Marketing Red Rock – a plan for promotion

I don’t intend doing a great deal of marketing and promotion for Red Rock. This is a re-release and in my mind it’s already had its day. But rather than simply press publish and leave it there to gather dust, I’ve decided to do a few things to give it a boost. It will be interesting to see which, if any of these, result in an uptick in sales.

1. Author social media accounts, twitter, Instagram, other? In the end I decided to set up an author Instagram account. I then generated a set of promotional graphics using Midjourney and Canva which I will publish to this account at regular intervals.

2. Run a giveaway. (Unfortunately Goodreads only allows this for US authors so I will run it from my author IG account and try to boost on Twitter) The giveaway will be for an e-copy – that way I can run it internationally. It might be good though to have some additional swag or a prize to make it more interesting. The easiest thing for me to offer is a chapter critique.

3. Countdown deals on Kindle Unlimited. I could offer it free or at 99p  to coincide with a special event such Earth day.

4. Review copies. Offer review copies in various ‘groups’ I belong to in the hope that they will enjoy it and give it a boost.

5. Participate in indie author events eg #indieapril on twitter

I will report back on these and what effects they have, which appear to be the most useful, and which don’t appear to make any difference to sales. This will be useful for me when I come to self publish my next book, which won’t be a re-release. The next one will be something new.

Formatting for Kindle and Print: A very simple guide.

 

Here is a very simple checklist for formatting your book for publication using Amazon. This is for both kindle and print. Make sure that before you start this stage that your novel had been fully edited and proofed.

Formatting for Kindle:

•         Clean document:  Ctrl A to select all. Set to ‘normal’ from headings section.

•         Set up title page, copyright etc format to centre set book title to Title, other text to normal.

•         Insert hyperlinks.

•         Inset page break at end of section

•         Set chapter titles to Heading, set text to normal,

•         Put page break at end of each chapter: On the Paragraph screen, under Indentation > Special: select First Line, and indent it by 0.38”

•         Remove spacing before and after

•         Click on normal and update normal to match selection

•         Edit title and heading style in the same way so they do not indent.

•         Generate epub/MOBI files (I use Draft2Dignital for this stage but I don’t press ‘publish’ as I’m only after the files.

I find it useful at this stage to send the novel to my kindle to check it is displaying correctly and also to pick up any last minute errors that may have crept in.

Formatting for print:

•         Use your clean kindle file as your starting point.

•         Set book size 6x9 (or 15.24: 22.86)

•         Ensure that you have no clickable hyperlinks in your book.

•         Add page numbers at bottom of page in the centre.

•         Select different first page to remove the page 1 number.

•         Check page breaks are where you want them

•         Export to pdf