Refreshing Rebel Perspective on Kindle Marketing
928766
I read this book at two or three in the morning, thinking these kinds of guides tend to put me to sleep. I actually ended up reading the whole thing! I woke up (hours later) excited to try out his advice. The author has a distinct voice, an engaging personae, and his perspective on the industry truly does run counter to all the social media gurus out there today. While I think every one of the authors I've read on the subject so far has a piece of the truth, a lot of the advice in here is more specific than others offer. Alvear pretty much walks you through his techniques, not in a condescending way, but in a very instructive manner. It makes me crazy when how-to e-book guys write things like "to be successful, you must engage with your audience." Well, duh, but can you explain how? Alvear does, in his own way, and I appreciated his somewhat irreverent sense of humor.
1320353
This book is a very useful resource for book marketing - specifically online marketing. I have yet to put all his suggestions into play with my book, but those that I have are slowly beginning to pay-off. Weber offers specific examples backed up by the selling statistics of various books that clearly demonstrate which promotion tactics do/don't work.

'Plug Your Book' has a heavy focus on Amazon, but since this is where most books are sold this makes complete sense. The book helps to illuminate the often cryptic practices of Amazon (how does 'better together' work for example) and numerous ways you can optimize your book's Amazon presence. I would not have thought to contact Amazon "top reviewers" if not for Weber's advice.

My only criticism is that the book may be growing somewhat out-of-date. I would love to see what new strategies might be included in a second edition!

M. Sean Kaminsky, Author&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/Naked-Lens-Video-Blogging-Video-Journaling-to-Reclaim-the-YOU-in-YouTube/dp/0981318800/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">Naked Lens: Video Blogging & Video Journaling to Reclaim the YOU in YouTube</a>
535768
Being a Kindle author myself I didn't expect to find many new titbits of information in this book but I was pleasantly surprised.  I have read other books by Colin Phillips before and I like them because they don't contain any fluff or filler - just usable content and this book was along the same lines.  Aside from the typical information I would expect to find about formatting and publishing a kindle book, what I did find, and I did like is the information about promoting the book - simple ideas, but the two links I got from this book were more than worth the money paid to read it.  What were they? Well you will have to read the book yourself to find out and when you do you will also learn a really neat trick about tracking your kindle sales as well. I enjoyed it :)

Lisa Oliver -
Author of How to Write and Publish a Book in 8 Hours
2961049
"People will exhibit extraordinary behavior for rewards and that's an amazing thing." In I'll Eat This Cricket for a Cricket Badge, Lara not only comes to understand that this is the primary principle of gamification--she lives it.

This novella is a fun, quick read that is a great entry point to understanding the idea of "gamification" beyond the ambiguous buzzwords sometimes used to describe it. The character of Lara is a great representation of the marketing everyman that subscribes to the more traditional marketing theory and perhaps hasn't caught the gamification wave. While the dichotomy of old world marketing Lara and her cutting edge marketing consultant Thresh initially appears like a slight against marketing professionals who are seemingly living in the past, the development of their relationship proves otherwise--at their core Lara and Thresh share the same goals and passion. As the novella explains, the advent of gamification isn't a wholesale change to the marketing landscape...it just makes the process more fun.

While the novella delivers well crafted prose and humorous moments of fiction, it excels beyond being just a fun story by being grounded with real world facts. Beyond the colloquial pop culture references that provide the story with a greater sense of realism, the presence of the footnotes provides proof that while the story is fiction the power of gamification isn't. The prose is a great jumping off point for understanding the concepts and the footnotes that follow serve as further, more in depth reading on the subject.

As a person who has worked in marketing, I found I'll Eat This Cricket for a Cricket Badge to not only be entertaining, but also an informative resource.
262745
Those old enough to remember the late Victor Kiam will recall his TV ad and catchline  about Remington "I liked it so much, I bought the company." Well I haven't bought Claire Ryan's company but I did buy her book and once I'd read it I hired her to help me.

So there. Full disclosure. I didn't know the author before I bought this book, but I do know her now and I like what she does.

