Creating a Lookalike audience that actually buys!
By: Ginger | Posted on January 21, 2022
Creating a Lookalike audience for your Facebook ads is far more useful than simply trying to advertise to FB users as a whole, even when you try to narrow that group down by the specific demographics you’re targeting or the interests you think your potential readers might all share. But creating that Lookalike from your entire mailing list isn’t nearly as effective as creating it from a more refined subset of that list, and when it comes to sending out ads looking to sell copies of your book, the subscribers you want to focus on are the ones most likely to buy a copy. Figuring out which ones those are, however, can be tricky. Luckily, Ginger has some advice on the best way to do that. Last month, I wrote a blog post about how the Apple IOS 14.5 update had disrupted the performance of a lot of authors’… Read More >
Should you advertise direct to your Series Page?
By: Ginger | Posted on December 24, 2021
It’s an unfortunate reality that many authors cringe when they hear that Amazon has made yet another change to their storefront with regards to how product pages are displayed or laid out. After all, it seems like more often than not those changes are more of a benefit to Amazon than to the actual author whose book is being sold on that page. So it’s a welcome relief to learn that they’ve finally added something that is actually useful. For authors that like to write books as part of a series, Amazon now allows more customization around how your series landing page looks and acts, making it a much more powerful tool for selling multiple books. Here’s Ginger with how you can start taking advantage of this! It’s a pretty well-established fact that the most successful self-published authors tend to write multiple books – often as part of a… Read More >
Tweak your Sales Strategy before Cyber Monday!
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on November 12, 2021
Every year, Black Friday and Cyber Monday seem to grow bigger as consumers save up their money for when they think they’ll get the most bang for their buck. But most of the really big deals are limited, and not everyone is looking for a new 60 inch TV or fancy espresso machine anyway. There are plenty of consumers that don’t even know what they want, and they’ll just be browsing online on Cyber Monday for anything that catches their fancy. And that’s why authors are missing an opportunity if they don’t try to capitalize on all those new eyeballs. Here are a few ways to get yourself and your catalog ready for the biggest online sales day of the year. For decades, America has been gripped by Black Friday fever. The day after Thanksgiving – the last Friday in November – is when department stores and retailers traditionally… Read More >
The startling importance of your “Look Inside”
By: Ginger | Posted on October 22, 2021
I never feel my age as much as when I catch myself referring to the “good old days”, and yet with self-publishing I can’t help but think back about how much easier things were (or at least seemed) back when the online eBook landscape wasn’t so crowded. With less books to choose from, it didn’t matter as much if you clearly did your own covers or hadn’t tweaked your blurb to perfection. Writing in less popular sub-genres was no big deal, either, because while there were fewer readers, they were hungry for content and there weren’t many authors feeding each niche. And don’t even get me started on advertising! It not only cost less but gave a much better return. True, those days are gone, but that doesn’t mean you can’t make money as a self-published author anymore – you just have to pay a lot more attention to the… Read More >
Showing appreciation to your reviewers can go a long way
By: Ginger | Posted on September 3, 2021
One of the biggest challenges you’ve likely faced as an author is getting reviews for your books, especially early in your self-publishing careers, and helping with that is one of the reasons I started Hidden Gems in the first place. But just as you appreciate getting reviews, your reviewers will appreciate being acknowledged. So whenever possible, take the time to publicly appreciate your reviews and the readers that take the time to leave them. Ginger has some examples of how you can go about doing this, as well as some advice on what to be careful not to do. We all like to feel valuable. It’s the human condition. From reading your kids their bedtime story, to sharing your own stories with readers, there’s a validation to be had in contributing something meaningful to the life of others. Many of these things we do without expecting or demanding acknowledgement… Read More >
Befriend other authors for support and collaboration
By: Ginger | Posted on August 6, 2021
I’ve mentioned before that I attribute much of my success as an author to being part of an online writing community where I could ask questions, get support, or just talk to others that were dong the same thing I was doing, and going through the same sort of experiences and challenges. Even though that community is no longer around, I’m still friends with many of those authors, Ginger being one of them. Befriending another author directly is essentially the same thing, the two of you just make up a smaller community, but it’s no less important or beneficial. Just remember that while you might do your writing alone, that doesn’t mean that you’re alone in writing. Ernest Hemingway once wrote: “Writing, at its best, is a lonely life,” but uncharacteristically, I don’t agree with Papa on this one. The most successful authors that I know are surrounded by… Read More >
BookBub Ads – Part One: Getting Started
By: Ginger | Posted on March 5, 2021
When it comes to advertising, Amazon isn’t the only game in town. Facebook is still a familiar favorite for those trying to drive traffic to their books, and some authors have even ventured into using YouTube and TikTok to promote their work. But have you given Bookbub a try? Once just a hard-to-get newsletter promotion, Bookbub now allows authors to place ads in front of their large readership. In this first installment of a three-part series, Ginger gives you the lowdown on the Bookbub advertising platform and what you need to know to decide if it’s right for you. One often overlooked but surprisingly effective advertising platform is BookBub – with many authors unaware they even run ads. For most self-published authors, getting a BookBub ‘deal’ is the only feature they’re interested in – often considered the Holy Grail of book promotions. But for a fraction of the cost,… Read More >
The 30-day Social Media Challenge
By: Ginger | Posted on December 11, 2020
One of the topics I discuss most often with authors looking for advice on expanding their readership is social media, because the importance of building a following cannot be overstated when it comes to self-publishing. There’s no one else to do it for you, so even if you shun social media in your personal life, you can’t afford to ignore it when it comes to your writing. That’s why advertising and marketing expert Ginger is here not only to challenge you into using your social, but he’s also handing out plenty of tips on how to do it effectively. There’s probably nobody reading this who doesn’t know what NaNoWriMo is – the “national novel writing month” in which people commit to writing 50,000 words in 30 days, each November. Well, successful self-published authors spend every month as if it’s NaNoWriMo – because of how important it is to write… Read More >
What are your Publishing Priorities?
By: Ginger | Posted on April 3, 2020
As many of us know, when it comes to self-publishing, actually writing your book is really only the first step in a much bigger process and to really have any chance of achieving success in this business, you can’t afford to miss or skip any of the other steps. You want to make the most out of each book launch, which means being prepared and well organized – in other words, “get all your ducks in a row.” Unfortunately, that advice only works when you’re already sure which order your ducks are meant to go in! That’s why in this short guide, we’ll break down the publishing priority list for any independent author. One of the things that holds back a lot of self-published authors is the sheer scale of launching a writing career. Writing a book is hard enough – but then you’ve got to teach yourself how to… Read More >
10 Software Essentials for Authors
By: Hidden Gems | Posted on November 15, 2019
With the rise of self-publishing, there’s a growing differentiation between people who just publish – and the truly successful authors who produce books that are indistinguishable in quality from those of the top 5 publishers. One of the ways in which they achieve this is by using the same tools as publishers do; or often, even better versions of them. Here are some software essentials as recommended by our community of Hidden Gems authors – which could empower you to add additional speed, precision and polish to your published works. Vellum It’s a cliche that writers tend to favor Apple products, but in the case of this highly-touted formatting software, the fact that it’s only available on MacOS suggests there’s some validity to that. Vellum is designed to streamline the entire process of formatting books – including inserting links and pretty flourishes, assembling box sets and store links, and even… Read More >
