We have all hear about buying ads on Face and Twitter. I have followed some surveys from different writers groups and the general consensus of opinion is don't do it.
It just doesn't seem to work for books.
I did take a coaching lesson from D.D. Scott, International best selling author and marketing coach - www.DDScottville.com
She showed me a way to make Facebook work for authors and their books. 

It make perfect sense and we all should have thought about it for ourselves. Go where the readers are. I toiled away posting about my wonderful books on my Facebook author page for years. I paid for ads that went no where. I even had a shop on my page that cost me money and I sold nothing.

Look at the genre of your book. I have children's books and adult mysteries. Let's take the adult mystery kindle version of my books. I went on my author page and searched eBook mystery readers. You get a drop down of several choices. I chose the one with the most readers, something like 10,000 readers. that where I posted about my Kindle book Broken Branches. I did this over the Halloween weekend because my story is set in Salem Massachusetts at Halloween time. I got a tremendous amount of downloads.

Another  thing KDP is they have a KDP Global Fund. The more eBooks that you sell and the amount of pages that are actually read put you in the running for a bit of this money. Right now it's over a million dollars. Now that's enough to get your marketing juices flowing.

​Something else I learn is bundling your books. I have four children's book in the Hayden series. I spent two days making them into one file to upload to kindle. I made a new cover and titled the bundle Hayden's Adventures on the Farm. Then I searched for children's eBook readers and again found sites with lots of readers. I posted to that site and got a few downloads. I'll do it again before Christmas.

I usually post a free eBook and also mention another book that you pay for. It's a great hook for getting readers interested in your work.

I'll be learning more and letting you in on the secrets of marketing your books. so check back and please leave a comment or a question.

I




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Reviews for self-published authors like me are our only real way to know what you the reader thinks of our work. I have run across many people that have read one of my books and they say how much they really liked it and enjoyed reading it. They even passed it along for friends to read. While that is terrific and makes my day, I need to have it posted on Amazon.
Why post a review on Amazon? So others can read the review and decide if they want to order the book or not. If there is not one single review for a book then the person looking for that next good read will pass over a wonderful book just because they think, 'well no one has read this or it was so terrible that no one wanted to comment'.
I love to read a book from a self-published author. There are some great books out there that never make it to a Traditional Publisher.
Did you know that there are less than 400  agents that deal with the big five Traditional Publishing houses? I have also seen smaller independent traditional publisher springing up. Do I trust them? I'm reserving judgement until I know more about what and how they operate.
I belong to several writing groups, Sisters in Crime is one. I very much enjoy reading my fellow members books. Another is the Sarasota Authors Connection. I don't read fantasy as a rule but was given a copy of the Golden Harpy by Susan Klaus. I started to read it and did not want to put it down. I will write a review on Amazon for this book with no problem.
Writing a review takes about five minutes but means the world to an author. Did you know that the big name authors pay for reviews? Kirkus charges $495 for a review.
I want review from real readers and if it's good, I'll do my happy dance. If it's not so good or down right terrible I'll dry my tears, pull myself together and learn from it and try to do better in my next book.
​I'm still learning my craft and I need readers to tell me how I'm doing as a writer. My last book, 
Honey Tree Farm - For the Love of the Bee Keeper's Daughter  www.createspace.com/6227763
​has not one review, yet I've been told it's my best work so far. 
So help us independent self-published authors out, try our books and right those reviews. We want to hear from you.