The Author's Marketing Handbook is not for you if you fall into any of these categories:

Lazy dreamers
Those in search of a shortcut to the top of the bestseller list
Seekers of assurance that everything in self-publishing is pretty easy really

The book is for you if you are willing to work really hard to put Claire's principles into practice.

Claire is upfront from the start; she will tell you what to do to help get your book an audience, and she tells you that in a simple, straightforward manner with as few technical terms as possible. Also, admirably, in my view, she does not use the book to try and sell her services. In fact she even includes an HTML primer and quite specific instructions on how to do everything yourself.

I found that much of the 'techy' stuff I could do and indeed had done before I bought the book:

I had my blog, website and twitter account: they weren't linked directly to my writing but had a reasonable audience - 1550 Twitter followers: 3.5k blog hits on my busiest day . . . I'm telling you this because even if you're communicating pretty well already, and you're fairly savvy on the tech front, the essence of Claire's book is about harnessing those skills for use in ebook marketing.

If you are not tech-minded, this book will walk you through what you need to do. If you are technically minded, you will benefit from the marketing nous.

What you will definitely need to make the best of this book (and any other publication like it) is time and dedication. Claire shows you how to set up all the tools - you need to deploy them and you need to do so consistently with Claire's advice on content and target markets always in your mind.

The book is well written and easy to follow. Claire uses the generic "Author Extraordinaire" to address you at times and I found this a wee bit wearing toward the end. But that's a subjective comment - some might well relish that AE honorific!

In summary, If you dislike straight-talking and hard work, buy another book. If you're happy to dig in and  persevere, you'll be glad to have Claire's book by your side as you work toward making yours a success.

As a side-note: Claire set up our website and is proofing all our books (I'm a co-author). She's also offering us nuggets of marketing advice. She tells you what you need to hear, not what you want to hear - a pretty rare thing in the publishing business, and very valuable imo.

The first book Claire worked on with us, Warned Off, got its first review within 10 days of publication (5 star, happily). If you want to see a sample of her website input check [...].

Thanks for reading this far and good luck with your writing career.
Joe
787224
There was once a time when an authors only true concern was producing the best quality manuscript.

Over the last decade, that has changed drastically with the advent of social media and blogging. Now, writers are expected to have a platformincluding a strong online presencewell before their first book is published.

Whats more, unless you're of the stature of Stephen King or J.K. Rowling, no longer can published authors simply sit back and let others do the work of promotion and marketing. These days, the onus is ON US.

Enter Kristen Lamb, social media Jedi and author of Rise of the Machines: Human Authors in a Digital World. I had the pleasure of hosting Kristen as the keynote at the 2015 Write Stuff writers conference in Allentown, PA where I purchased her book. I was curious to learn more about how to properly leverage social media and my blog to bolster my platform.

In her book, Kristen divides her lessons into five sections, providing a brief history of the publishing industry, the changes that have occurred (and are still occurring), and fascinating insights into human psychology and communication. She also explains why the traditional marketing methods are no longer effective today.

Before delving into specifics about social media sites, Kristen leads the reader through very focused chapters and sections about identifying your short term and long term goals, creating your writers platform, creating your brand, the types of friends and followers who will help writers with these efforts, and what it means to go viral.

With those concepts understood, we then delve into specifics about a few of the hottest social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. In addition to providing advice on how to manage your time and content, Kristen also offers tips on social media etiquette, how to avoid conflict and potentially sensitive topics, and handling internet trolls who insult and harass rather than politely disagreeing with something you post.

Along the way Kristens humor and anecdotes provide entertainment along with education that held my attention and prevented the material from becoming dry.

Although I have worked in the IT industry for over 20 years and have a solid grasp of technology, and although I am a published author who is active on social media, I came away from Kristens book with insights on how and where I need to improve my approach, especially to blogging.

I only wish I had known about Kristen before I published my first novel in 2009!
3476181
I have already written a couple of books that are available on Amazon.com.  One is a paperback (available on Kindle too) and the other is a Kindle book.  So, when I saw Tom's book "The Kindle Publishing Bible" I thought I would at least take a look.  My own experience has taught me that marketing is a huge element of successful publishing.  Tom does not disappoint on that front.

From a full blown launch plan, to sites for free promotion, to a blueprint for how to use multiple press releases, Tom gives you what you need.

