Self Publishing promotion update: (August 2024)

Here is my latest update on the various promotional activities I have undertaken to try to spread the word about my self-published books, and how successful or otherwise these activities have been.

1. Social Media

I joined a number of reader and author groups on facebook and did my best to contribute as far as possible. Most have very strict ‘no promotion’ rules but some do offer opportunities such a monthly post where people can post kindle sales or new releases. Apparently the way authors game these groups is to team up and then talk about each other’s books. Unfortunately I don’t have a team of author friends willing to big me up, so I just have to play by the rules. Where I was allowed to I advertised the kindle countdown sale for The Arid Lands and my ARC signups for Dragons of Dunmoray. The main benefit from joining these groups was the helpful advice on offer.

Other social media activities continued as normal.

2. ARC Readers

In the run up to self publishing my new book, Dragons of Dunmoray, decided that, rather than approaching review blogs, I would reach out for ARC (Advance Review Copies) readers. I set up an ARC signup form on google forms and included one important question – Why do you want to read Dragons of Dunmoray? This deterred non humans very effectively. I only had one signup who was clearly a bot.

So far I have sent out 20 review copies. Hopefully this will prove to be a better approach than my previous efforts of approaching review blogs directly.

3. Readers Book Club

The Arid Lands was chosen as book club read for April/May and the organiser sent out six free copies to the participants. There was lively discussion but then one of the participants warned everyone than Amazon frowns on authors leaving reviews for other authors’ books and will cancel your KDP account if they catch you. So this immediately killed off anyone leaving reviews for anyone else, which was a shame.

I did ask the participating authors if anyone would be happy to let me have quotes that I could use in my promotion, but nobody responded.

As of now this group appears to have fizzled out.

4. Indieverse awards

This has come to nothing and I won’t be pursuing it any further.

5. SPSFC4

I plan to enter The Arid Lands into SPSFC4. I thoroughly enjoyed taking part in SPSFC3 and although Red Rock didn’t make it past the first round I feel it raised my profile plus I discovered some fantastic new authors and books.

6. Kindle Sale

I ran a two day kindle countdown deal for The Arid Lands in June. Sales had tailed off over the preceding couple of months so I hoped that this would give it a boost. I did my best to promote it wherever I could but only picked up a handful of sales.

So in conclusion the approach I took to find ARC readers has been significantly better than pitching to review sites. Final tallies for how many ARCS I will send out at the proportion that translate into reviews are yet to be determined.

 

 

The Arid Lands and Red Rock promotion update:

Here is my latest update on the various promotional activities I have undertaken to try to spread the word about my self-published books, and how successful or otherwise these activities have been.

1. Social Media

I continued to promote Red Rock and The Arid Lands on Twitter/X, IG, my Facebook/Meta page, Threads and Discord. I did pick up sales of The Arid Lands on preorder and downloads of Red Rock from my free promotions, as well as the occasional sale of both outside of promotion.

2. Red Rock free kindle deals

The first free deal which ran for 3 days to coincide with the ten-year anniversary of Red Rock first being published resulted in a modest number of downloads but at least I was reaching potential new readers. I will have to wait and see how many of these translate into reviews.

The second 2 day free deal for Red Rock was run to coincide with the launch of The Arid Lands and produced a similar result.

3. SPSFC3

This contest (The Self Published SF Competition) will run for a year and the first phase, where I fully expect to get culled judging by the quality of some of the other contestants in my group, will run for 5 months. Initially there was no uptick in sales but it is likely that this is where my new downloads during the free offers came from. However, the contest did enable me to gain more visibility for my writing, which is always a good thing, and may well have contributed to those sales I did gain.

4. Review bloggers

I started approaching reviewers with The Arid Lands as soon as it was live for preorder on Amazon and I had set it up on Goodreads. My first observation was how many are asking for money for reviews. I’m not interested in paying but it’s clearly a lucrative industry. I passed over these guys and pitched the book to anyone who looked as if it would be a good fit. It takes a long time to thoroughly check out each review site so I sent these out in dribs and drabs throughout the preorder period. At launch date I had pitched/submitted to 20 reviewers. It is impossible to tell how many, if any, will result in reviews at this stage.

