I’ve worked with numerus independent authors trying to get to the point where they can live comfortably off of their sales. However, I always noticed their own agencies fail them by giving them poorly designed book covers and marketing strategies that are outdated or none at all. That’s pretty much the equivalent of turning 18 and being kicked out your parents’ house with no idea of where to begin or how.
Your Website Looks Dated
We are in the digital age, so keeping your website clean and easy to navigate it crucial to your success as an author. I have experienced so many independent authors webpages and couldn’t find the books they were trying to sell. Then most seemed like someone put pictures on a page with a simple navigation bar and called it a day, without filling in the necessary information to find them on social platforms. Yikes!
There came a point in seeing so many of these rising authors with poorly designed websites, I offered my services for free just because I wanted to go on a website that worked, and it was frustrating no one wanted to help them.
Here are a few resources independent authors can use for their website that are easy to install and use:
Your Book Cover Looks Cheap
You can hire the most expensive book cover design agency this world has to offer, but it doesn’t equate to quality design. Most agencies will treat independent or small authors with very low budgets with the lowest quality design and not look twice. I’ve worked with small authors to redesign their book covers within their price range when I was in high school, because I taught myself how to use photoshop at the age of 12 and teachers wanted me to teach my peers how to use it.
However, some of these small authors already signed a contract with an agency to do their design their covers and it was worse than mine at a much higher budget. I charge $20 to redesign their cover and an agency charged them $200+ for a photo and some basic text. It was not attractive nor appealing to the eye. In a situation like this, reach out to the agency to see if they’ll allow a third party to redesign your cover on their behalf. If the agency is reasonable and they see the finished work, they should allow it. Unless they are concerned about copyright, they should be able to work something out with the redesign artist.
Social Media Marketing is Lacking
Most authors either have no social media presence or they use ineffectively. Since authors don’t truly understand the platforms and algorithms it can cause them to keep putting out the same content or abandon it after not seeing the results they are expecting.
The best way around this is to understand the algorithms and stalk your competitors to see what content they are pushing out that is getting engagement. Afterwards you want to make a list of content that is similar or like your competitors and reproduce it for your content.
However, you want to keep your hashtags relevant to the content you are making. It can be tempting to use the most current hashtag that is gaining popularity and traction, but it can actually hurt your page in the long run. As most social media platforms use AI technology to filter relevancy when it comes to hashtags and other content.
Not Having an Advertising Budget
Most independent authors don’t have the funds to afford an advertising agency because of their high-ticket price. However, you don’t have to pay the exorbitant fees to do advertising for your books. The prices ad agencies include the cost of designing the camping, setting up, market research, and targeting the right audience. If you want to advertise yourself, you can start with Facebook Blueprint which has a free course to get you started on the basics. It won’t tell you everything that an ad agency knows, but it’s a good start.
Once you reviewed the courses in Facebook Blueprint, you want to figure out your target audience and what their interests, demographic, and locations are. In my own discoveries I learned that Indonesia is big for romance authors and have seen success in book sells in that region for my clients. When you are starting out advertising, you may not see success the first time. You want to start your ad on Monday at 12AM and let you go for at least a week with a minimum $100 ad spend. Your goal is to get qualified sales, and in advertising the higher your ad budget is the greater probability of getting a customer that will convert to a sale.
We offer most of the services at a budget friendly price. Contact us for pricing on your project.
