Self-Publishing

Last night I read a post by a new first-time self-published author who struggled to sell his debut novel.

He just couldn’t figure out how to advertise, market, and sell his book—far from a new and original tale obviously.

But this situation was different.

As I continued on reading I noticed that this person wasn’t ‘struggling’ with his marketing in the usual sense (i.e., pouring his heart and soul into it without seeing any results). No, this time he was getting results.

Quite decent results, in fact.

The problem was he wanted more. He wanted—as he called them—die-hard fans and lifelong readers, or in other words… repeat buyers.

I hope you already noticed the problem here…

But in case you don’t, the guy only just released his first novel. How can you expect to get lifelong fans, let alone “repeat buyers” if you only have one thing to sell??

This reminded me of the following fun, useful, and maybe somewhat obvious (but not obvious enough that everyone thinks about it) lesson: the more stuff you have to sell, the more money you’ll make.

It’s as simple as that.

Straightforward, simple, and effective.

I’ve realized this early on in my career as well.

Not only will you create fans who love your stuff so much they buy everything you put out, no matter what it is, but you’ll also be able to convert people, complete newcomers in your world, so much easier and with a higher average order value (the average amount of money a new customer pays you on their very first purchase) because of all the upsells, downsells, cross-sells, bonuses, bundles & packages, and future email sequences selling the next thing you already have in place.

There’s this saying I first heard from Ben Settle, who probably heard it from someone else, “To make more money than you do now, simply create more content than you do now, faster than you do now.”

That’s easily proven true by seeing how much more profitable it is to sell a trilogy series compared to three standalone novels.

That’s just how it goes around here.

Anyway.

If this got you thinking, “damn I’d like to create some more things to sell, but I don’t know how, let alone if I even have the time for it”, then worry not my cheeky little pumpkin pie.

Because I’ve got just the thing for you.

Let me introduce you to one of my best-selling, highly effective, and currently most expensive item on the menu, “Product Creation Made Easy”. It’ll teach you the ins and outs of product creation, including how to ideate, create, and launch profitable digital products in 21 days or less.

All of which can make for great additions to treat your customers and readers even better.

Click here for more information: https://alexvandromme.com/product

So read a recent question asked to hundreds of (aspiring) self-published authors.

The most common answer (it’s not even close compared to the second)? To quote one of the users, using the exact words they used:

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“Marketing is such a pain in the arse.”

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Which honestly saddens me.

Marketing doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to be time-consuming either. In fact, if done right, it can almost be a “set and forget” type of deal.

Sure, it might take a short while to get everything up and running. But once you do, you’re done… forever if you’d like.

Even if you publish new books, create new offers, venture out into new territory, everything you did the first time can be re-used, re-purposed, and re-peated to save you a bunch of time (and a lot of headaches).

So, if marketing can truly be that simple… then why are so many people finding it a “pain in the arse”?

My best guess?

Because there’s too much noise out there; too many so-called “experts” who truly have no idea what they’re doing, and haven’t achieved anything worthwhile themselves (or maybe they have but it was purely by accident and they have no idea how to reliably do it again, let alone for someone else in another market).

I dare you to look around, really look at who’s doing the talking, who people are following, what they’re doing, and what everyone has accomplished.

It’s truly the blind leading the blind out there.

Which brings me to the good news of the day…

Because of this exact reason I’ve decided to create a paid ads course, backed up by years and years of old-school direct response marketing (the type that brings immediate results, measured in $$$) specifically focused on independent creatives in the art & entertainment industry, with a very (and I mean VERY) big emphasis on self-published fiction authors—arguably one of the most difficult markets to do advertising in because there’s no real talk of “benefits” or “big ideas” many guru fanboys like to brainlessly yap about all the time, so if it works for them, you’ll be sure as hell it’ll work for anyone in the entertainment industry.

A fair word of warning.

The course won’t be sexy, nor will it contain a buttload of new trendy tactics. No exciting stuff at all. Just pure principles, simplicity, and effectiveness.

The bad news?

The course isn’t here yet (but it’s close!).

You’ll just have to sit down your sweet patooty and wait a bit longer.

Until then, consider checking out Email Valhalla to help you master my way of doing email marketing, which will act as an extremely profitable “supplement” to my way of doing advertising, making it so it’s virtually impossible not to succeed.

For more information about Email Valhalla, click the following link: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

Once came a Reddit post titled “Are newsletters better than social media following?”

