Just finished with taxes last week and the sales results of my author year are disappointing. Yes, there are the usual excuses: people are still reeling from sickness, job loss, painful stories in the news.
But, in my case, I'm not crazy about spending the money to take out ads at places like BookBub, Facebook (I”m not even on Facebook!), Amazon, and others.
So I started digging into cheap or free ways to promote my books.
https://www.ingramspark.com/blog/how-indie-authors-can-get-their-books-into-libraries
https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2019/06/12/book-marketing-how-to-get-your-book-into-libraries/
https://www.superoffice.com/blog/email-open-rates/
Subject line: “So many books–how do you choose?”
Anti-Spam Requirements for Email: https://eepurl.com/dygYDH
Lots of articles–very good info. Approach librariaes. Sounds cheap, right?
But.
Do I send snail-mail (the cost of stamps went up to $0.63, ink for my printer, paper, envelopes, bookmark in each envelope), or email (seems I'd go over my limit of email contact numbers, so I'd have to upgrade my Mailchimp account to $13/month=$156 per year)?
https://www.thecreativepenn.com/2022/06/06/get-your-self-published-book-into-libraries/
I'm posting all these articles here to be able to archive them for furture reference. Maybe to help you, too?
Here's what I did: I made a spreadsheet with all the contact info I could find for all the libraries beginning with A in Nebraska. (That's where I started! B's will be added today! One letter at a time–it doesn't seem so overwhelming!) Plus I added other columns to the spreadsheet for sent, response, sales.
Had another thought to add a column for “update letter when a new book is out” and response to that.
It took lots of time to send out each letter. Like I wrote earlier, my Mailchimp account would go over the top and have to be upgraded.
I used the Mail app on my MacBook Pro computer. Entered the library email address. The subject line was, “Introducing a Fiction Series set in Small Town Nebraska!” Dragged and dropped a logo banner I use, then copy and pasted the body of the letter into the email.
I copied the library director's name after “Hello” on the salutation line, then inserted the name of the library farther down to personalize it even more.
“Here's my connection to Name of Beautiful Library and your patrons.”
I scrolled down and added avatars of my published books after my name and contact info.
On 2/17/2023, I sent out to all the A's and three local ones–nineteen letters. If I send out 250 letters total, and get 10% in responses, that's 25 libraries that responded with a purchase, a reply letter, or some kind of event.
Just this morning–one day after I sent them–I received a response from a local library! “When your fifth book is published in April, we would love to have a program/ book release here at the library for you!”
I had been praying about doing this. Ads are expensive. Sending out these emails one by one, is a lot of work and time. Then the response landed in my inbox! I feel like it's a confirmation from God that it's the right thing to do.
It literally cost me nothing.
