Book help for a published author. Your opinions are needed!?

[Phoenixx eyes]

Try Advertising on where people generally visit ... social sites
Try facebook , myspace twitter
You should be able to create an ad for your books so more people will see them or you could ask one at one of your local bookstores if you could hold a discussion there for your book. It's great publisity so even if people aren't interested in the genre themselves they could be curious and tell other people
Hope this helped XD

Eirini,
Kaori

[kate]

You have to think about your audience and best how to reach them. Going through kindle is good but create a facebook group and reach out to people. Take an ad out in paper. Better yet, talk to a book critic.

[akaMaryn]

No agent or commercial publisher is going to help you, because there's no money in it for them. That's one of the negatives of self-pubbing, that marketing doesn't happen. Self-published books do poorly on ebay, amazon, the publisher’s website, and the author’s own website.

Marketing a pay-to-publish book is damned difficult. Many of the avenues open to traditionally published authors are not available. Chain bookstores won't host signings or carry copies (although they will order them for customers). Newspapers, magazines, TV, and radio don't want your press releases and won't do interviews. The library system won't accept free copies. Writing- or book-related conventions won’t let you set up a sales or autograph table, don’t want you on their author panels, and forbid you giving away promotional material.

The author's blog, Facebook, Twitter, and other electronic self-promotion efforts seem to have little effect in terms of increased sales.

About the only marketing I've seen have any effect for self-published authors is active participation at forums and chats dealing with the subject of your book. Find your niche market and determine where online they hang out. Some sites may allow you to discuss your book *if someone asks about it* (but will ban you for bringing it up more than once). Some may allow a link to a point of sale in your profile, or to your blog or web-page which in turn links to a point of sale.

You'll sell a few more copies than you might have, but overall, like most self-published books, regardless of quality, total sales will probably remain low, even if the book is really good and you and your sister work hard to market it.

I’m sorry not to be able to offer much real hope for promotion, but I figured you’d rather hear the truth than sugar-coated lies which might cause you to waste your time or money.

[Joss]

An agent's job isn't to market your book. An agent's job is to sell your book to publishers. The problem you're facing with this particular novel is that it's already published and selling. Now you have the additional hurdle of selling thousands of copies before an agent and publisher will even consider it. For instance, Amanda Hocking had verifiable proof of having 1 million sales of her self-published ebook. That's what got her a $1 million deal with a big pub for not only the self-published book series, but a new book series. She's an exception, though because most commercially published authors can't even sell that many ebooks.

If what you want is an agent for your book, your best bet is to work on a different novel. You're not going to get the sequel to Do No Evil published by a real publisher unless that publisher picks up DNE. And they're not going to take on DNE unless you've sold thousands of copies; I've heard that you'd need to sell anywhere from 5,000-10,000 copies, but I dont' know if it's a different figure for ebooks. My advice is to make sure it's on as many self-publishing platforms as possible. Read up on Amanda Hocking and see what kind of marketing and promotion she did to sell so many copies. I know one of the reasons is that she built up a fan base over the years, so she had people who were eager for her next book because they liked the previous one. Also, she priced her ebooks at 99 cents and it's believed that's how she sold so many copies. but, noawdays 99 cents is getting a stigma attached to it. Many people are starting to believe that you get what you pay for with a 99 cent ebook (it won't be that good). I dont' know if these thoughts are wide, but this is the expressions of many people who buy ebooks. I think 99 cents and free is a good short-time promotion. Think in the long-term. If people like your book then they're going to be eager for the next, so, yes, you lose money by offering it for free, but you can also build-up a fan base who will buy future books if they like what they've read.

Also, put it on other ebook platforms. See if you can publish it on the Nook. Make sure it's available through bookstore websites like Barns and Nobel (you need an ISBN) and Smashwords is a great place to sell it. (okay, I just reread your post and see that you already sell it in other places, but you didn't mention Smashwords, so check that out if you haven't).

There are many review sites that review only self-published books. Big Als is one of them. Seek them out. It's best if you start a relationship with them before hand. Do this by commenting on their posts. This will make it more likely that they'll agree to review your book if they know who you are. It doesn't hurt to try before you've built a relationship. But, many people don't like it when a stranger who doesn't read their review blog comes and ask for a book review. Just something to think about.

Use social media. Get on Twitter and start following other writers and self-published authors and commercially published authors. Build relationships that way. Follow them and they'll usually return the favor. Comment on their tweets and Retweet their tweets and they'll do the same for you and that's one way your book can reach more readers (I don't know if it works because I don't buy ebooks and I've never been tempted to buy a self-published ebook). Don't forget Facebook. You can start a page for your book or an author page. Follow some publicists on Twitter. They offer great advice on marketing and promotion and using social media for those things. Follow other writers because they tweet great articles they come across including articles about writing, promotion and marketing. That's how I found a large portion of the great articles that has helped me as a writer.

[And sorry if I went off-topic in my post.]