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Experiment with readers
The best way to come up with new and exciting ways to bring readers to your books is to experiment. Readers change with the times and here are a few new things I’ve noted recently.
Use Twitterfeed to post interesting stuff to your readers even while you’re away.
Okay, I confess, I’ve been using Twitterfeed since starting on Twitter back in 2011. But one thing I noticed is that while I was ‘offline’ for about 5 months, my following was not affected at all. In fact, neither was my level of retweets. Why? Because I chose the right people to add to my Twitterfeed and many readers found the posts helpful.
Use free features like Justunfollow.com
This is a great application for anyone on Twitter, but you have to be careful, especially if you haven’t got a huge following. Let me explain. If you unfollow a lot, obviously you’re not going to get many followers. For tips on how to get more followers, see this post or pick up this book. However, if you have a healthy following, you can take advantage using these tips:
-unfollow inactive followers
select the ‘inactive following’ button so it displays those who haven’t been on Twitter for a while. I suggest going from the ones who haven’t been on the longest (3 months or more) and so forth.
Note: Justunfollow.com (or Crowdfire) only allows you to unfollow 200 people per day. However, you can unfollow manually by simply opening up their profile on the justunfollow page and hit ‘follow’ to unfollow them. If you have a little spare time it’s amazing how fast you can clean up your stuff.
Unfollowing inactive users gives you a higher ranking on Twitter, which means that those who search for valuable people to follow will see you more readily. It also makes your profile appear better for organic searches.
-unfollow non-followers
this is kind of a no-brainer, however, one thing it does is force you to unfollow presumably active users (some may not be, but that’s the chance you take). If the users happen to be serial ‘checkers’ of unfollowers, etc., then they will see you…
Change your profile bio to something meaningful for readers
Twitter bios are something you can change whenever you want, and I change mine semi-regularly. I’m learning that author bios are being used more often now similar to Facebook statuses. It isn’t just a static info dump anymore. Recently I added to mine the fact that some of my books are free and I told readers where they can find them. It sure helps to draw attention to your work and it doesn’t cost a cent! And while we’re on that topic…
Make at least one book free
Back in November, I decided to conduct a little experiment. Some of my books have been around a long time, and seemed to be collecting dust, so I made them free on Kobo, Smashwords, Nook, iBooks, and everywhere except Amazon (we’ll get to that later), and while it took some time, I’m noticing a spike in sales because of the freebies I’m offering readers. The trick is to choose the right books, and if you’re lucky, the right book will funnel into a major sales spike….but you have to be patient. While I haven’t struck gold yet, I’m hopeful.
Offer a permafree book
You’ve probably all heard about making your book(s) permafree on Amazon. I find it works best with book one of a series. If you don’t have a series, try it anyway, but remember that once your book is free on Amazon, there is no going back. I was lucky and book one of my police procedural series was picked up by Amazon and put on permafree. While it is taking some time, I’ve had more downloads with The Wife of a Lesser Man than I’ve ever had with Kindle free days. It’s a very effective tool…but again, you must choose the right book.
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