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How to become an ebook superstar

A growing number of ambitious authors are turning to self-publishing. But how do they translate their aspirations into success?
Ben Galley, author
Ben Galley, a self-published author of fantasy books also offers a consultancy service for would-be writers.
Ben Galley, a self-published author of fantasy books also offers a consultancy service for would-be writers.

It has never been easier to publish your own book. Traditional publishers may take a year to turn your manuscript into print on a page but you can get your own ebook on sale around the world in about four minutes. The real battle, however, is the same as it ever was: how do you find an audience?

Old-school publishing houses will almost certainly endure. Their expertise in not only editing but distributing and publicising your book increases its chances of success. But alongside them are a growing number of authors who have become editor/designer/marketeer/sales director for their own ebooks. In return for this slog, instead of a modest advance plus 8%–15% royalty from a traditional publisher, a self-published author may enjoy royalties of 70% if their book is sold at a certain price (£1.49 to £7.81) in the Kindle store. Self-published authors will also get the buzz of seeing their ebooks in high-street shops after Waterstones recently made a surprise deal with rival Amazon to sell Kindles and its ebooks through its 300 stores.

1. Choose the right book, the right genre and the right title

"Write for the right reasons – ie yourself," says Kerry Wilkinson, the 31-year-old sports journalist from Preston who became Britain's bestselling ebook author – beating established megasellers such as Lee Child and Stieg Larsson – on Amazon in the final quarter of last year. "If I had set out to sell tens of thousands of copies and sign with a publisher, then I would likely have ended up achieving nothing because I would have been focused on the wrong things," he says.

If the book you have written for yourself is a delicate work of literary fiction, a children's book or an esoteric subject (butterflies, say), it may be better to persevere with attracting a mainstream publisher. At this stage in the digital revolution, the successful self-published ebooks spring from popular genres, and those for which there are already big online communities – fantasy, erotica, chick-lit, horror and crime thrillers. Be careful with your title: in an era of keywords, tags and search engine optimisation, it has never been more important. Distinctive is good; baffling, however, is not. According to a recent survey by the Sydney-based Taleist blog, self-published romance authors earn the most – 170% more than their peers.

2. Don't just rely on Twitter or Facebook

Ben Galley became a self-published author at 22 and is currently making a modest living selling his fantasy ebooks and offering "Shelf Help", a consultancy for other aspiring authors (sessions via Skype, phone or face to face from £50 to £199). He believes every author must create a website. "Some people survive off Twitter or a blog, but you need an online presence. Most people who buy your book want to find out more about you and they can't find that from your Twitter feed," he says. "A website is a sales platform, it's a marketing platform and it's a global presence if you do it right." He recommends building one with iWeb if you have a Mac, but customisable blog platforms created through Tumblr or Wordpress can work as well.

Wilkinson agrees: "I set up a website with information about future releases and that has provided more publicity for me than Twitter and Facebook combined."

3. Crowd-source some help

Steven Lewis, a writer and blogger for the Taleist, produced its fascinating survey of more than 1,000 self-published authors last month.

It shows that self-publishers who take the most professional approach to production – getting external help (editors, proofreaders and, especially, cover designers) – make on average 34% more from their books. "Self-publishing is a triathlon," says Lewis. "Writing your book might feel like a marathon but it's just the first leg. The second leg is the production, and the third is marketing. Readers care deeply about things such as formatting and proofreading. If you have been sloppy, they will mention it in the reviews and it will hurt your sales." Help need not be expensive: Ben Galley crowd-sourced his cover design (for a small fee) and even persuaded readers to proofread his second novel. The average production spend is £440.

4. Go high-risk

Rachel Abbott, the retired former boss of an interactive media company, became an Amazon No 1 bestseller this year with her psychological thriller Only the Innocent. Sales took off after she designed a marketing plan that focused on Amazon. "Amazon is all about visibility. I looked at the ways your book could be made visible and exploited those opportunities," she says. When buyers browse genres in Amazon, they can list books by average review. Some authors get friends and family to post positive reviews, but readers soon smell a rat when they see these reviewers have never judged another book. Abbott took the "high-risk" approach of sending a review request document to bloggers who wrote about thrillers (only choose relevant bloggers). Just like any job application or sales pitch, a personalised request is most persuasive; so is one including details about your book and links to any previous reviews, Twitter feeds and websites to whet the bloggers' appetites. Offers of interviews or guest blogs may also encourage bloggers to publicise your book.

For Abbott, good reviews boosted her book's visibility on Amazon.

5. Give it away. Now!

Everyone loves a freebie, especially online. Kenny Scudero, a 22-year-old from New York, says offering his ebook debut, Comfortably Awkward, for free on Kindle one weekend was the best marketing method he used.

"I wouldn't say it's definitely required," says Galley, but it also worked for him. He gave away his debut novel, The Written, for a month last August. Before his giveaway, he was selling roughly 50 copies per week; afterwards, his sales more than doubled, and stayed high. "The free charts on Amazon are constantly trawled by people with voracious reading appetites," he says. Getting read is an obvious way to sell more copies via word of mouth – if your book is any good. For authors wanting to eat, giveaways should be for a limited time only.