It went as follows:

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I see a lot of talk about newsletters on here and am about to publish my first (and possibly only) book. As I consider how to connect with readers and what to put as a hook to connect at the end of the book, I was wondering… isn’t social media more engaging than newsletters? Would an invitation to follow a FB page, for example, not be more effective at regularly having a dialog? Why or why not?

I appreciate you guys being willing to share your experience with a newb like me.

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Short answer: email is superior in every way

Longer answer: Take a look at this and think about how “useful” this is.

You create a Facebook page, Instagram profile, Twitter account—or whatever social media you prefer—and invite all of your readers, customers, and other folks interested in your stuff to follow your profile.

Then, even though you’ve already got them to follow you (a difficult step on it’s own) you’ll still have to compete against hundreds of other people (friends, family, influencers, theme pages, other businesses,…) to get the attention of your followers whenever they happen to doomscroll (or zoomerscroll) through their homepage—most of the time while taking a dump at work to avoid working.

And as if that alone wasn’t enough.

If you do happen to grab their attention, then god forbid if you want to show them something nice, guide them to a new product of yours (a podcast you were on, a new YouTube video, your latest book, or even a free novella as a gift) because you will be heavily punished by the platform for “sending traffic away” aka, including a link that points to anywhere else but the social media you’re using.

Hell, let alone if someone doesn’t like something you post and decides to report you. With how today’s social landscape is looking, that could easily mean a total loss of your profile (losing everything you’ve worked for in the process).

You don’t even have to piss someone off to have it happen to you.

Many creators get their accounts banned or closed for no reason at all (and trust me because I’m one of them).

Long story short, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

Using email as the main form of communication between you and your customers is the only certainty and security you’ll ever have.

Make sure you’re using it.

Anyway.

If you’d like to learn more about all things email-related, then check out Email Valhalla here: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

People love to talk about publishers like they’re the second coming of Jesus—regardless of market or industry.

But if I were you I’d think twice about getting into the sea with a publisher.

After all, it’s a big decision, and more often than not, working with a publisher isn’t worth it.

For one, on average, across all industries, whether we’re talking books, video games, or music… publishers will take anywhere from 30% to 70% of your total profits.

Sure, the good ones (which are becoming harder to find day after day) will pay you upfront for your deliverable. But that’s not never where people make the majority of their income (if they know what they’re doing that is).

So there’s immediately a huge trade-off here.

Then the question you need to ask yourself becomes, “Will I make more profit, on top of the publisher’s cut, with the publisher than without them?”.

If the answer to your question is either “no” or “I don’t know” then don’t work with a publisher.

They need to be able to show you an entire game plan backed up by reliable figures of previous (and hopefully similar) projects they took on to convince you of their worth.

Even more.

Self-publishing has never been an easier, efficient, and especially lucrative practice than it is today. And it’ll continue to improve and be the better option for 90% or more of creatives out there.

The downside?

You’re on your own and you’ll need to do your own marketing.

Luckily for you, that too is becoming easier and easier by the day, especially when you apply what I teach in Email Valhalla about building a list and writing daily emails that get you paid and keep your readers reading day after day regardless of what market or industry you’re in.

Click here for more information about Email Valhalla: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla

A question popped up in a self-publishing writer’s community:

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I published my memoir in late January of this year. I was able to get quite a few sales (I was amazed tbh because my previous book I had published barely even sold…).

I’ve been trying my best to promote it this last month because the sales are dropping and I think it’s simply because people have no idea it exists…? But I don’t think I’m catching people’s attention with it.

I published it on Amazon kdp. I can’t pay for ads currently so…am I SOL? I really want my story to be heard

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Classic case of short-sightedness.

You see it everywhere. People trying to get others to buy their products or services so they start looking for ways to advertise that specific product… only to get a few one-time sales and then struggle to keep that momentum (if they even got any to begin with) going—never actually making a business out of what they’ve got.

Here’s the tl;dr of what I’d suggest to anyone in a similar situation:

• Step 1: Create an email list

• Step 2: Drive people to your opt-in page through content creation

• Step 3: Email them as often as you can about the common interests that connect you and them to whatever you’re selling.

• Step 4: Sit back and relax while growing a business that doesn’t rely on one-time sales because you’re not losing your customers. Instead you’re actively growing your customer list and building a better and tighter relationship with them, guaranteeing more sales (consistently) in the future as long as you keep giving people what they want.

Ain’t nothing complicated to it (and if you think this only works for authors, you couldn’t be more mistaken).

If you’d like a more in-depth view of this process, then check out Email Valhalla to learn all about building, growing, and monetizing your email list.

Click here to check it out: https://alexvandromme.com/valhalla