LiterarySalon.Bookmotion.pro

For the Radically Independent Author

Welcome.

Literary Salon is the newsletter of Bookmotion.pro, where I offer managed Bookfunnel services. Here I explore the options we have for building an author ecosystem, by which I mean an email list, newsletter, website, direct bookstore, advertising, social media, publishing options, etc.

 My recommendations as of the writing of this new introduction:

Reader magnet promotion: my services at Bookmotion.pro handle the headaches for you and save you money, but if you want to do it yourself Bookfunnel and StoryOrigin are proven methods that are worth the cost. That’s a rarity these days.

ARC promotions: I’m currently developing a relationship with BookSiren so I can offer their services as well. So far the experience has been good.

Email list and newsletter: I’m a big fan of Substack and use it for all my newsletters, but it doesn’t offer automated sequences. That doesn’t mean you have to switch providers entirely. Sendfox isn’t fancy, but you can set up an automated sequence for your imported subscribers that help acclimate them to who you are and what you offer. Sendfox’s biggest charm is that it’s cheap. I always advocate for only spending money when its necessary.

Direct-sales Bookstore: After exploring Ream, Laterpress, and PayHip, I’m about to build my next store with Fourthwall. I prefer PayHip’s payment policy, but I want to try offering merchandise. Laterpress is helpful in that they don’t take a cut for customers you bring to your site, and they’re subscription model is sound. If it’s important that your readers have a web-based reading option, it’s worth considering, but I plan on moving on. My recommendations are PayHip or Fourthwall.

Advertising: You need a multiplying factor to make advertising work. You can get that by advertising a book on Amazon using a staggered approach over several consecutive days. Bookbub is the king of this area, but it can be difficult to secure the coveted Featured Deal. For the staggered plan, you can run a regular advertisement on Bookbub for one day, and then follow that with other sites (which I haven’t yet used myself) like Book Barbarian and eReader News Today. When Amazon sees the spike in sales that stretches across several days, they will help promote your book within the site.

My other strategy I’m hesitant to share because Facebook recently messed with me. They took down my page for unspecified copyright issues, which were most likely that I was posting the covers of the books I’m paid to promote. The system for challenging the decision required that I tell them what post was the issue, but I couldn’t do that, so they wouldn’t forward my case for consideration. I was saved from this Catch-22 by the ad department who acted when I reached out to them.

So, be careful about posting images of covers directly, even your own. I’ve since heard of an author who was struck down for copyright infringement for posting her own book. She successfully challenged. 

That being said, the opportunity for the multiplying factor here is in creating a page and advertising it. The response rate is high. Those who respond get your page’s posts, and mixed among those posts are the posts that amount to free advertising.

Social Media: I’ve already touched on Facebook, but I’m also exploring Bluesky and Pinterest. I’m a longtime user of Twitter and still haven’t abandoned X because my follower number is huge there—but X doesn’t produce much, even then. The big focus in Notes, Substack’s own social media. People are there because they want long-form writing.

Website: Substack gives you something for your newsletter posts, and anything that doesn’t cost you will have its limitations. That being said, I’m very pleased with the combination of Substack, a free store (see above), and Google Sites. The biggest drawback on Google Sites is a lack of SEO beyond the first page, but your Substack posts are a great opportunity for search engine traffic.

Publishing: My only tried-and-true recommendation is that once you have enough subscribers, serialized publishing on Substack is a good way to grow your newsletter and promote your book. As for the publishing after that, my previous experience is with Amazon, and this time I want to go wide. I’ve heard that Ingram-Sparks is a headache, but Draft2Digital is a good experience. My plan is to go with D2D this time.

— Thaddeus Thomas