SELF PUBLISHING How to self- publish - Writers...Learn how to self-publish. Then self-publish, y...

SELF PUBLISHING

How to self-publishA whirlwind tour

What we’re going to talk about

Who am I? What’s Jericho Writers? The indie publishing model

How not to self-publish a book And a little bit of magic

The mindset you needCase study

How to make $30,000 without really trying

Basics Seven vital things

And here’s our no BS promise

Most webinars are alltease & sell

We’re going to deliver as much heavy-duty value as we can

We do have something to offer at the end,but you’re welcome to switch off if you want

Don’t take notes!

We’ll send you the replay

We’ll give you the slides

Brains open. Burners on. Let’s go …

So let’s get started

Who am I?

What is Jericho Writers?

But I made more money when Iself-published.

4x more. And it was easy

Major book deals with

global publishers in

UK, US, Japan, China,

Ger, France, Italy, Spain

Plus: Series under option in Hollywood.

Brilliant reader relationships.

I’m Harry Bingham, and I’m a writerholic

All experience levels.

All kinds of routes

to success

All genres

All nationalities

All ages

We know we can

help writers like you

(We’ve done it before)

Jericho Writers helps 100s of writers get published or professionally self-published

How not to self-publish

An idiot’s guide

It’s easy to self-publish … badly

The neversell mindset

“I like writing books.I didn’t get anywhere with trad publishing,

so I’ll just put the book out thereand see what happens.”

You already know what’s going to happen

Nothing

No sales. No reviews. No readers

No brand

No readership

No marketing

… No hope

World’s best authors

Massive brands

Huge readership

Vast marketing

Keen pricing

And it’s kind of obvious why

The successfulindie mindset

Right mindset

+ disciplined work

+ adequate writing skill

= Success

The mindset

I am going to be systematic

I’m going to use a marketing system that I know works

I’m going to apply it with care

Yes, I may want to experiment …

but only once I’ve got the basics straight

The mindset

I am going to care about quality

Bad books won’t sell

Mediocre books are painfully hard to promote

Good books make your marketing task much easier

The mindset

I am going to be prolific

Lots of indie authors think they need to publish 20 booksbefore they can make a living

That’s wrong. You can do it with far fewer.

But 1-2 books? You’ve only just started…

The mindset

I am going to sell ebooks on Amazon.com

Yes: you can and will sell print

Yes: you can and will sell audio

Yes: you can and will sell in other territories

Yes: you can and may sell on other stores

But Amazon.com is where you’ll earn your $$$. So focus.

The mindset, summarised

I know that hit and hope will never work

Basics

What you need to start

You need

A KDP account – use your AMZ login(kdp.amazon.com)

A book

A cover

A computer

That’s it

Most of the things you worry about are incredibly easy

How do I get my book onto Amazon anyway?You use your KDP dashboard

How do I turn my Word doc into an ebook file?You use your KDP dashboard

What metadata do I need & how do I input it?You use your KDP dashboard

How do I get print books as well as ebooks?You use your KDP dashboard

So actually …

I don’t really need to talk about basics at all

The indiepublishing model

The heart of everything

Step 1

Launch your #1 ebook

First book? You’re going to need help launching. You’ll use:

Book promo sites (like Robin Reads, ENT, FreeBooksy, …)

Co-promotions with other authors (Prolific Reads)

Facebook groups, but don’t be spammy

Amazon advertising, but it probably won’t be profitable yet

And low prices!

Step 2

Your #1 ebook says:“Hey, do you want a free story?”

One you create – a mini ebook, in effect.

Same world, same characters, same everything

Step 3

Your readers love your stuff,so they download the freebie

(“reader magnet”)

They get a great short(ish) story

You get an email address

Step 4

You launch book #2

This time, you write to your mailing list:

“Hey, my new book is out. Go buy it.”

Step 5

They buy it!

You make some lovely sales

And you haven’t spent a penny

Step 6

(a) Write another book

(b) Launch another book

(c) Repeat & repeat

Ta-daaa!

~~ Intermission ~~

I want to aska little question…

What do we think so far?

Um. Is that all?

A little bit of magic

Why the basic model isbetter than you think

Here’s why email marketing looks crap

Here’s a scenarioYou sell 6,000 ebooks of Book X

You collect 1,000 email addresses

Those emails let you sell 300 books when you launch X+1

That would be a really good outcome …But you still have to find an additional 5,700 sales even to match Book X

There’s got to be more to it, right?

Here’s a scenarioYou sell 6,000 ebooks of Book X

You collect 1,000 email addresses

Those emails let you sell 300 books when you launch X+1

This story misses the most important element

Here’s what really happens

1. You send your emailLet’s say you have 1000 names on your list

Then this happens …

2. People buy your bookLet’s say you get a 30% conversion rate

That give you 300 people who are buying your book

They’ll do that in a very short time frame –let’s say 24 hours

You’ve just sold 300 books in 24 hours

Amazon’s bestseller list is very, very short-term

So you’ve just climbed toposition 500 or so

on the overall Amazon.com bestseller chart

Then the magic happens

And what does that mean?

