Adventures in eBook Advertising - REBEL EMPIRE, The Series

So you’re and independent writer and you’ve just finished you’re first novel - you probably think the hard work is now finished and soon the accolades and money will start to roll in. Think again! Soon you’ll realize that the hard work is just about to begin. The quest to find an agent and a publisher.

This is virtually an impossible task, yes it does happen, but it’s seldom.

Therefore the next step is to self publish, and there’s nothing wrong with that, in fact I would encourage you to do so. There are two excellent options. Amazon Kindle and Smashwords. Smashwords will get your product to the major eBook vendors, although Amazon will seldom accept a Smashwords product, the good news is you can directly publish your eBook on Amazon. In my opinion Amazon is the easier and superior choice.

I have all of my books listed at both Amazon and at Smashwords, but from the stand point of sales Amazon is far better in my experience. My Amazon sales are quadruple that of my sales on all of the Smashwords vendors combined.

So now your eBook is published and available to all those anxious readers. Now comes the hardest part of the process.  How do you get exposure to readers that enjoy the genre that you have written in?  After all the whole purpose of writing is to get your story into the hands of the reader.  Beyond a doubt this is the most challenging part of the independent writer’s work. 

You can establish a blog to hawk your product, or set up a Facebook page. This will certainly help. Many experts recommend some form of paid advertising. I’ve been reluctant to take this step as advertising can be quite expensive and often the benefits are not realized. However, that being said, in 2016 I have taken the advertising plunge.

Having decided to advertise my books it now becomes a question of where to advertise?  Since, I have a three book series devoted to the concept of what an alternative reality exists where the Confederacy wins the American Civil war, it would seem a Civil War venue would be a good bet.

After some research I decided to go with the Civil War magazine- THE CIVIL WAR MONITOR. This magazine is insightful and well received and dedicated to the American Civil war. Hard print ads are expensive, but the magazine has a great internet based site. The added benefit of taking out an ad on their web site is that a reader can simply click on my ad for the series “REBEL EMPIRE” and it will take them directly to my books on Amazon.

There’s the link to the magazine’s web site:

http://www.civilwarmonitor.com/

So, long story short I’ve taken out 3 months of online advertising.  It will be interesting to see what effect if any this will have on my sales.  I’ll report back with the results later in the Spring.

REBEL EMPIRE

1. GETTYSBURG REDUX

http://www.amazon.com/GETTYSBURG-REDUX-REBEL-EMPIRE-Book-ebook/dp/B009EBPNAS/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

2. REBELS & DESPERADOS

http://www.amazon.com/REBELS-DESPERADOS-REBEL-EMPIRE-Book-ebook/dp/B00FRKG91C/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1414985280&sr=8-1&keywords=rebels+%26+desperados

3. FOR THE GOOD OF THE CONFEDERACY

http://www.amazon.com/GOOD-CONFEDERACY-REBEL-EMPIRE-Book-ebook/dp/B00TM02HFU/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8