Reading Activity 0703: Case Study 9 Social Media and eBook Sales Success

Case Study 9

Reading Activity 0703 

In case study 9 they examine the rise of the Kindle ebook, particularly the fact that independent self published ebook sales so substantially increased in sales that half of Amazon's top 100 were independent self published books. From here, the problem, or the issue became, how the authors within the social publishing world were responsible for their own advertising and promotion. Or, as stated clarly in the text: 

"With a substantial faction of the social publishing market operating independently, advertising and promotion become the responsibility of the author. One portion of an author’s time is allocated to writing the novel, while the other half of the time is invested in social commerce, which includes marketing to expand the author’s fan base. The challenge is to differentiate an eBook from millions of competitive titles, then convince readers to download the digital offering onto a Kindle reader or other digital device."

So the question is, how have these authors tackled this issue? A large number of ways and they have worked. 

-Authors create a social media plan

-Blogging on Google+ or Wordpress about their new book

-Finding a good URL and keywords for Google search

-Google and Linkden landing page

-Research through topical groups, what works for engagement 

-Facebook to get people to go to their websites 

-Cross promotion. using Instagram, Youtube and Pintrest for a visual effect 

And from the text : 

"The author’s challenge is to entice user engagement, create awareness for the latest published eBook, and generate reader feedback, which can channel into digital book reviews. Many authors use the visual advantage to promote their eBook through storytelling in multiple posts."

-Twitter works as a hub. Writers @ other authors of similar genres, provide links to their blogs and webpages,  Some authors use it's video program Periscope.

Also Amazon offers an authors page (had no idea) so people use that, linking to twitter, website etc.

I just realized too that when I googled the topic of interest (love spells, i know) I bought a bunch of books that were super cheap on kindle and they were all independent books!!! Just random people. One of them was so bad it was good, the others were actually pretty awesome. However, love spells do not work. 

This is great information if I suddenly become good at writing cowboy, romance or sci fi novels