Does your profile pages on Twitter and Facebook look uneven?
What are the actual Image Picture Guidelines for Facebook? Twitter? YouTube?
Did you know the cover photo image on Facebook is 851 x 315 pixels?
If you have ever experienced frustration at trying to find the perfect size for your profile pictures then we have the perfect solution.
The folks at SocialTimes.com has a great infographic that details the sizes for the different components for Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.
Most authors have heard about the Amazon affiliate changes concerning free books that came out on 2/22/2013. Additional conversations can be found on the Amazon Central Message board, on Kindleboards, and many other eBook sites.
What impact does the Amazon Affiliate changes have on authors, book websites, and promoting your book for free?
Digital Book Today and The Top 100 Best Free Kindle Books List can help an author with their free book promotion. However we are just one island in the vast ocean of the Internet. To capitalize on your free book promotion an author needs to make sure they are getting the word out to as many islands as possible.
The author’s goal is to use our site (and others) to get their book up on Amazon’s top 100 list (and the sub category 100 book lists) as quickly as possible. Amazon updates their lists on an hourly basis.
Once you get on Amazon’s Top 100 lists then it is time for the 800 pound gorilla in the cage (Amazon) to take over. No matter how many sites you use to promote a free title one has to wonder ultimately how many downloads come from being on the Amazon Top 100 lists.
Recently an author detailed his efforts on a free book promotion he ran on Amazon. This other author actually got 30K in downloads over two days (first time being free and well reviewed). He paid to be promoted on many of the popular free book sites. He asked for stats from the sites. The best he come up with is about 18K in clicks into Amazon (not downloads, but many would be). Amazon was probably responsible for at least 60% of all his downloads but only after other sites got his book up on the bestseller list.
Which comes first the chicken or the egg? Without the free books sites promoting his book he probably would not have made it on any of Amazon’s Top 100 lists. Without being on the Top 100 lists he would have never gotten as many downloads and publicity.
His sales after the free days paid for his promotional costs.
He had a couple of good questions and comments including:
As an independent author you need to decide the proper price point for your book. Should your book be priced at $0.99? $2.99? $7.99? Is it possible to market and sell your book to all three types of bookstore customers?
If you can sell your book at a higher price point without a major loss in units sold the end result is more return for your intellectual property.
Digital Book Today deals with a large number of Indie authors. Many authors have found sales success with one or more of their books. If you are one of these authors you should presume that you have a following of readers who will be interested in your newest book.
This might be the time to follow the old guards of the book industry and treat your book as a Hardcover New Release but in a digital format. Maybe set your price at $7.99 with it being on sale for $5.99 shortly after your release since we know most hardcover new releases are discounted the moment they hit the shelves.
Instead of ignoring the standard practices of the major publishers that have been very profitable for 40+ years, maybe it is time to implement a best practice from them.
The book industry has known for many years that there are really three major types of customers, each with smaller sub-groups that walked into bookstores. They even merchandise and market their books in stores to those three major types of customers.
What are these three major segments of customers?
Very few customers will actually buy books from all 3 sections. An exception can be seen during the holiday season when some customers will buy a hardcover book as a gift. Read more »
Our guest post is by Brooklyn James author of Vigilare (book #1) and Vigilare: Hell Hound.
A repost of a blog article from author C.S. Lakin’s website – Live Write Thrive.
Today’s guest post is from Anthony Wessel, a book industry veteran and founder of DigitalBookToday.com. I enjoy having my books promoted on his site and so asked Anthony to give me his non-author observations on indie book trends.
I read indie authors’ blogs about the lack of sales in the past months. Most indie authors have only been through one or maybe two holiday seasons. A book is a product. Just like with most products there is a sales cycle on a year-to-year basis.
Readers are still buying books in the same cycle as they always have. Just on a different medium.
The book industry has sales trend lines that have been consistent for the past forty years. Sales are relatively flat on a week-to-week basis for forty-six weeks out of the year. Slight sales increases are seen on the minor sales holidays. This means approximately the same number of books is being read in any given week compared to the previous year. The marketing efforts of authors and publishers generally do not increase the total amount of books that are purchased. The marketing effort is to get the consumer to purchase your product (book) instead of the competitor. A great example is the car industry.
Sales boom for six weeks (holiday season). During the last ten days of the holidays, retail bookstores would often have sales for a day that would equal what they would do in a week during the rest of the year. Read more »
A day doesn’t go by where I don’t get at least 3-5 submissions for book reviews from authors. Digital Book Today does not provide a review service, but a couple of us do reviews as a hobby for The Kindle Book Review.
