NaijaPublish: 2018

Sunday 21 January 2018

How Nigerian Authors can Market or Promote their Books

As an independent and digitally published Nigerian author, one thing you need to pay attention to in addition to writing is "how to market your published books. The easiest and also free method that works is the use of Facebook groups. You have to join Facebook groups for book promotion and marketing. Click here to access the list of of Facebook groups that will be of great help to you. Join as many of them as possible.

But you have to get the link or url of your published books first. Once your book is successfully published, you can follow the steps to get its link: To do that, first login to your Amazon publishing account and copy the book's ASIN number and then follow these steps:

Login to Amazon AuthoCentral using your Amazon publishing account email and password through this link.
From there, click on the link "Add more books".
In the search box provided, paste your book's ASIN number there and click the button "GO".
Your book will be displayed, click the "This is my book" button under it and it will be added in to your AuthorCentral Author profile in about ten minutes to one hour later.

You can then click on the book there to go to its Amazon sales page. Once you are on its sales page, you will see its link or URL displayed on the browser URL field. Copy it from there and that is the link for your eBook which you can use to promote it on social media or your website or share it with your friends who may want to buy the book.

Note that this link is the eBook's .com URL (That is Amazon USA market). You can then edit it to the URL of the other national markets. For example, you change the .com to .co.uk for UK, .com to .ca for Canada, .com to .com.au for Australia etc.

Just write a small advert copy or just the books description and include the link of the book and then paste it in those groups. Include the fact that it is a new book.

In fact, from these groups, you will see how other authors are doing it and then take a clue from them too.

Other Standard Book marketing Methods

Another viable marketing option is the use of Amazon Marketing Services (AMS) to promote your books. Have a look at Amazon's guide on this here and KBoards guide on it here.

Some things I think you can do to further market your books are: Creating a vibrant author brand through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Goodreads. As for the print books, you can use facebook page, and offline marketing through newspapers, speech making, and giving free copies to libraries.

Saturday 20 January 2018

New Book Project Strategies

As a Nigerian writer who is interested in self-publishing through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing, there are things you need to take note of when starting a new book project. Some of these things are as follows.

Make sure the book idea fits a worldwide audience (since Amazon market place is suited for this purpose) not only target at Nigerian audience
Research the sales potential of the supposed genre of the book idea and see if it is worth it or you will need to optimize it for a different genre. To do this, search for books in that genre or sub-genre in the Amazon store and see how it is fairing in sales through it sales rank.
Properly outline the book's chapters and sections/scenes.
Research any relevant information.
If you have social media followers who are interested in your writing, start building sales momentum for the book by posting your writing progress on your social media outlets to carry them along.
Research the nature of the Book cover design and start to work on it too or hire someone who is competent to do it. You can contact us if you need this service through our services page here.
Plan and document the launching strategies you will use to promote/market the book. Make sure you used these strategies to give the book a good standing in sales and ranking once it is published. See our earlier post on book marketing here.

WRITING GOALS

It is very important you have writing goal(s). This is because; you will perform better when you have a desired target to attain and also because the more books you have published through amazon kindle direct publishing, the greater the chances of making daily sales since if one title does not sell, another may do. So, always have daily word count targets, monthly word count targets, and number of books to publish annually.

GENRE WRITING TIPS

Although, the techniques involved in creative writing are not constant but varies from period to period, genre to genre, and schools of thought. I will consider this topic from two broad perspectives, that is, fiction and nonfiction writing.

Fiction

The writing of fiction requires the following skills and many others.

Sharp and Organized imagination as this involves the creation of scenes that are predominantly abstract.
The ability to outline the storyline of the book.
The ability to create compelling and expressive characters.
The ability to create dialogues that flows.

Nonfiction

The writing of nonfiction requires the following skills and many others.

The ability to outline the storyline of the book.
Being a good researcher.
The ability to organize the products of your research.
The ability to creatively write the actual book in a manner that it will be informative, interesting, and give a compelling read.

Monday 15 January 2018

Writing and Author Resources for Nigerian Authors

Writing and Self publishing requires specialized and organized knowledge. It is to this end that I created links to Stephen King's writing guides and other great writing resources for convenience and ease of access to aid Nigerian Writers and Authors in their research and writing.

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