One of the more interesting things I’ve run across with this little start to writing and (self) publishing, is I don’t think I truly understood the power of a review. I’ll be honest, I never really left reviews myself, and didn’t ever think about not leaving them, until now. With from what I understand at least, Amazon really counting reviews a lot towards marketing. This gets you better visibility, and hopefully, better visibility leads to better sales. Which hopefully leads to more reviews, which leads to better visibility, etc etc.
Of course the kicker is how to *start* that process. Your a nobody with an idea and a recently published eBook. You think it’s pretty good, maybe you’ve gotten a family member to read it, they think it’s pretty good. And you hope they just aren’t saying that.
You can beg, annoy, cajole everyone you know to both get the book and review it. And say, put it up for free for 5 days. And out of over 100 downloads, you end up with 4 reviews. đ Great reviews to be sure, but 4…:(
Then you “submit” your eBook to services that are supposedly there to help promote the book, but your not even sure they do anything.
I once thought writing was the hard part, and it is sometimes. But just as hard, and in ways I never expected, was the marketing aspect of an eBook.
I’m going to redo the cover, I changed the categories the book is under, and tightening up the way I tweet about the book. Trying to find the right hash tag for it.
Marketing an eBook, is in some ways, it’s own special challenge. Getting reviews for eBooks, can just be plain hard.