4 TIPS TO MAKE YOUR eBOOK STAND OUT

The immediacy and convenience of ebooks and digital content has had a marked impact on how people today read.

Authors are beginning to realize that they can publish freely and digitally distribute their work for nothing other than their time and a bit of their money.

Readers are beginning to realize that with an eReader, they have access to a small library of books in their purse or their backpack whenever they need something to do while waiting for any number of things.

BUT HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF eAUTHORS ARE OUT THERE HAWKING THEIR BOOKS!  HOW DO YOU STAND OUT?

1.) BE MAGNETIC -

 

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00HIU5O38

 

Daniel Craig, dressed in a tuxedo, walks into a crowded room of middle-aged, used car salesmen.  Who will draw your eye?

 

People do judge a book by its cover.  You have to catch the eye with mystery, danger and color.

 

A good cover can be a great marketing tool for an ebook. 

 

You want your cover to make someone scanning through a website, stop and click your ebook. 

 

You don’t want to be tacky or overbearing, but the cover should draw attention.

 

  In the wide-open publishing world, a cover gives readers their first impression of what to expect from an author’s book. 

 

For now, the quality of a cover is a good indication of which authors have invested more time into their work than others. 

 

Did the cover for the sequel (yet to be written) for DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE draw your eye?

 

 

2.) BE READER FRIENDLY -

 

 

The easier you make the purchasing step for your customers, the better. 

 

This can be done by making your ebook as visible as possible. 

 

Every time you mention your book or yourself online,

provide links to make it easy for people to find your content or more information about you. 

 

Let’s say you just put up a book trailer on youtube. 

 

That youtube page needs a link to your book’s webpage or blog and your blog needs a link to the video. 

This is called cross-linking. 

 

 

3.) THE THREE MUSKETEERS had a point -

 

 

The best marketing tactic is to write more than one good book.

 

Each new title will broaden your name recognition and generate more sales for all your previous ones.

That’s because many readers are “binge readers.”

 

They find an author they like, and they then seek out and scoop up every single title that the author has written previously.

 

{Only 99 cents! What a bargain, right?}

 
(The isolated Hollywood film crew for the first talking Western is hunted by Nightmare )

 

Every successful author out there agrees:

 

The single best “marketing tactic” that you can employ, by far, is to write and publish your next book.

 

 In fact, many of them counsel that you shouldn’t even bother to begin doing any promotions until you’ve written and published at least three books.

 

Success in indie publishing is a marathon, not a sprint.

 

Each new book released will attract new fans, prompting them to go back and buy all the prior books in the series.

That’s how bestselling authors expand their audience over time, often geometrically.

 

(Again, only 99 cents!)

 
{Find out what happens when the Nameless Ones catch McCord wounded and left for dead}

 

 

4.) WHAT'S THAT BURNING?  OH, IT'S YOUR BRAND -

 

 

“Brand” yourself and your book.

 

Carve out a narrow, distinctive “niche” in the book marketplace based on some catchy concept, theme, or image

 

 that will appeal to your target readers, but simultaneously distinguish your work from all others in your genre.

 

As Alex Cavanaugh says

 

my linked books in a common mythic universe is Lovecraftian in scope and design -- one minor character in one book becomes a major one in another.

 

The setting of a haunted jazz club in the French Quarter in New Orleans whose stories go back (so far to 1834) is unique. 

 

I flit from time period to time period sometimes even from one exotic locale to another.

 

McCord is a supernatural Paladin as Victor Standish is a paranormal KIM.

 

Bottom line: Find some catchy, distinctive concept that works for you.

 

Next, use your “brand” in everything you do to promote your work:

 

book covers, author photos, blog designs, promotional copy, business cards, etc.

 

That kind of focus and integration will guarantee that your “brand” will become uniquely identified with you,

 

making you and your work memorable for your target readers.

 

My header is done, as are most of my covers, by the incomparable Leonora Roy. 

 

When you see my book covers, you know at a glance it is from me.

 

So there you have some ideas.  I hope they were helpful.
 

 

SAMUEL McCORD in chronological order:

{Though each book stands on its own}

 

 

 1.) RITES OF PASSAGE
 

 2.) ADRIFT IN THE TIME STREAM
 

 3.) DEATH IN THE HOUSE OF LIFE
 

 4.) HER BONES ARE IN THE BADLANDS
 

 5.) FRENCH QUARTER NOCTURNE
 

 6.) CREOLE KNIGHTS
 

 7.) BURNT OFFERINGS
 

 

VICTOR STANDISH in order:

 

 1.) THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH

 

 2.) UNDER A VOODOO MOON

 

 3.) THE RIVAL

       Much of the action occurs in 1834 New Orleans

 

 *) END OF DAYS

      Victor is a "soul echo" in this, and the tale is narrated by his ghoul friend, Alice Wentworth -- and has all my major heroes in it.

 

 4.) THE THREE SPIRIT KNIGHT