How does one develop a fan base?

[Asche Morgan]

Hello! I am new to the community, so forgive me if there's already a thread for this that I have not come across yet. I published my first book, but despite my advertising, I am not getting a lot of attention. I believe this is due to my very new name in writing and lack of reviews. What steps do people use to build a following?

 

[Devor]

It's uncomfortable for a lot of people, but the short answer is that you have to reach out to the people who review books and ask them to review yours.

Tips and Advice About Getting Book Reviews

 

[Demesnedenoir]

I literally have people contacting me on FB to tell me how much they loved the book and the series, top 10 favorite, etc etc and I’m like woohoo! Put that in a review, will you? Of course! They say. About 50% of those people actually ever end up leaving reviews as far as I can tell, probably less than that, LOL. It is amazing. And the moment I stopped chatting up to get reviews? they mostly stopped (on Amazon) while rating on Goodreads continues up.

I like your cover.

Work on your sales pitch. Your book description has a few passives (not real bad) but tells me very little. If you’re standing on the street hawking books what are you going to say to get my attention as I walk by? Now, I’m not a romance reader, so I might be off, but the description doesn’t set anything on fire in my imagination.

Your preview pages have a paragraph issue (at least on my ipad), so if that is in your book, reformat that puppy.

Romance has some bult in advantages, if willing to risk nasty reviews, there is a group that you can pay to who will get your book in front of unpaid reviewers, but they will tend to bring your average down. They specialize in romance, so might be worth a shot.

Less hazardous and free, give away sample chapters or free books through Prolific Works or something similar. Hit everything free you can think of. FB has groups where authors can self promote to readers, plus you can people with list builders and other such stuff for reasonable prices or free.

Advertising, I will be blunt: The odds of making money off of ads for a single book are slim. Ad rates are too high to overcome for the most part, in particular without some street cred such as reviews. But, I also found some of my biggest and staunchest fans while losing money advertising, LOL.

Booklife by Publishers Weekly does paid reviews for Indies, if you’ve got the confidence in your book, it can be worth it. Same with Kirkus and Indiereader.

The trouble isn’t a lack of things to try, it’s the opacity of the entire system that doesn’t let you know what works and what doesn’t.

I’m guessing from your books 400k area you’ve had 1 sale or KDP download in the last several days, and that isn’t promising for a new release. Amazon likes new releases, but you probably aren’t triggering enough sales to get into their emails which are based on also-boughts and categories.

WHat advertising have you tried?

 

[Asche Morgan]

I have tried Facebook, Boobkbub, Goodreads, and Amazon Kindle. Thank you for the tips! I'll get on that.