Let me make this perfectly clear – I do it as a hobby and have a form rejection response in Gmail that I am quick to use. On a good week I will finish one book for pleasure while I work out in the evening. Maybe one other How To or Guidebook on publishing, internet, web SEO, or some other book in this expanding segment.
However I am a believer in trying to help out Indie authors buy giving some feedback and tips. Listed below are just some quick suggestions from someone who gets submissions:
Any other tips you would like to share?
For Readers: Which day of the week is most popular to look for a quality free read?
For Writers: Which Days Are Best To Promote Your Free KDP Select Book?
An author enrolled in Amazon KDP select has 5 days out of 90 day period to list their book for free as a promotional tool to entice readers to read their book. Which day(s) are best to promote your Free KDP Select Book? Worst?
Well the analytics people at Digital Book Today took a look at this question that Amazon refuses to answer. They crunched the numbers for 28 weeks (196 days) from their popular sister site The Top 100 Best Free Kindle Books List which features predominately small and independent author titles that are free for a limited time. Titles listed meet the minimum guidelines of 13+ reviews and 4.0+ stars. This is a stronger list of proven reads than the Amazon Top Free list (in our opinion). It should be noted that The Top 100 Best Free Kindle Books List is presented like the front of a bookstore. The bestsellers without being broken down by genre. A great place to look to see what is available and maybe you will find a great read that is not in your normal genre which is a delight to any author. Some book buyers never venture any farther than the front of the store before they have their arms (or eReaders) full of books to enjoy.
Before we get to the actual graphs, lets talk about the data. Of course The Top 100 Best Free Kindle Books List is just a small sample of the total amount of traffic that is sent to Amazon by the many book web sites on the internet. Another site could easily have completely different results. Our data is based upon visits for this time 28 week period. The Top 100 Best Free Kindle Books List is updated daily. Read more »
The year is 20
01. 600+ Waldenbooks, 350+ Borders, 550+ B&N’s, and still about 100+ B. Daltons.
The retail landscape for selling books has changed drastically over the past decade. Amazon just announced that The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins is now officially the best-selling series ever in Amazon history even ahead of the 7 book Harry Potter series.
It is really amazing to look at how the retail landscape has changed. Remember the midnight events at Borders, B&N, and your local bookstores at the height of Harry Potter mania? When Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Book #3) came out in July of 2002, this writer remembers being at a national sales meeting with Borders/Waldenbooks and the contest was how many copies will be sold in the first day in the stores. If memory serves me right, I believe the Waldenbooks stores (600+) alone sold almost 130,000 books in the first day. I do not know what the other stores sold, but then have to in the same ballpark.
Now shift forward to 2012. Total number of Borders, Waldenbooks, and B. Daltons = Zero. Nada. Nothing. How many copies of The Hunger Games have these stores sold? Zero. Sure the big box merchants have picked up some of these sales that normally would have gone to bookstores. However it really shows just how much product Amazon ships in just one of their many product categories.
Sara Nelson, editorial director of books and Kindle at Amazon.com, stated.: “Interestingly, this series is only three books versus Harry Potter’s seven, and to achieve this result in just four years is a great testament to both the popularity of the work and, we think, the growth in reading digitally during that time. Customers love these books and all three titles are consistently on our Top 10 lists in both print and Kindle formats, and ‘The Hunger Games’ is also the most-borrowed book in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library.”
Over 40 years we have seen book sales move from independent stores to mall based stores to superstores and now to Amazon. Who or what will replace Amazon in the future?
Press Release: 7/25/2012
400+ Indie author books have been featured for free on Digital Book Today during the past year. This popular free promotion called the Weekly Featured Great Reads started one year ago allows authors to feature their books at no charge. These books were featured in a blog post, on Facebook, and via Twitter. To qualify these books had to meet established minimum guidelines.
Providing free ad space for up to 8 books for per week on Digital Book Today has allowed many authors to use this promotional tool as part of their marketing plans. This is one way that they try to give something back to the Indie author community for their support and to highlight quality indie books for their readers.
Digital Book Today is currently taking submissions for the rest of 2012. Authors may have their books listed for a week once every 6 months with maximum of 2 books per author. Find out more about the guidelines and registration form.
Digital Book Today provides other paid and free opportunities for authors to promote their books. Please visit their promotions page for details.
The popular Top 100 Best Free Kindle Books List, maintained by Digital Book Today, is updated daily and features the best free books that are available for a limited time by authors. This is another free promotional tool that Indie authors have used to gain exposure to their books. See the minimum guidelines and details for this promotion.
The staff at Digital Book Today would like to thank all of the independent authors for their support in the past year and wish them good luck in their writing careers.