6. Use social media in a clever way

Even the dimmest celebrity has grasped that Twitter is a great way to sell themselves. But a recent Verso survey estimated that barely 12% of books are discovered from social networks whereas 50% are passed on via personal recommendations.

Everyone is a bit hazy about how best to use social media but there are specific ways of finding an audience. Abbott purchased a piece of marketing software called Tweet Adder that enabled her to make contact with people who followed other authors in the same genre.

7. Talk, don't spam

Spamming strangers via Twitter is not usually a route to sales success. Self-published authors and gurus still see too many authors conducting one-way shouting about their book. "Be interesting, be generous, and be interested in others," is Lewis's advice. "The principle is to be human," advises Galley. Chat about stuff other than your book, reply to everyone, and don't get drawn into slanging matches with hostile reviewers. "A lot of writers make a mistake by going on Twitter and spending all their time spamming people saying 'buy my book'. I don't do too much of that," says Wilkinson.

Building an audience on Twitter is time-consuming. How often is it OK to plug your book? "I recommend sending out promotional tweets maybe once an hour, but not more than every 30 minutes," says US self-published sci-fi author Michael Hicks online. Once an hour?! Galley suggests five times – a day. That sounds like a full-time job to me – try employing your sulky teenager or dog to do it for you.

8. Be ready to slave away

Working through the night to write a book while slaving away at a menial day job is an obligatory component of every romantic self-published success story. Anyone who has knocked out 70,000 words on top of a job and family life doesn't need to be told to work hard. What is new, perhaps, is that this nocturnal drudgery doesn't stop with your book's publication. Galley gets up at 7am to do what he calls his "social media rounds", visiting eight or nine different social media sites to keep abreast of online chatter. As any author promoting a book knows, promotional duties play havoc with writing. Unlike many authors, Galley stays online even when he is writing. "I always make sure I can see the Twitter screen on my laptop when I am writing," he says. He claims the quality of his work is not affected. If only it was true for all of us. Too much marketing may be a damaging distraction: according to the Taleist survey, top earners all spent more time writing than marketing their books.

9. Take it to a bookshop

The fusty old book business may still be a lifeline for self-published authors and its collapse hurts all authors. The online world that opens so many doors is shutting others. Ian Collins, an arts journalist and author, recently wrote of how a book he published through a small imprint about the artists of Southwold sold 1,300 copies in two bookshops in the Suffolk coastal town. He and his small publisher would love to reprint but Southwold's two bookshops have now closed down. There is no marketplace for his book except online, where it is being offered for £85 plus postage on Amazon's marketplace (none of which will go to Collins or his publisher). Self-published authors with books that serve a particular geographical audience can find audiences through bookshops – where they still exist. The physical book is expensive to self-publish but it can still be worth it, if you can persuade a sympathetic outlet to stock it. Offer it on a sale-or-return basis, and give them a generous (40%) margin if you can.

10. Aim higher

The future may be a world where authors prove themselves in the self-published world before they are snapped up by mainstream publishers. Self-published success invariably leads to big book deals. Should authors swap 70% royalties for a traditional deal? "Initially I was definitely better off self-publishing. I've built an audience, plus made friends and money I never would have done through a publisher," says Wilkinson, who has now signed a six-book deal with Pan Macmillan. "Sales of physical books are still higher than ebooks, so there was always likely to be a point where I could do with some help. I had nothing to lose by taking a publishing deal."

John Locke, the self-published American millionaire, has also branched out into physical books, but says he has done it a different way: he has signed a distribution deal (not a publishing deal – Locke says he still controls his product) with Simon & Schuster so that his self-published book, Wish List, can get into shops across the US and Canada.

"My distribution agreement, if successful, could lead to many more such deals between trad publishers and indie authors and demonstrates a way for indies to finally make it into bookstores and receive interviews and reviews from mainstream media," Locke says online.

And finally … the dirty secret

No, not erotica, although that's not a bad idea – the print version of EL James's originally self-published Fifty Shades of Grey sold 100,000 copies in its first week in the UK, becoming the fastest-selling book this year.

Is it a coincidence that many successful self-published authors have had web-based careers? "The wonderful thing about self-publishing is that it is a level playing field," says Lewis. "If there is a 'secret', it's only that being a self-publisher today means you are an online marketer." Self-publishers should teach themselves online marketing, he recommends, from sites such as Copyblogger.

One secret is that despite the tempting royalty slices available, you almost certainly won't make much money. Half of the self-published authors in the Taleist survey earned less than £320 in 2011 from their books; 75% of reported revenues were concentrated among less than 10% of authors. Those who had an agent earned three times their unrepresented peers.

Wilkinson's day job involves web journalism but his success, he insists, was the same as any book throughout history: his book found an audience via word-of-mouth. "The truth is, there is no magic wand. Regardless of anyone who tries to flog you a 'How to sell a million books' guide, it is the dirty secret no one will share – a lot of it is luck."
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jun/06/become-an-ebook-superstar
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