Should Indie Authors Pay for Book Reviews?

I’ve been keeping an eye on a recent trend in the indie publishing community — paid reviews (and family/friends reviews) and the controversy surrounding them. But I fail to see why it’s such a hot topic.

On one hand, when I see people asking the question of whether or not it’s okay for authors to do this, the answer’s clear. I want to scream “of course not!” But what makes me want to scream even more is the fact that this conversation is happening at all. That’s especially true when we’re talking about online reviews, which we often are.

I get that indie publishing is still new for most authors. But if you’re going to use the Web to publish or promote your books, have the basic sense to understand the arena you’re entering first. Paid reviews are an ancient topic in the Internet age. So let’s just boil it down to the basics in case you missed them:

• Paying for reviews is stupid from a marketing perspective. As an author the only feedback you should care about is honest feedback. And you’ll never know if you’re getting honest feedback when you pay for that feedback. Even if you don’t insist on a positive review, not all reviewers going to tell you what they really think. They’re too afraid of how you’ll react or they’re afraid others won’t pay them for the same. There are ethical paid reviewers out there. But you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference. And you can’t improve your product or your marketing strategy based on a bunch of bullshit.
• If you pay for reviews and you do insist that all published reviews are positive, you’re a pathetic unethical schmuck. Period. If you aren’t ready for honest feedback, you aren’t ready to publish.
• Not only are there strategic and ethical issues with paid reviews, but you can also have your ass handed to you by Google. They don’t like paid reviews. You can be penalized if you’re caught. (And you probably will be caught.) Again, this is old news. And if you’re an e-book author, this can be especially problematic. Not only can you lose search traffic to your author or book website (and therefore direct sales), but if people find you somewhere else like Amazon and they want to learn more about you before buying, they might be SOL when they search for you and can’t find your penalized website.

Seriously folks. It’s this simple. Question: “Should indie authors pay for book reviews?” Answer: “Hell no!” There. All settled.

Just in case you can’t tell: laziness and a lack of common sense are major pet peeves. There’s really no excuse for this to be such a big topic of discussion. Maybe authors in favor of this really did miss all of the hoopla about paid reviews just a few years back. Or maybe it’s just my hypersensitivity to, and no bullshit tolerance for, spin given my background. Either way, it’s not enough to write. You need to make sure you understand the business side of publishing if you want to go it alone. If you don’t get the problems with paid reviews, you haven’t done your homework.

Indie Publishing Teams: Who to Include

We’ve talked about the fact that indie publishing is a business. And you know that if you’re serious about selling a top notch book you can’t go it alone. That’s where your indie publishing team comes into play. As a true indie publisher (rather than just a small publishing company with in-house staff), you’ll most likely work with independent contractors.

There are benefits to this:

• You don’t have to worry about long-term hiring, withholding income tax, or paying worker’s compensation insurance.
• You can handpick the best contractors for each individual project (the best designer for a children’s book cover might not be the same person as the best designer for a business book cover for example).
• You save money because you only hire people when you need them to complete specific tasks rather than paying a regular salary.

Now who exactly should be a part of your indie publishing team? What kinds of professionals might you want to hire as you bring your book to market? Here are several examples of contractors you might need to work with.

• Book marketing consultants
• PR consultants or publicists (not exactly the same thing)
• Cover designers
• Typesetters
• Developmental editors
• Line editors
• Proofreaders
• Copywriters (for your back cover blurb and marketing materials)

You may hire all of these people. You might be qualified to do some of the work yourself (I work as a freelance business writer, where I handle copywriting on a regular basis so I wouldn’t hire a copywriter, and I used to run a PR firm so I can handle that end for example). And some projects simply don’t need some of these people (a developmental editor would be more for a novel than a nonfiction book).

I’ve yet to meet an author who can honestly do all of these things themselves. And I can tell you from experience that trying to do it all yourself can wear you down and kill your project’s potential over time.

I’m sure I’m missing some other contractors you might consider working with. So who would you add to this list? Are there any here you hadn’t thought of while working on your own book? If you’ve already released one or more books and you could go back and do it over again, would you bring in any of these professionals to help? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

When Should You Start Your Book Marketing Plan?

When you publish your own book with the intention of selling it, you should always have a marketing plan. One of the biggest mistakes I’ve seen indie authors make is assuming they don’t need one. They just wing it or rely on a low price or a single distribution outlet to cover all of their marketing. Let’s assume you have more hope than that. For you and other indie publishers like you, another book marketing mistake comes in deciding when to put together that book marketing plan.

