Free Ways to Market Books

Photo by Balázs Kétyi on Unsplash

I sold four Kindle copies of my poetry book for $0.99 this last time, and one other person downloaded and read a KU (Kindle Unlimited) copy. It's not much, but it is still encouraging. The first couple times I tried to give "Un-Clenched Emotion" away for free, there were no takers. Then I gave away 1, then 6, then 70! I tried some Amazon Advertising this time and wasn't very successful, but that's okay, marketing is a learning process!

Photo by Robin Pierre on Unsplash

Of course, I use this blog to market. I'm not sure how successful it is. I do get a lot of traffic that you can see by looking at my counter. I'm not sure how I did it! Just showing up helps. I don't have much interaction, only 4 comments and no subscribers' through blogger, but people are looking and that makes me happy. Then I do have some subscribers on Goodreads that I just found out about. When I post my new blog posts on Facebook, I usually get a consistent 7 or 8 people who look. (My blog has a reports section, that's how I know). I want to thank all of you who do look at my writings! I have over 1000 X (formerly twitter) followers, but I don't get many looks from there. I'm working on being more active on X, there are a lot of authors helping authors on that platform. I'm not sure how many followers that aren't family or people I know on Instagram. It's a big sized number I think, but not so much as X. I don't get that much interaction with Instagram yet either. The Goodreads author program is also free and there are many groups you can participate in. I belong to some and have gotten a few reviews from there. There are a few people who also marked "Un-Clenched Emotion" as want to read. So Goodreads is also a good marketing platform. The cool thing is I don't have to pay anything for these platforms.

Photo by Carl Heyerdahl on Unsplash

There's a couple of other of things that aren't costly that I could do to market my book. I could create a separate Facebook page and invite those interested. It seems like so much work though, added to this. And then I could attempt to create a newsletter, but that seems like A Lot of work. You may have noticed, I'm not extremely consistent in simply writing this blog.  It takes awhile for me to come up with a subject to talk about and sometimes I just don't feel like doing it. If I make a newsletter, it's got to be consistent. And then, of course, I have no idea how to get subscribers. So there are a lot of things I do to market my book, and somethings I could be doing but don't.

Selling Indie Books

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

First, for those of you are curious, I was once again unsuccessful in selling "Un-Clenched Emotion" for 99 cents. I had made 2 full price sales before that, so not the end of the world. Speaking of selling books, I recently sold to 2 other countries. Usually KDP reports shows how many sales you have a week (or how many Kindle Unlimited pages are read) a month, year etc. So I waited a week to check the reports, and those foreign sales were not on my KDP reports. However, I did get money in my bank account for those sales. All is good. Speaking of making money, for the first time since I published my book in 2016, I was emailed a tax form for the royalties on my book this year. What I made is in the extremely low double digits, but it was still exciting to get that tax form.

Photo by Julian Hochgesang on Unsplash

I do believe in order to make money and more sales, I need to spend something on advertising. Previously I was questioning whether Amazon Ads was worth it. Now, I am pretty sure it is. Many Indie Authors that I am in contact with expressed their success with the program. I really need to take a closer look on how to use these ads. Amazon has a lot of guides. I looked at some of them and find them daunting. I have bought some marketing through other companies in the past. I have to say, never pay for social media shout outs. You can do that yourself for free. Many people on X (Previously twitter) will retweet your post for free, especially if you retweet their posts. Someone once even made an unsolicited post advertising my book on Instagram. You can get Facebook friends to help you too. I really need to make a Facebook page to promote my writing.

Photo by Kendall Scott on Unsplash

I may soon have free advertising through Amazon. It has been said that if you have over 50 reviews of above a certain star rating, Amazon will put your book in their newsletter. I have strong doubts about this. I am not that far away from 50 reviews. My star rating is definitely high enough. I am hoping that I will be pleasantly surprised and get "Un-Clenched Emotion" in a newsletter because of this. For all of those Indie Authors out there, I wish you success in your marketing ventures. For curious readers, please leave reviews for those authors!

Amazon Prime Days and Author Promotion (99 cents, 7/10/23-7/14/23)

Photo by micheile henderson on Unsplash

Amazon Prime Days are Tuesday July 11th, and Wednesday July 12th 2023. I decided to try an experiment. I am reducing the price for "Un-Clenched Emotion" from $2.99 to $0.99 on the Kindle!  The book will be on sale the day before Prime Days, Monday 7/10/2023 until the day after, Thursday 7/13/2023. If you haven't found the link yet,  it is: 

https://www.amazon.com/Clenched-Emotion-Natasha-Gruss-ebook/dp/B01LZNVH4Y

I have done this 99cent deal before, but completely failed at it. It doesn't hurt to try again!  To get you interested in my book, I'll show my YouTube Teaser once again:

I believe I failed on the first go around because I am not the best at advertising. When I self published my book with Amazon I naively believed that Amazon would help me advertise....for free. It might be needless to say that I didn't really know what I was doing. I just did it. The final product, the book "Un-Clenched Emotion", turned out great.  Promoting the book didn't turn out so great, and it's still been a struggle, but I learn more everyday. 

Amazon does have a marketing section for authors and an advertising section,  but you have to pay for advertising. I'm always trying to save a penny or two, so I haven't looked into this as much as I should because it looks expensive. I am just making my 99cent sale coincide with Prime Days; instead of buying Prime Day Ads. Another reason I haven't looked more into advertising on Amazon is because I've heard other authors recommend it not be used. Now I'm seeing authors that Do recommend it! Who knows? The same goes for Goodreads Ads.

I have found another free way to advertise "Un-Clenched Emotion". Many book promotion websites offer free author interviews. So I answered a bunch of various questions about myself multiple times. You can't beat free advertising. I believe that the interviews I have posted so far have added traffic to this blog and have enticed some people to download and read my book on Kindle Unlimited. I have 3 interviews published online.  They are at:

Awesome Gang: https://awesomegang.com/natasha-gruss/

Pretty-Hot.com: https://pretty-hot.com/natasha-mckinley/

and

Crave Books: https://cravebooks.com/author/natasha-gruss/interview

Photo by Marten Bjork on Unsplash

I've wondered for awhile if blog tours worked for selling books. Some of them are pricey. I figured doing these Author Interviews will give me an idea if they will work or not. I also am not sure how well they work for poets.  Book blog tours seem to be geared toward other writing genres. If you're a poet and have gone on a book blog tour, let me know how it worked out for you. Let me know about Goodreads and Amazon paid ads too.