Successful Self-Publishing – It’s All About the Conversions
By: Ginger | Posted on August 2, 2019
Advertising expert Ginger is back this week with some more thoughts on what happens after you’ve written and published your book – specifically how to advertise, promote and hopefully sell copies to eager readers! Today, he’s talking about the cornerstone of any successful promotional campaign – conversions. A couple of weeks ago, I wrote an article about how to make sense of your Amazon Advertising facts and figures – and I had a few questions from readers about one important aspect of that: Conversions. Conversions are the technical term for when you ‘convert’ a visitor to your Amazon product page to a paying customer; or, in short, when they buy your book! In terms of successful self-publishing, any promotional efforts you make to drive potential customers to your product page need to result in a good percentage of ‘conversions’ – otherwise you’re leading horses to water, but none of them… Read More >
Free Cover Promo Creation Tools
By: Ellen Mint | Posted on May 3, 2019
A professional, eye-catching cover is a key start to getting your book noticed against a sea of competition, but book promotion shouldn’t end there. Many authors create other imagery for marketing their book in a variety of different places, whether it be on social media or paid advertising spots. While you can usually commission these from designers, if you are comfortable with photo editing and have an eye for putting together compelling imagery, you can save money by doing it yourself. Today’s guest author, Ellen Mint, gives us a quick primer on some of the free tools out there to get you started. Writers, you’ve got an amazing book, a perfect cover, and can’t wait to tell the world about it. You need a beautiful picture to make ads for facebook, amazon, or blogs. Readers are far more likely to click on a link if an eye-catching infographic entices them…. Read More >
Author Spotlight Interview: Luke Smitherd
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on November 20, 2018
Continuing our series of author interviews, we were delighted to sit down live with Luke Smitherd, the best-selling author of The Stone Man and many other critically-acclaimed and popular novels. One of the defining characteristics of the novels of Luke Smitherd is that they defy easy classification – which is somewhat true of himself, too. A former singer and guitarist – well-liked for his traveling homage to the likes of Michael Buble – Luke also played his hand as a professional darts play, commercial copywriter and much, much more. Today he’s a full-time writer with a loyal following who enjoy his unique and thought-provoking books; which I once described as “Stephen Kings meets Ben Elton.” Luke very kindly sat and chatted with us live, and here’s what he had to say: HG: Luke – your books aren’t easy to pin down as a specific genre, although you’ll often find them… Read More >
The Fundamentals of a Successful Book
By: Ginger | Posted on July 18, 2018
Recently, resident HG designer Ginger wrote an article about the importance of a strong cover for your novel – but there are many other fundamentals that go into whether a book is successful. Today he follows up on some of the other factors that can help lead you towards publishing success. “I don’t get it,” one aspiring author said to me recently. “I’m spending all this money on Facebook ads for my books – but I’m just not selling any!” Another complained: “I keep getting bad reviews!” A third lamented: “Nobody downloaded my books during my free promo days. Why?” These are questions that keep plaguing many would-be authors, and they don’t like the answer when they finally hear it. But it’s a bitter truth anybody who takes writing and publishing needs to hear – and take to heart. You can invest as much time, money and effort into promoting… Read More >