The Wrong Time to Assemble Your Book Marketing Plan

It’s understandable that some independent authors think the process should look like this:

1. Write your book.
2. Edit / polish your book and get it ready for publication.
3. Release the book.
4. Put together a marketing plan so you can drive more sales.

This is understandable because it’s easy to confuse marketing and sales. Marketing tactics and tools drive sales, but they aren’t synonymous. Marketing isn’t just what you do after your book is published to tell people about it and convince them to buy it. Marketing starts much earlier — or at least it should if you want to give your book the best chance of success.

Why Your Book Marketing Plan Should Come First

Your book marketing plan shouldn’t only come before the book is published. It should come before you even start to write the book. Here’s why:

1. If your intention is to sell the book, you should know your audience and target market long before creating a product that you hope will appeal to them. Your market research is a part of your book marketing plan.
2. Ideally you’ll want to build visibility and brand recognition (around your book, series, or you as the author) before the book is ever published. You do this to create an existing demand when you finally hit your release date.
3. Some marketing tactics take time to work, and you’ll want to invest time or money into them early in the game (for example, your cover design is a marketing tool). This also includes things like a pre-launch plan to get early reviews.

Waiting until your book is written or even published is too late. Your launch period is a valuable marketing time, and there should be a solid plan in place well before you get there. If you’ve already written your book, there’s no time like the present to work on your book marketing plan. Make sure your book appeals to the audience you intended it to appeal to, and figure out how you can generate awareness and demand before you release it.

If you’ve already released your book sans marketing plan, you might have a second chance. If you had a slow launch you can simply re-launch the book with a bang. Or maybe you’ll plan a launch for a new version (print vs e-book for example).

When did you write your book marketing plan? Did you have a plan in place before you launch? Why or why not? If you could go back and do things differently, what would you have done? Leave a comment below to share your thoughts, tips, or stories.

Use Ancillary Products to Promote Your Book (and Earn More Money)

It isn’t unusual to see indie authors mention that they aren’t earning as much as they’d like to be from their books. When I see comments like this I want to ask them two questions:

1. What does your marketing plan include?
2. What other revenue streams have you set up around your book’s brand?

Today I want to focus on the second issue — specifically using ancillary products as a way to earn more from your book even without increasing direct book sales.

What are Ancillary Products?

An ancillary product is simply a product related to your book and its brand. Think of it as an add-on. You see ancillary products for movies, TV shows, and some bigger books on a regular basis (traditional merchandising). You can do something similar with your indie published books. Not only can it bring in more income from readers who already loved your book, but it can offer a lower-cost option as a lead-in to book sales and keep income flowing in between book releases. And readers don’t have to wait as long for something new.

Examples of Ancillary Products for Indie Books

Here are a few examples of ancillary products you might release under your book’s brand:

1. Short e-books and reports — If you write nonfiction books, these might take a topic you touched on in the book and expand upon them (like a more in-depth tutorial). If you write fiction you might release short stories or novellas between novels. They might explore a subplot in more depth, they could be prequel stories about new characters you’ve introduced who sounded like they had an interesting past, or maybe they could just be shorter stories about what your characters are up to between the times Novel A and Novel B take place.
2. Workbooks and tools — If you write actionable books, you can also sell tools to make the process easier — a workbook, access to specialized online tools and calculators, or something else along those lines. For example, if you write a book about planning weddings (or even a novel revolving around the topic), you could release your own wedding planner.
3. Games — This is one I’ll be putting to use personally with the Murder Script series I’m working on under my Aria Klein pen name. The series happens to involve murder mystery party games, and later this year I’ll be launching my own series of downloadable murder party games as a result. You could create anything from a board game or card game to an app game or all-out software if you can partner with a developer. I can see this working best with mysteries and children’s books, but you could probably plan a game just as easily around any action-oriented books or even fantasy characters.
4. Courses — You might think of e-courses as services, but you can release them in product form too. It’s what I have planned (in addition to selling short reports) for my Query-Free Freelancer book expected to be released next year. Just create a members-only website (you can do this fairly easily with premium plugins and themes for a platform like WordPress). Then put your course material on that site. Only paying logged-in members can access it. You can also set up autoresponder email courses. The idea is to give buyers something they can access on their own time rather than a service-based approach where you have to physically be available and schedule and promote each event to a more limited number of participants.
5. Traditional merchandise — You could also rely on good old fashioned merch to serve as ancillary products. This could be especially good if you write inspirational books. Coffee mugs, pens, t-shirts, and calendars are just a few examples. Just think about any relevant product that could rock your logo or other brand elements, and ask yourself if it might appeal to readers.