As I read this, I immediately started applying Tom's tips to my existing books and queued up two new books for release on Kindle.  I plan to use Tom's formula for book release as closely as I can.  I know it will be worlds better than what I have done before.

Overall, I liked the content and presentation very well.  It was clearly written and easy to follow and implement - with the exception of the stuff about Categories.  I confess understanding how to get at those to view my rankings or the competitiveness in a prospective category still largely eludes me.

Tom's discussion of keywords and how to figure out the best ones was very helpful.  I have done some research on keywords and most of it left me more confused than helped.  Tom's explanation was clear and helpful.  I used it to pick keywords and improve the title of my most recent release.  I started out with "Be a Real Real Estate Millionaire".  But after researching keywords, I ended up with "How to Become a Millionaire Investing in Real Estate:  The Truth Behind Guru's Claims of Making It Rich in Real Estate Without Using Any of Your Own Money or Your Own Credit"

I believe that is a much better title than what I had at first, and I expect it will garner more attention.  I wouldn't have come up with that title if I hadn't followed Tom's directions and used both Google Adwords and the Amazon search tips Tom provided.  And, because he was so specific about what numbers really mean with the search and adwords, I was able to choose the best, instead of just bumbling along.

There might be some folks out there who already know how to do all this.  But for the rest of us who know nothing or just a little, this book is a huge leg up.  I recommend it to anyone who wants to learn to succeed as an author.
214889
I grabbed this today after finding out that Don has put this terrific book on Kindle.

Don is a master at dominating Facebook - not with a ton of silly family updates and photos, and not just junky marketing promotions.
Au contraire - with Facebook Demystified, Don delves into the mechanics of properly setting up your brand, yourself, your fanpages, and more to utilize to social reach that will bring you the largest volume of fans in the shortest amount of time. Listen, if you've been struggling to get an audience to hear you, you realize that today more than ever, social media gives you more bang for your buck. And sometimes without even needing to spend any bucks.

I highly recommend grabbing this right away. I trust Don, and his insight, wisdom and tactics will have you smiling all the way to fandom from Facebook!
4966515
As a Kindle book author I can tell you Steve Scott is right on the money with many of the ideas he presents in this book.

KDP Free Days aren't what they used to be. Six months ago I consistently had 2500 to 4500 downloads for each of my book launches; today 500 to 1000 is a strong number. I'm not sure if it's a summer slowdown, or a shift in people downloading free books. Time will tell.

Scott suggests that 99 cents is the new free. That may be possible. I will agree with his theory that giving your books away for free can draw the wrong audience. Most often your one and two star reviews come from readers who down loaded the book for free. Many of these reviews start out like this, "It's not really the kind of book I normally read," or "I didn't really read the whole thing, because it wasn't what I thought it would be..."

Perhaps the best advice you can take from the book; track your sales everyday; make notes of special promos you're running or free days. This is the only way you will know what works and what doesn't.

For me, I'm not ready to give up my KDP Free Days, but I don't use them after the launch for all of my books. Free days don't seem to drive sales in the business and ecommerce categories after the initial giveaway. My history books are just the opposite. I can easily drive 100 or 200 more sales within three to four weeks of running another free promo. In the business category, 99 cent promos seem to work better to reinvigorate lagging sales.

_____________

Quick follow up two weeks after reading and reviewing this.

Based on the eBay and Kindle writing category, Kindle author's have taken Scott's advice to heart. Dozens of authors used the 99 cent price to vault their books to the top spots. What surprises me is, two weeks later they're still at that price. The idea was to use the 99 cent price to reinvigorate your book, not to drag the market price down.

Just putting it out there. Anybody else have an idea on this?
3718459
Author and former Corporate Lawyer John Tighe's writing lifts the curtain to show the soups to nuts on all things Kindle, where he has been successful and profitable. You'll read of his beginnings, the struggles, the tactics, tips, and techniques to carve your own Kindle non-fiction niche. "Be in no doubt that we are living through a pivotal moment in the history of publishing," he admits, along with the fact that he had a good job but "I was unhappy" before he got into Kindle publishing. This book is a personal account and is filled with useful advice and strong experience with understanding the phenomena of Kindle publishing. His successes in attaining #1 bestseller and building a 6 figure publishing as wells as challenges are well documented offering the reader a treat: humble insight and knowledge to succeed with hard work and determination.  What's left is: "What will your story be?"
2373345
I recently published my first book on Amazon and have seen some early success. I can contribute much of this to Michael Alvear's  advice, which is contained in the book- Make a Killing on Kindle.

