Asking for things, especially a personal thing, is hard to do, at least for me. Yet I know that the whole point of marketing is to ask you (my readers) to do something. If I want to sell my books, and if I want to make a living selling my books, I must ask you to purchase my books. However, why should you purchase my books if you know nothing about me? One way I might persuade you is to create a website and talk about my books and my writing. Hurrah!! This is one item I can check off the list, and it turns out to be fun.
Another thing I can do is guide you to reviews other people have written about my books. Last time I looked here at Amazon, I had two reviews for Shadows of Victory now titled Midnight Victories. This leads me to the next thing I ask of those who read my books (maybe that’s you, maybe it’s not you):
If you liked this book, please leave a review of my book here – and link this to one of the review sites where reviews can be entered by readers.
It seems so easy to type the words, but it’s taken a while for me to get the nerve to do it. Now that I’ve written the words, I have to ask myself, “Why did I wait so long?” Turns out this was easy to do. Yes, there are some technical things to consider, but there are no obstacles I cannot learn to deal with. So, here is what I’ve learned and am doing.
Place a link allowing readers to leave a review:
- On this website
- In the back matter of each book – make sure link goes to the correct store the reader purchased the book from
- In sign off of each newsletter
I need to mention here a step I skipped without thinking about it. Since I publish “wide,” I have more than one author page. Apple Books and Amazon both have unique author pages and allow customers to leave book reviews. BookBub also allows authors to create pages and allows readers to leave reviews of books. I’m experimenting with:
- Which author pages provide me with the best feedback
- Which pages provide readers with the most updates and interesting information about me.
- Which page provides the best number of sales.
The more I learn, the more I’ll share here. In the meantime, keep writing. Oh, and If you liked this book, please leave a review of my book here at BookBub.