So in conclusion, of all the activities so far, it looks like free deals and participation in SPSFC3 have been the most worthwhile. I will have to look out for more opportunities like this.

Ten Years of RED ROCK

 It is now ten years since Red Rock was first published.

Red Rock remained in print for nine years until my rights reverted and I self published it so that it would still be available. I’ve enjoyed the process. It’s good having control although I do now realise how much my publisher did with marketing and promotion. They fixed me up as a speaker at conferences and placed Red Rock into libraries (from which I still get a modest income in PLR).

My main market was through those travelling book fairs that do the rounds of schools in the UK, and through these Red Rock sold quite well. It’s a book I am very proud of. I hope my readers, past, present and future, enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

So to celebrate Red Rock’s ten year anniversary I am making it free on kindle for three days only – 12th, 13th and 14th September.

If you would like to grab yourself a copy, now is your chance.

The Red Rock Promotion Experiment and where I go next.

The results of the Red Rock publicity and promotion experiment are in, and I’ve been analysing the results. Hmmm.

Red Rock was originally published in September 2013 through a traditional publisher and I had all the advantages of having a marketing team and a designated publicist helping me. I have spoken elsewhere on this blog about the promotional activities which we did.

For the re-release I avoided repeating those, although with future books there are definitely options I can pursue. But I did take the opportunity to try out a few other publicity activities largely geared towards the e-book, and focussing on what I could achieve online. This was mainly through the medium of social media. For example:

1. I set up an author Instagram account and make regular posts about my writing

2. I promoted Red Rock on twitter with a cover reveal and in general increased my interactions on that platform

3. I increased my activity in the various writing/author groups to which I belong and talked about Red Rock and what I was doing about re-releasing it

4. I revived my author facebook page

5. I enrolled in a Kindle countdown deal setting the price at 99p for one week

6. I timed the countdown deal to coincide with Earth Day

7. I participated actively in #IndieApril on Twitter 

Of course, there is the disadvantage that most of my immediate network have already read the book (if it is to their taste) so I was really trying here to extend my reach outwards to find new potential readers. I certainly learned what doesn’t work, (pretty much everything listed above) and I found the whole exercise an interesting if rather depressing experiment.

What is clear is that producing a quality product, editing, formatting, cover art, is the easy bit. Finding readers is a lot more difficult without the backing of a publisher. Even those who expect the author to do a lot of legwork can still make a huge difference to sales through their review networks etc.

So where do I go moving forwards?  Well I still intend to self publish my Science Fiction novels, but I’m going to keep aiming at the mainstream market with my thrillers and I will be giving them priority. I have a new novel on the go, but you will be seeing one of my SciFi novels hitting the virtual shelves in the not too distant future. But more on that later. For now I have some writing to do.

Countdown Deal for Earth Day

April the 22nd is Earth Day. A perfect opportunity to promote Red Rock. And also to test out Kindle countdown deals.

So for one week in the run up to Earth day, from the 15th - 22nd April, Red Rock will be available for the reduced price of 99p (UK) and 99c (US).

I will do my best to promote it on social media during this time. Let's see if I get an uptick in sales.

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

Red Rock (new) Cover Reveal

 Today I am delighted to share with you - the new cover for Red Rock!

A few tips for generating book cover and promotional artwork on MidJourney

Using MidJourney to generate artwork in support of my forthcoming self-publishing adventures has been a lot of fun. I’ve learned a lot along the way and I’m going to share a few tips with you. I hope, if you’re going to give MidJourney a try, that you find them useful.

1.    Discord channel: Set up your own Discord Channel and then invite the bot to it. This will enable you to keep all your images in one place and to easily find earlier prompts if you decide to generate further variations or upscales. The feed in the Midjourney channels moves far too fast!