The book gave me great insight to how Amazon works, and how set up you own publication on their system for Kindle. I would highly recommend this book to anyone with an interest in publishing on Amazon.
558400
As my shelf gets weighed down with business books I have read in the past few years, they all start to sound very similar after awhile.  The same anecdotes, similar presentation, even similar book length.  Social Media engagement is critical to almost any business today, and that fact has driven the business publishing community to put out more books geared towards this message.  I was pleasantly surprised by Scott Stratten's approach to the material for a few reasons.  First, you can't get past his "awesome" presentation.  The front of the book is the book of "Business Awesome", or companies doing the right thing.  The cover is white and shows a ladybug.  Flip the book over and the back is "Business Unawesome", with a dirty looking cover and a smashed ladybug.  The organization of the book follows - good stories one way, bad stories the other.

I like to think of myself as Awesome, so I started with that side.  Most business books suffer from word-glut - the author has a few short messages he tells with too many words.  Stratten is succinct with his narrative and well organized.  Each chapter is only a few pages long - it tells a point and then moves on.  From how to recover from a social media gaffe (The Red Cross is "gettngslizzerd") to rebranding an old product like Old Spice, Stratten hits many points in the market quite well.  His "Thirty Tips for Speakers" covers the critical points of a shelf full of public speaking tomes in a single succinct chapter that summarizes about all of the wisdom you need to stand in front of a crowd.

Business "unawesome" covers the others side - social media gaffes that are not well handled, how we misuse Facebook, when not to use a QR code (like on a highway billboard!), and other stories of people who have single handedly killed their brand or just their own careers/reputation.

I have gotten cynical with my reviews of business books - too much repetition and too little original thought.  Stratten was a refreshing read.  Sure I read some stories I knew from before, but the presentation was fresh, original, and best of all, quotable.  I am giving a social media talk in a few weeks and intend to use some of his examples.  Thanks to the organization and straightforward style he uses, that will be no problem.

I recommend this book and Stratten's approach to any business person looking to make himself more "awesome".
3453073
One of the more contentious claims in this book (aside from the issue of the use of reviews) is the idea that you need an 'author platform' and that promotion, publicity and social media sell books.  In fact belief in these is cited up-front as two of the three obstacles that keep you from making a killing on Kindle.

Now I am a social media professional.  I make my living advising organisations (including some quite big and well known ones) how to operate in the social digital space - and I believe Michael is absolutely right in this respect.  The single most important thing I help organisations understand is that you don't try and create audiences in social media, that is what you did with traditional media and marketing (and traditional book promotion).  Social media is different, because social media is a low reach, but high engagement space.  You can't use it to generate numbers, albeit you can use it to create value.

Optimising your book so that it performs within the Amazon search environment is therefore definitely where the focus of your effort should be, rather than on using social channels to create sales.  The only exception to this, as Michael acknowledges, is if you already have a very large social following (i.e. you are a celebrity or a 'rockstar' publisher) which most of the readers of Michael's book will not be.  Michael does not dismiss social out of hand, he just places its usage in its correct context.

Co-incidentally enough, the reason I read this book was because I had just published my own, which specifically dealt with this issue about the lack of an audience in the social media space.  Given comments in earlier reviews I am reluctant to put a link to it here - but I will mention it, it is called Social Media and The Three Per Cent Rule: how to succeed by not talking to 97 per cent of your audience.  Hopefully the title is self-explanatory, and passes the scan test - see chapter three (although I had come up with it before reading Michael's book).

This issue aside, I would say that the main benefit of this book is that it gets you thinking along the right lines.  It may well be that some of the tactics are questionable, don't now work or have changed as a result of things that Amazon is doing but once you have been alerted to these issues you can keep abreast of development's yourself.

