Happy New Year!
It’s just over a week now until the first book in my series comes out. I feel oddly prepared for this, which probably means that there’s a million and one things I’ve forgotten to do and will find myself scrambling next week, but hopefully not. This isn’t my first book launch, and since I have been in scrambling mode before, that was exactly what I was trying to avoid with this launch. Hopefully, I’ve done a good enough job of preparing myself for the big day.
Netgalley Results
As I mentioned previously I had posted an advanced copy of my book on Netgalley using a third party service to get some early reviews, and I received my report. There’s a lot of details in the report including contact details for anyone who requested a review copy, and so I can send an email for anyone who hasn’t left a review yet encouraging them to do so.
Overall I had 112 reviewers who requested my book via Netgalley. That’s pretty awesome, though so far I’ve only received 8 reviews through Netgalley. My hope is that more will continue to post reviews and that they will also post reviews on Amazon as well as elsewhere. With the 8 reviews I received my average star score is 4 out of 5. So, I’m happy with that.
I dread reading reviews, but I may look through some of the better reviews to see if there’s any quotes I can pull to be used on the editorial reviews section on Amazon.
Catching up on my Reading
As I was working on setting up ads for my book, I found that when it comes to advice about selling books on Amazon there is a lot of conflicting information out there. I’ve read some of David Gaughran’s previous books on book marketing so, I decided to dive into Amazon Decoded to see if I can’t figure out how to best market my series on Amazon. I’ve only just begun, but already I’m learning some valuable information.
I sell a lot of stuff on Amazon every year, but I have to admit selling my books is the thing I struggle with the most. I also have to admit, I feel like one of the last people on earth who doesn’t really shop on Amazon. I’m not saying I never buy stuff there, but rarely do. And in case you’re an Amazon investor don’t worry, I pay them thousands upon thousands of dollars a year so the fact that I’m not doing my shopping there probably isn’t hurting them any. Though the irony of the fact that I bought a book called Amazon Decoded in the Apple Books store is not lost on me.
Well, I have some stuff to work on from what I’ve read so far in David’s book. So, I’m off to make some changes and take care of some other last minute things before the big launch.