The idea is to look within your own book first. Do you mention a specific product a lot? Could you create something similar to promote and sell? Does your book have a message that people would pay for? Is there an educational angle you could use to sell information products? There is no one size fits all list here. Your books dictate the types of ancillary products that would work best for you.

Why You Should Consider Releasing Ancillary Products

There are two main reasons to consider releasing ancillary products:

1. They can increase your income and help you get more mileage out of your book or author brand.
2. They can promote sales of your existing book or future books by keeping your name or your book or series names fresh in the minds of your target audience.

The financial incentive is pretty obvious. But think about that second point. You market your book. And you get paid to do so. It’s similar to me telling freelance writers they should incorporate revenue streams into their marketing plans and platform-building (like niche blogs and e-books).

If you can get more out of your marketing time, there’s no good excuse not to. And in this case those additional marketing-oriented income streams can help tide you over financially while you write your next book. What’s not to love about that?

Do you sell ancillary products in addition to your main books? If so, what products did you choose? Why? If you haven’t yet, are you going to consider it or is there some reason you don’t want to pursue the additional revenue streams and marketing options? What kind of success have you seen with ancillary products if you do use them? Share your thoughts, suggestions, tips, and stories in the comments below.

Why Your Books Are Your Best Marketing Tool

Writers of all kinds often say that they love writing but hate marketing. But that’s frequently because they confuse marketing and hard selling — “Buy! Buy! Buy!” In reality, the hard sale is only one small part of marketing and whether you realize it or not you probably market your books every single day.

When you set up your author website you were marketing. Every blog post you write that helps build visibility is marketing. Every comment you leave on this or other blogs with a link back to your website is also marketing. Every case of face-to-face networking or handing out your business card is a part of marketing. Every time you get new Twitter followers or have others RT your links you’re marketing. Every time you ask for a referral or get one simply because your work speaks for itself, you’re taking advantage of word of mouth marketing.

That last one is often the most important. A combination of word 0f mouth marketing and good PR can not only attract new buyers, but keep previous buyers invested in your work and coming back for more.

Your Readers Are Your Customers

I know I’ve said this before, but it’s important enough to repeat (and probably will be often here): when you’re an indie author, you’re a business owner. You conduct market research (or you should). You create a product for those prospective buyers. And you bring that product to market.

If you’re indie publishing to actually sell copies of your books, and not as a type of vanity publishing simply because you want to see your name in print (or virtually so these days), then you have to be able to think of your readers as more than just readers. You have to be able to think of them as customers.

New vs Repeat Customers

Here’s something just about anyone knowledgeable about sales or marketing will tell you:

This is where good PR on the customer side (and relationship marketing like discounts for past buyers or your customer newsletter) comes into play. You have a group of people with an obvious interest in your work, and you already know they value it enough to spend money on it. Those are warm leads. Heck, they’re downright hot leads.

The Role of Your Books in Book Marketing

Here’s why your books themselves are your best marketing tool:

Once you’ve done the initial promotion of your first book, you’ve built a reader base (or maybe you did so online via a blog or newsletter and converted those readers into buyers of your first book). Now your book becomes not only the product you’re selling but also a marketing tool that encourages future sales of future products or other books you’ve already published.

You shouldn’t have to work hard to get a buyer of Book A in a series to go out and buy a copy of Book B in that same series. The same applies if you have non-series books that target similar markets. That’s because the first book someone buys should practically make the next sale for you.

How do you turn your books into marketing tools? You don’t have to make them ‘”salesy” in any way. You just have to write a book (or e-book) that leaves the reader wanting more. As long as your work continues to do that, you’ll have a steady stream of buyers. Better yet, when your work leaves someone wanting more it often means they’ve enjoyed it enough to talk about it and share it with others who might enjoy it. So by putting out on a non-crap book, you earn not only repeat sales but customer referrals.

What about you? What has your experience been in converting one-time buyers into repeat buyers? How have you kept your past customers aware of new book launches, and what kinds of conversions have you seen? How could you improve your next book to make it an even better marketing tool? Leave your thoughts, stories, and tips in the comments below.