Definition of four stars is "I like it" - which is why I have given this book four stars.  It has its flaws (hence not five stars) but it is a very useful read.  You don't have to agree with everything it says to get a benefit from it.
1437567
I just received a copy of this eBook and I'm thrilled. It's an inexpensive and quick read, but highly informative, with actionable suggestions. As someone who lives my day in this space, helping companies market to baby boomers and seniors, I know all the data and stats. However, I've never found it all pulled together in one place so well. Not only does Suzie share the data - but she explains it! And she gives real-world, go look via this link, examples.

Chapter 2 - Boomers - Who Are They? - worth the price all by itself, for anyone selling to this marketplace, not just those building and selling apps. Suzie's taken a unique angle by including the Product Manager's perspective, and instead of distracting, it clarifies. My favorite visuals may be the graphs showing the DISTINCT differences between Early and Later Boomers and Early and Later Seniors. These folks 45 and older are NOT all the SAME, People!!!

Lastly, I have to share my appreciation for her segment on distribution. No matter how many times the Brand tells a Boomer to love them, getting someone else to say it for them works wonders. At BOOMbox Network, we have first hand experience of the power of ambassadors for brands.

Chris Bradshaw
Principal
BOOMbox Network
260595
Read this marketing book as an advanced copy from publisher and was quickly hooked.  Phil's casual, real life writing kept my interest, it's not a "what I learned in college" snore fest.  Insightful personal experiences that he gained over years in retail have been shared in this book.  I can easy apply this marketing principle Think-Engage-Thrive to my business and garner a whole new generation of customers that have been over looking us.  Phil's ideas are relevant and I am excited to share this book with other business owners!
214426
What Kindle users want to knows:

Active Table of Contents for each letter chapter.
You can browse chapter to chapter with one click.
Formatting is nice and simple to read.
Index available but is neither clickable or page numbered which makes an index useless.

What readers want to know:

This is a narrative of one man's adventure in reading the Encyclopedia Britannica.  For select entries, the author expounds on the content and history and its application in his world (his wife, his job, etc.).

It is humorous, enlightening, and fun.  If you are a trivia or reference book enthusiast than this is your comfort reading!  It has hilarity and heart.  And even I, a reference book junkie learned a thing or too!  The narrative is pleasant and makes the effort more enjoyable than just reading about entries.

Jacobs has brought stunt authoring to the academics...  or at least Jeopardy watchers!  It makes you want to go back when information searching began with sifting through pages of a heavy set of leather bound books.
1009109
*Marketing is about sharing what you love with people who truly value hearing about it*

Joanna Penn sums up her expansive experience in How To Market A Book, this easy to read and retain treasure chest for authors who want to sell more books and to think more like an entrepreneur.

It's structured into five, stand-alone parts which are a smorgasbord of information whether you're a novice or a seasoned pro. Joanna offers useful content on building a brand and social networking within her core belief of being genuine.

How To Market A Book begins with marketing principles and takes you through book fundamentals, building your platform - short-term and long-term - ending with more take-away advice on launching your book. Her tips on Discoverability, Authenticity, and Permission Marketing were immediately useful to me and I loved her term Co-opetition -  "by working and educating ourselves together we learn faster, respond and adapt more quickly."

Joanna Penn demystifies Platform as attraction marketing - simply putting things out there that attract people to you; making yourself useful and/or entertaining to others. She emphasizes Social Karma as being the core of your social media efforts, giving real examples of what to do that actually works in connecting with others, leading to an increase in sales and opening doors of entrepreneurial opportunity.

How To Market A Book is just that - a How-To book on what works... and what doesn't...  in social media, public speaking, audio & podcasts, brand-building, and on-line relationship building. She tells you exactly what algorithms, keywords, metadata, and SEOs are, and she has a particularly juicy part `Meat, Hook & Format - What Really Baits a Reader'.

I've been a Joanna Penn fan for over a year and I'll attest to how much her influence has on me. Her on-line mentoring and personal generosity helped my debut novel open in the Top 10 on Amazon and I've steadily built my blogsite and social media contacts based on her teachings. I cannot say enough about the benefits you'll get from How To Market A Book.

- Garry Rodgers  Vancouver, Canada