Hello all, I have two novels published by a small niche publisher. I'm in the process of building a niche I call dark inspirational. Basically it's Christian fiction with paranormal themes. When my first novel came out, sales looked promising, and even strangers who bought it emailed me to say it was amazing. I even saw people on facebook posting reviews. But that enthusiasm hasn't carried on, so now I've hit a brick wall where sales have completely stopped. When I search for advice on what to do next, it's all the same. Build a website that visually conveys your brand, blog on a regular basis, use social media, use goodreads, blah blah. Everyone is doing those things. I'm already doing them and they are not helping me break from the pack. I can't email reviewers to offer free copies because there's no such thing as a site that reviews dark inspirational fiction. I can't shelf my stuff with similar titles because there are so very few similar titles. My niche exists in movies and music, but not in fiction. I know there is an undiscovered market, but I can't seem to find it. What are you supposed to do for marketing when you've moved past the blog and the tweets? I'm pulling my hair out here. Help!!
I'd say ask for reviews - never mind that it's a different genre, find a similar genre, say - dark fantasy, mystery, Christian fantasy, paranormal - and then ask. If THEY feel it is unsuitable, they will say so - but it seems unnecessary to me that you yourself are not sending review requests based on what you feel will fit. Let the marketers and publishers and reviewers make that judgement - you go and knock on as many doors as there are! Have you gone around locally? Go to book shops and cafes and ask if you can do a reading in their venue, take with you your sales figures and come up with a marketing plan - why do you think your book will appeal to people, why should they let you use their place, what benefits can you bring them? Then take your sales figures, your proposals and copies of your book and go to the book stores and cafes. Book an appointment with their managers if possible and make your proposal. If it's Christian fiction - are you yourself a Christian? If yes, I'm gonna assume you attend a church. Can your church not help you promote it? How about Christian book shops? How about a youtube video - something funny, a song that promotes your book?
Hi, I hate to say it but sales go up and down. There's sort of a pattern to these things. You first put the book out and sales are slow. Then it get's noticed and they pick up. Then it sort of plateaus and they slowly start sliding away. It's sort of log growth of bacteria in books! Remember to get your liking and tagging down, join the Goodreads thread or the Kindleboards thread if you haven't already. Put the book out to professional book bloggers for review. You can always try a new cover and blurb. However probably the best way to garner new sales is to write more books. Move slightly away from your genre, only a tiny bit, because you want to attract new readers and then hope they'll migrate across. Hope that helps. Cheers, Greg.
Psychotick beat me to it, but yes I came back to say - write more books. You can't keep a world interested in just one book forever. Look at Harry Potter, as famous as it is - do you hear much talk of it nowadays, ever since the last book and then last film has been out? You need to keep writing. Your existing fan base wanna read other things, and what's more - they wanna read other things FROM YOU. You also find new readers, new fans this way and the new people will see your old stuff and think, "Hey I haven't read that yet" - and yep, buy it!
Go through Google and Facebook and find all of the people who reviewed your book and said nice things. Try to contact those people directly to get permission to reprint their reviews. Add all reviews in which you got "permission to reprint" into a DOC file. When you have them all gathered, do a teaser for your book at the beginning of the file and one at the end of the file, with links to where people can buy the book. Then compile the DOC file into a PDF file. Once you have a PDF file assembled, go to Fiverr.com and find those people who offer distribution to Document Sharing sites and pay them to distribute your PDF file. Then go through your list of reviews to find the shortest reviews that have the biggest emotional bang to them, and distribute those via Facebook with a link to your book. You can just do a simple post with the text as your message, or you can include the review in an image with the short link for your book also in the image. HINT: Images are shared more on Facebook than text posts. Where possible, you want to use reviews that will create in the reader a desire to read the book. You can even skip the reviews for your social media images and just create a teaser for your book to be included inside the image. You can also find on Fiverr.com people who are willing to share your posts in dozens or hundreds of book related Facebook groups. My experience has shown this to be a mixed bag on results. Sometimes it works out well, and sometimes not so much. You can do the same on Twitter, but bear in mind that if you distribute as an image, you can beat the 140 character limit. Next, you can contact bloggers who talk about topics that would fit your book's audience. If you write up a short teaser for your book, and you include a couple of powerful reviews with your submission, many bloggers will post as is for free. You can also take that teaser with reviews and distribute through article distribution sites such as EzineArticles.com. When you contact bloggers, you can let them know that you can provide them the teaser and reviews for them to share with their readers, and if they have an Amazon Associates account (Amazon's affiliate program) they can link to your book with their link and make a little money for the recommendation. If they have a sizeable audience, I'd say at least 1000 regular monthly visitors to their blog or on their mailing list, you can provide them a review copy of the book so they can write their own reviews. Books just don't die. They die when people stop talking about them. And it is completely within the control of the author to make sure that lots more people get the opportunity to talk about their books. I'd recommend taking the time to track down and contacting reviewers, for "permission to reprint" their reviews of your book. I'd also recommend taking the time to create a few teasers for your book, and distributing those teasers through article syndication sites, social media, document sharing sites, and through targeted bloggers.
kboards.com is a writing forum that focuses on indie publishing and marketing your work. There's a lot of good info there.