Position #500 means you are quite likely to be #1 on your category bestseller list

Or top #10 / top #20 in even crowded niches

And you’ll feature in “Hot New Release” selections

You might feature in marketing emails, etc

That delivers a HUGE amount of visibilityAND your book is getting in front of the exact right group of readers

Visibility means sales

Email ➔ sales to readers ➔ visibility➔ sales to brand new readers

So an email list delivers sales way in excess of the total size of the list.

It’s magic … but it’s real

Case study

Bet you’d like somecold hard numbers …

In summer 2015, I launched a bookI also had 4 kids under the age of two

My genius marketing strategy (in full)

Send 1 email

Um. That’s it.

That summer I was a teeny-tiny bit busy

My list at launch: 330 emails

1st month sales: 2,200 e-books

1st year sales: 5,000+

Other series titles:

List size 12 months later: 1,700

Self-pub income from 1 email: $30,000

Other marketing? Nil – I was changing nappies

Thing is though, things worked out OK

Main lesson to take away

Email capture is critical

Really, success in self-pub comes down to this:

(A) Write a good book

(B) Build a list of engaged readers

(C) Return to A & go again

There’s a lot of additional stuff you can do

Price promos

Promo sites

Co-promotion with other authors

Social media (non-idiot sort)

Box sets & other product extensions

Amazon ads, Bookbub ads, Facebook ads

But these are add-ons

Email marketing will lie right at the heart of your whole machine

7 Quick Wins

Win the FirstGet the cover right

Don’t skimp!

Get the right cover

Pro designer: $300+

Pre-made cover: $50+

There are 10s of 100s of pro designs available for sale. If in doubt, buy one.

Win the SecondGet your text right

Don’t skimp!

Perfect your text

MS assessment: $750+Proofreading: save money!

Your first self-pub title is themost important. Get it right

Blatant plug

Win the ThirdBuild your website for the long term

Don’t skimp on your website

Right platform: WordPress

Right theme: Parallax for Writers(gocreate.me / $399)

Right domain: yourname.com(already taken? Then yournameauthor.com)

Your website is a key, key tool. Get it right from the start.

Win the FourthWrite in series

Writing in series will make you loads more money than

writing standalones.

Romance authors can do it,so you can too

Win the FifthMake your work exclusive to Amazon

Wide Indies

Amazon

52%48%

Kindle Select

Kindle Unlimited Full-Read

Amazon Retail Sales

‘Narrow’ indies get a full half of their income via KU‘Wide’ indies get a much smaller boost from other retailers

Win the SixthDon’t put your book on pre-order

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29

Reviews starting to populate. Book available. Conversions will be good –but you’ve lost your traffic!

Traffic will spike when you email readers about the book, then fall away

Pre-order period Post-publication sales

No reviews? Can’t read the book? Conversions will stink.

Win the SeventhDon’t be a dummy

Learn how to self-publish.

Then self-publish

You can try doing it the wrong way round,but you’ll mess up badly

Cheesy selling bit

Q&A follows

Let’s review what we’ve learned

We’ve learned the basic model(email marketing)

We’ve learned a few tricks(Pre-made covers, pre-orders, write in series, Amazon exclusivity, etc)

But no way do we know enoughto self-publish professionally

There’s so much more to know

For example:What’s the best way to lay out your ebook?

How do you set up your website to maximise conversions?

How do you use your mailing list between launches?

What’s the best way to run a price promo?

What’s the fastest, best way to get reviews post-launch?

Unsurprisingly, there are some great courses available

Chandler Bolt, SP School - $6,997

Steve Scott, Authority - $597

Nick Stephenson, SP Formula - $597

Mark Dawson, 1.01 - $497

Any of these courses will radically improve your self publishing

We have a great course too

It’s called Self-Publishing Success

It’s great

It covers everything

And we recommend you don’t buy it

Because the thing about us is

We love writers

So we want to give you more.

For less.

In fact, we give away our Self-Publishing course FREE to members

We cover every topic you needText preparation Editing & Copyediting Formatting Print books Ebook layouts Book covers Uploading Categories & keywords Titles, subtitles, series titles Book descriptions Pricing Reviews Launch teams Reader magnets Landing page construction Reader magnet distributionMailing list basics Co-promotions Book promo sites Price promos Social media Amazon ads Bookbub ads Facebook adsMailing list advanced And more

Membership = £195, or approx. $259

But the thing is …

We love writers

So members of Jericho Writers don’t just get our Self Publishing course for free

They get everything

Our members also get – for FREE

A complete course on how to write17 videos

Lavishly documented

Intensely actionable

Amazing user feedback

Our members also get – for FREE

A course on Getting Published

Full access to AgentMatch

Member-only webinars

Tons of masterclasses

Cinema films

And much more

Jericho Writers

Self-publishing Success +

How To Write + Getting

Published + webinars +

AgentMatch + more

£195 / $259

Chandler Bolt - $6,997

Steve Scott - $597

Nick Stephenson - $597

Mark Dawson - $497

Prices for self-pub courses only

So my recommendation?

My recommendation is …

Don’t take out membership of Jericho Writers

Wait till November 29th …

And we’ll give you Jericho Writers membership

at 33% off the normal price

You don’t need to do anything to register

Just check your emails around Black FridayWe’ll tell you exactly what to do

33% off – membership just £130 / $175

That’s it from me

Questions?

SELF PUBLISHING How to self- publish - Writers...Learn how to self-publish. Then self-publish, y...

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