2.    Aspect ratio: Midjourney defaults to a square image format. But you can change this. The aspect ratio’s I found most useful were 16:9 for a widescreen format, and 1600:1256 which is the ratio I used for book covers. You can use whatever you like but the algorithm responds to some better than others. The command to set aspect ratio is --ar 16:9

3.    Test algorithms: These are fun to play around with. More keep coming on line but the two I’ve tried are --testp and --v 4. Of these v 4 gave the results I liked best, however it does not allow you to set aspect ratio. So keep an eye out for whatever is new. You might find something you like.

4.    Lighting effects: You can influence the mood of you image by adding commands such as dramatic lighting, cinematic lighting, or octane render. Play around and see what works.

5.    Time of day: Moonlight, night-time, sunset, dusk. These all change the colours in your image and can dramatically change the outcome. I particularly like moonlight! Why not also try snowy landscape or stormy skies. And anything else your imagination suggests!

6.    Mood and style: You can make your image fit with a particular mood or genre. I’ve tried post-apocalyptic, cyberpunk and fantasy, all of which were very effective and created some interesting results

This however has only skimmed the surface of what you can do. If you have a hunt online you will find many more useful guides. Here is one I found particularly handy. Midjourney Prompt Database - A.E. Alexander (aealexander.com)

 

Artwork for Red Rock using MidJourney

 The self-publishing journey for red Rock continues.

Since Red Rock has already been professionally edited my first major task is to generate artwork and create a cover. There are two cover formats required. One is a simple cover for the kindle edition and the other is the full wrap around cover for the print edition. I also need to generate supporting artwork for use in promotional activities.

To do this I took out a subscription to MidJourney, the AI art generator that runs on Discord. When you sign up you get 25 free credits after which a month’s subscription costs £12 for 200 credits. I let my subscription run for two months before cancelling it. This has given me plenty of images to work with.

To generate an image, you enter a text prompt. For example, one of the prompts I used to generate images for Red Rock is: “A girl walking through flooded city ruins at sunset.” I used variations on this theme as well as specific instructions such as changing aspect ratio, lighting effects, and which algorithm I wanted to use (there are constantly new test ones coming available. Some work for me and others don’t.)

Now I’ve generated images that I’m happy with I will turn to Canva to add text and turn the image into a book cover. I can also use Canva to generate various promotion graphics as well as videos which I will be using on social media to try to get the word out.

But I will talk in more depth about these in future posts. In the meantime, here are a couple of images to whet your appetite.

Self Publishing Red Rock

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts I now have my rights back for Red Rock and I intend to self publish it. I hope it will be the first of many, and I will be sharing the process with you as I go.

I will be republishing Red Rock under the name Kate Kelly which is how it first appeared. But I also have a second author pen name, KM Kelly under which The Sleepers was published. I intend to keep both these going. Children’s books will join Red Rock under Kate Kelly and my adult fiction will join The Sleepers under KM Kelly.

I did vacillate about whether my thrillers and adult SF should also be separate, but since my thrillers tend towards speculative anyway and my SF tends to be thrillers, I think they will work well together, and having them together under one name will make the marketing and promotion easier.

There are a number of stages to self publishing a book and I will be exploring these in detail and sharing what I learn along the way on this blog. But broadly they are as follows:

1. The Written Word

2. Editing

3. Cover Design

4. Formatting for Kindle and print

5. A Marketing Plan

6. The launch

7. Managing Expectations

For Red Rock steps 1 and 2 are already covered. The book is written and has been professionally edited. So I will join the process at stage 3.

And if anyone is reading this who is also starting on a journey of self publishing, or has already self published and would like to share some tips, then do reach out. I would love to hear from you.

The Lifecycle of a Book

Today I received my rights back for Red Rock, almost nine years to the week since it was published. For now it is still available on Amazon, but it probably won’t be long before it is taken down. And then it will go back to being unpublished once again.

