{"id":2502,"date":"2013-04-10T17:04:54","date_gmt":"2013-04-10T17:04:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bookim.org\/?p=2502"},"modified":"2013-04-10T17:04:54","modified_gmt":"2013-04-10T17:04:54","slug":"indie-authors-the-one-and-only-way-to-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookim.org\/index.php\/2013\/04\/10\/indie-authors-the-one-and-only-way-to-success\/","title":{"rendered":"Indie Authors: The One and Only Way To Success"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Every so often I am going to add articles from other experts in ebook marketing:<\/p>\n<p>Guest blogger Renee Pawlish warns Indie Authors against\u00a0 getting carried away by every new fad.<\/p>\n<p>I recently read a post about free books on Amazon being the way to striking gold.\u00a0 Yeah, another one.\u00a0 What struck me most was one of the comments.\u00a0 It said something like:\u00a0 most books take about six months to gain traction and sell well.<\/p>\n<p>Really?\u00a0 Most books will sell well after a certain time?\u00a0 Most books?<\/p>\n<p>I have some thoughts on this\u2026 and all the daft things people say about how to sell books.<\/p>\n<p>I get really irritated when I see books, downloads and training guides that tout <em>the one thing<\/em> that will make your book sales take off<\/p>\n<p>First it was blog tours, then Twitter (ugh, the number of books I see that say Twitter\u2019s the main thing you need to sell books), or giving away books for free on your blog, or&#8230; well, fill-in-the-blank.\u00a0 For many, now, it\u2019s KDP Select.<\/p>\n<p>Just do this the way I show you, and you\u2019ll be selling so many books, you won\u2019t know what to do.\u00a0 And then the success story is trotted out but never the hundreds, if not thousands, who tried the same method and got little or no results.<\/p>\n<p>Sound familiar?<\/p>\n<p>Actually:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>First adopters<\/em> of almost any of the ways to sell are most successful, just by being first. Once word gets spread about them, they become less effective. So what worked for Amanda Hocking then won&#8217;t necessarily work for you (or, indeed, for Amanda Hocking) now.<\/li>\n<li><em>Reality check: <\/em>Even doing everything right (great book, great cover, great editing) doesn\u2019t mean you will automatically sell a bunch of books.<\/li>\n<li><em>You&#8217;ll need to market.<\/em> Selling books is an ever-changing landscape, and that you\u2019ll need to be educated on marketing as well as writing.<\/li>\n<li><em>It takes luck<\/em> to make it in this business (maybe any creative business). We can all list many authors who have written great books, but they never sold well. If you really love writing, really love it, and you\u2019re not just trying to make a quick buck, then you know that it\u2019s a bit of a crap shoot.<\/li>\n<li><em>Writing, just like any other j-o-b is hard work. <\/em>If you recognize that, then you\u2019re already ahead of the game.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Sometimes we create our luck through what we do and where we put ourselves.\u00a0 We create the circumstances in which luck occurs.<\/p>\n<p>Turns out there <em>is<\/em> one and only way to success after all: your way.<\/p>\n<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.reneepawlish.com\/\">Renee Pawlish<\/a> is the author of the bestselling horror book Nephilim Genesis of Evil, the first in the Nephilim trilogy, the Reed Ferguson mystery series, the Noah Winter adventure series for young adults, short stories and more.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every so often I am going to add articles from other experts in ebook marketing: Guest blogger Renee Pawlish warns Indie Authors against\u00a0 getting carried away by every new fad. I recently read a post about free books on Amazon being the way to striking gold.\u00a0 Yeah, another one.\u00a0 What struck me most was one [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2502"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2502\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookim.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}