The Difference a Year Makes My Journey to Self-Published Success By Eva Pohler

After years of rejection from agents… Dear Eva, You are a talented writer, but… Dear Eva, I love your voice, however… Dear Eva, I’m on the fence with this one, but…

I took the plunge in August 2012 I read books about publishing. Resources for Self-Publishing Smashwords Style Guide, by Mark Coker (free) Building Your Book for Kindle, by KDP (free) Self Publishing 101, by Shelley Hitz (free)

I Assembled a Team  Professional Editor  Professional Cover Artist

I Chose My Publishers Ebook: Kindle Direct Publishing Smashwords Paperback: Createspace Lightning Source

And then I watched my sales dashboards. AndI waited. Nothing happened.

In June of 2013, I went to a writers’ conference called EVERYTHING CHANGED!

My Amazon Author Rank Increased

My Book Sales Increased

And Now I’m a Fat Cat Rolling in Money

Well, maybe not… But I have doubled my monthly teaching salary, and I did it in less than a year.

What did I do to achieve this success? I will tell you, step by step.

Make the First Book FREE Your first book becomes your very best marketing tool. People who like it will buy your other books.

Buy a BookBub Ad Hundreds of thousands of ebook lovers subscribe to BookBub.com. When you make your first book free, buy an ad, and you will get thousands, and sometimes hundreds of thousands, of downloads. This will also increase the number of your reviews.

Exchange Back Matter Find an author in your genre who will exchange first chapters with you. At the end of your book, you can say, “If you enjoyed x, you may also like y.” Then provide the first chapter from your exchange partner. You can also recommend one another on your websites.

List Your Free Book List your free book on every free and cheap site.

Develop Brand Awareness Create an image for yourself and use it on your website, marketing materials, and social media sites. Try to make your image recognizable to your readers.

Build a Following Make your website informative and entertaining. Interact on social media. Book a virtual blog tour. Join forces with other writers.

Create a Street Team After you’ve published two or more novels, find book bloggers who love your work and invite them to join your street team. Create a secret Facebook group and give monthly missions and rewards.

Publish Often To take advantage of Amazon’s algorithms, you should publish something every three to four months.

Experiment with Advertising Try using targeted Facebook, Goodreads, and Google Adwords ads to reach specific audiences.

Keep the Buzz Going Use teasers, cover reveals, giveaways, and frequent releases to keep people interested in you.

Develop a Marketing Plan Consider your immediate, future, and distant goals. Let me show you mine as a sample… wp- content/uploads/2014/02/M arketing-Plan-Sample.pptx