But this isn’t the end. I have a clean edited copy so at some point in the not too distant future I will self publish it on to Amazon, possibly along with a couple of other titles that I wrote but never sold – books that I believe in, even though I wasn’t able to persuade the publishing industry to take a punt on them.

For Red Rock all I will need is a new cover and to format it for kindle. The latter will be easy. The former less so as I’m not a graphic artist. I may be able to buy a cover off the shelf though – there are quite a few available.

So this isn’t the end for Red Rock. It’s only a pause before the next phase of its lifecycle begins.

Melting Ice and Rising Seas

My first piece for the Climate Fiction Writers League is now live over on their blog. You can find it here: Melting Ice and Rising Seas. Do check it out. The League is a wonderful resource for all things CliFi related!

Welcome to the Climate Fiction Writers League

I have recently joined the Climate Fiction Writers League, an exciting new venture set up by author Lauren James.

The league has members from all over the world who have one thing in common – we have all seen the perils that climate change poses to our planet and have used this threat in our fiction.

From picture books through to YA, adult SF and contemporary fiction you can find books that explore a wide range of scenarios and environmental issues, any of which could be our future.

The books may carry a message, but not at expense of story, so do pop over to the website and see who is involved, sign up to the newsletter, and discover some wonderful books.

Visit the Climate Fiction Writers League here: Climate Fiction Writers League

And read more from Lauren about why she has set up the League over at Tor: Lauren James Launches Climate Fiction Writers League

Living in a Dystopian Novel

There is a blurring of fiction and reality. The world we live in has changed, in many ways not for the better. We thought we were safe, living in our technological bubble. But all that is changing.

It really does feel as if we are players – minor characters in a real-life dystopian novel. We didn’t choose these roles. But now we have to let the story play.

Over the years I have written about climate change – Cli-Fi – Climate Fiction it was called. Nobody reads it any more. Probably because it is real now. Climate fact. I wandered down to the harbour at Spring tide and the roads alongside the harbour wall were awash. Two weeks ago at the last spring tide it was the same. Cars were ploughing through, sending up plumes of spray. The salt water will rot their bodywork but the drivers don’t seem to care.

People have other things to worry about. There’s a virus spreading across the world, out of control in many places. Nobody bothers too much when it’s somewhere else. But it’s not somewhere else. It’s here. It’s happening now.

I went to the supermarket and the shelves were bare. Not all of them, but oddly people are stockpiling toilet roll. There’s a craziness about the world we live in. Historians of the future will study it in great depth, I have no doubt. Maybe they’ll puzzle over the toilet roll panic. I certainly did.

Maybe I need to brush up on my survival skills. Do I know where to forage for food? Could I skin a rabbit? Should I be building a bunker at the bottom of my garden? Or will a well-stocked freezer and larder suffice?

Will it all blow over and life continue as before? Will the summer be one of spritz in the sunshine, laughing at the craziness of it all?

Either way, I still get the feeling that I’ve been trapped in a novel. An oddly surreal novel.

The next few weeks will tell.

Revisiting Malta

In most of my novels the action moves around geographically. I love writing about interesting places, and I love visiting those places. Whenever I travel it is always with half a mind on how I can incorporate these settings into my fiction.

Red Rock was no exception. The action moves across Europe, and one of the places Danni ends up in is Malta.

I revisited Malta earlier this year, after quite a long gap, and I went back to some of the settings where Danni has her adventures. Malta has changes a lot in recent years, the most noticeable difference being the amount of development that has happened, and is still going on – skylines dominated by cranes and half-finished buildings all along the coast. But some things haven’t changed and it’s still easy enough to escape the main tourist centres and explore the island's less visited corners.

So here are a few pictures from my travels.

Megalithic ruins, very like the ones Danni hides in on Comino - 

only these are actually on Malta

Danni doesn't visit Gozo but I thought I'd include this - 

it's where the Azure Window used to be.

