no cost to you; (3) Market that site through PPC campaigns, targeting relevant search verticals. Basically, you'd be paying a commission to Google and Bing in exchange fore eyeballs on your site. Whether those impressions convert to sales depends on your presentation and (of course) the product itself. Conceivably, you might do all this yourself. But you might prefer to pay (1) A branding consultant / namer / domain broker to select and obtain the ideal domain name to use, (2) A web designer to build the site, (3) An SEM specialist to manage your AdWords and Bing campaigns, (4) A copy writer to craft your landing page sales pitch, improving your sales funnel and boosting conversion rates, (5) A content writer to produce additional articles, (6) An SEO to work on whatever it is they do this month. It isn't strictly necessary to pay for these services, if you're willing to teach yourself. You might accelerate that process and avoid expensive mistakes if you schedule a few short Clarity.fm calls with relevant experts. That's the approach I would use – building a site that functions like a store and advertising online through SEM. This way you can test the viability of your product without having to hire sales staff. Yes, you could try marketing through other channels such as local gatherings of college-bound students or via phone, email, radio, TV, mail, etc. But online you can access a broad range of potential customers with less initial investment in planning, staffing, and infrastructure. So it's a test case. If your product can't sell online in this way, then it may not be worth expanding with those other strategies. Furthermore, this online approach scales very well. If you're profitable while spending X on PPC, then you might grow those profits simply by reinvesting and raising that advertising budget. I offer professional services for #1 (names / domains) and #4 (sales pitch) above, if you're interested. To some extent, I know my way around #3 (SEM); but I don't manage campaigns for clients - only suggest tactics for those who run their own campaigns. Plenty of Clarity.fm experts could run an SEM campaign for you quite well if you'd like to outsource that marketing.

First, I think you need to look at why no one showed up for your writing on Medium. Did you just publish and forget it? What's your view-to-read ratio? Are the people reading your articles engaging with it (or at least reading to the end)? Selling ebooks is about 5% writing and 95% marketing. I wish that weren't the case, but the fact is that most ebooks are utter trash: riddled with typos, mostly packed with useless information, and generally executed poorly all around. But those terrible ebooks sell because they're marketed well. You can find tons of free resources on marketing, or you can buy (warily) any number of books about marketing ebooks online. You can also talk to someone who's helped other people set up successful ebook-selling operations — I'd be happy to help. The basics are: 1. Write something people need. If no one has the problem you're solving, it won't sell. 2. Put out lots of content around the subject matter on your own site/Medium that links back to your sales page for more info/next steps. 3. Write for other sites with big audiences. Guest post about your subject matter. Most sites are constantly hard up for content, so you have a decent shot of getting a post run of you submit it properly. 4. Be consistent. You can't run two guest posts and expect millions of dollars in sales. Many of the best sellers are putting out dozens of articles a month. 5. Test and iterate. Set up simple split testing on your site. Watch the conversion rates from your articles and see where spikes and dips are happening. Adjust as necessary. Making money from ebooks is not easy, and it's mostly an effort in self-promotion and sales. But if you follow through and keep testing, there's a lot of money to be made. If you'd like an experienced set of eyes to help with putting together a launch/marketing strategy, I'd be happy to give you a hand. Let me know. Good luck!

Basically, the question is this: Are people reading the book for your writing, or for your ideas? If it's for your writing (say, if you're a fiction author) then you should probably write it yourself. It'd be disingenuous not to. If they're interested in your ideas (which is the case with most Kindle non-fiction books), then what's important is that your ideas aren't lost. That doesn't mean ghostwriting is fine, only that you need to find an efficient way to get your ideas out without wasting your time writing. Basically, the process I use is to outline the book myself, sit down with a microphone, and talk through the entire book (basically recording a really rough draft of the audiobook straight from the outline). Then I transcribe it, and then hire a "writer" to work from the transcription to the finished text. That way it's high quality and maintains my ideas, but I don't have to do all the work of typing. I wrote a book that breaks down the process in a bit more detail (especially the process of outlining, how to record effectively, how to find that editor, etc.), but basically what I said above is all you really need to know. Here's the link if you want to check it out: www.amazon.com/Book-Box-Method-Quickly-Easily-ebook/dp/B014EUTYGM/