The citadel, Victoria, Gozo

Fishing village of Marsalforn, Gozo, on a stormy day

Comino viewed from the ferry. 

The chapel you can see was the inspiration for the monastery Danni finds.

Typical Maltese coastline with Gozo in the distance

Guest Author at Literary Edits

Today I have been interviewed as a guest author over at Literary Edits.

You can read my interview here: Guest Author Kate Kelly.

While you are there do check out the author services they offer - from editing and proofreading to reviewing and helping with marketing. The reviewing is free, of course, but I think you'll find all their other services very competitive.

What Happened to Cli-Fi?

Six years ago my YA Cli-Fi Novel was about to be launched onto the world, and Cli-Fi (short for Climate Fiction) was the latest buzz.

My publisher pushed this aspect of the story as part of their marketing plan. People were talking about climate change and the threat it posed and more and more authors were exploring climate change related themes in their work. It felt as if fiction was the perfect medium to bring climate change to the attention of the world.

For a while it seemed to be working. I took part in panels at literary events and ran workshops in schools that formed a crossover between literature and science. There was genuine interest.

And yet… Here we are, six years on.

Cli-Fi as a sub-genre never really took off the way we hoped. Every now and then it bubbles up, a new book comes out that explores these themes, and then it fades away. And the world itself? Has anything really changed? The science is still there, gathering momentum as the evidence mounts. Weather is becoming more extreme. Global temperatures are increasing. Sea levels are measurably rising.

But where is the action? Where is the call to arms? Politicians have come and gone yet it feels like we’re stepping backwards. Science Fiction is about to become Science Fact. The world I created in Red Rock feels closer than ever, and that’s not a comfortable thought. The coastal areas are already under threat and there’s a strange unease in the air – a society on the brink.

I can’t help wondering why this is. Maybe as our civilisation spirals inexorably towards becoming a real life dystopian novel people feel less inclined to read about such things. Is climate change something people don’t want to think about? Because maybe they should.

A Change of Direction

So far all my published work has been under the name Kate Kelly. These are my SF and weird fiction short stories, my short story collection, and of course my YA thriller Red Rock, the peak of my writing career so far.

But I’ve been reviewing my current work and I can’t help feeling that, without really thinking, I’ve taken a change of direction.

I’ve looked at the various novels written over the years and the ideas I’ve been running with recently and there are four projects which I feel have legs.

Novel 1. A thriller with a speculative twist – currently seeking representation.

Novel 2. This is the YA SF thriller I wrote after Red Rock which my publisher declined. But looking at it now I think it deserves more. So my plan is to age it up, restructure the plot and give it a major rewrite.

Novel 3. Another SF thriller that I was trying to make work as a YA novel. Only it doesn’t want to be. Rewrite and complete.

Novel 4. A thriller with a speculative twist about 20% written.

Looking at these I think I can see my ‘brand’ emerging - speculative thrillers. These are the novels I’m going to be running with. And I plan to change my by-line – ever so slightly, to reflect this.

I’ll keep you updated.

Library Love and PLR

Today was PLR statement day.

In case you’re not an author I’ll explain. PLR stands for Public Lending Rights. Authors receive a payment every time someone borrows their books from a public library. Currently this stands at 7.82 pence per loan and the number of loans is calculated from a representative sample of libraries.

This was my third PLR statement and there’s something lovely about seeing how many people have borrowed your books from their local library. My payments are modest but each year has shown a steady increase in the number of times my books have been loaned.

Libraries are a wonderful resource and often serve as a community hub. They do more than just lend books – they provide a quiet space for study, a venue for local groups to meet. Often they have a programme of talks and visits. So it always saddens me when I see reports in the news about libraries being closed.

So if you’re an author and you haven’t yet registered your books for PLR then I suggest you do so. You don’t want to miss out on the next round of payments!

And if you’re a reader then do support your local library. Borrowing a book will cost you nothing but each time you do you are helping to make an author a little bit happier.