Selling eBooks and Media Archives | Jennifer Lancaster

September 15, 2025

Books about Book Marketing!

I noticed there are lots of books about marketing your book in various ways. Here I’ve compiled a list of my faves, recently updated. There is the book-first approach, and then there is an author-brand first approach, which I endorse for those building a career out of book publishing. Smart Marketing for Indie Authors by Mike Kowis. A favourite, that takes intending authors through all the tactics and ranks them on Mike’s scale. My Personal Brand and Set Up as a Micro Publisher. The brand book is about foundations, with a chapter on publishing and speaks of monetising as well, while the second one teaches you more about book marketing and getting that return on investment. Sell Like Crazy – Sabir Suby. Not about book marketing, but this book helps you see where you can add lead magnets to your online…

April 17, 2025

Self-Publishing, Selling eBooks and Media

Why ISBNs Are Killer for Your Book Sales

The Overlooked Superpower in Book Marketing Self-publishing is full of decisions: cover design, editing, distribution. Whether or not you use a hybrid publisher usually comes down to fear. What if I don’t know how to fill out an ISBN? What if I get stuck as there is no guidance for uploading to Ingram and KDP? (See our Self-Publishing course and Q&As if so!) That’s why you might think it too difficult to take control of your own ISBNs. This article explores how ISBNs can boost your credibility, visibility, and long-term sales. I cover Why ISBNs are good for indie authors. What’s an ISBN and Why Should You Care? An ISBN—short for International Standard Book Number—is a 13-digit code that uniquely identifies your book in the global publishing ecosystem. Think of it as your book’s fingerprint. Every format of your book…

May 14, 2025

Publicity, Selling eBooks and Media

How Newsletters Sell both Books and Services

Why are Author Newsletters a Low Hanging Fruit? (An extract from my Micro Publisher book) When building any information-based business, influencing new readers is all part of the process… and we don’t do that overnight. Monthly newsletters make this super simple. Rather than solely worrying over promos – what new campaign to offer your email list – you set up a systematic schedule of writing and emailing a newsletter. The beauty is, anything you put into a blog can be transferred to a newsletter, either with RSS setup or simply copying the details and headings. I would suggest putting as much real and actionable content into your newsletter as possible and don’t rely on ‘read more’ links. Over time, my list shows that 2-3% click the read more link, so I switched to one long article and one promotion of…

how to create a digital product to help book sales

April 7, 2025

Selling eBooks and Media

How to Create a Digital Product to Help Book Profits

As nonfiction topic specialists, we all know that royalties aren’t quite enough, and your expertise and advice is worth a lot more than $5 per customer! So, it may be time to learn about a tool which has a way to add a simple coaching service or digital product to your book. You used to need to use a shopping cart like WooCommerce plus Woo Payments (setup time!) and connect a processor if you wanted to sell anything virtually (through WordPress). No longer! A product in this post is one that Jennifer uses herself and endorses to others – if you click on the link and go through the trial to purchase, Jennifer gets a commission. Now, you can use a main EMS platform to host each product and its payment options. Or still use a sales page in your…

November 18, 2024

Selling eBooks and Media

The Benefits of Organic Traffic for Authors

You may have heard of doing work to ensure better ‘organic’ traffic on Google, i.e. natural, unpaid traffic. There are certainly many benefits for book authors to capitalise on SEO for their book or author website. (Though this article is not about search engine optimisation). People will generally find your website through a combination of their remembering your author name and/or book title. An especially rare keyword might also work. Google isn’t the only source of free visitors; there is also Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn. However, these folk mostly won’t click through to your website to find out more. Happy as a clam on FB or Instagram, they often don’t move from that spot. Whereas, with a Google search, many will click on the top three ‘organic’ spots… unless there is the answer right on the search results page.…

fixing pricing at Australian book retailers

January 7, 2025

Self-Publishing, Selling eBooks and Media

Fixing Errant Prices at Australian Book Retailers

You might be facing similar self-publishing book pricing problems. In 2018 I had issues with proper listing and pricing at Australian book retailers, such as Booktopia. Since then I have learnt more about the secrets of Print on Demand (with IngramSpark). Things I will be writing about in an upcoming Pitfalls of Publishing book! Feeds are not distribution. IngramSpark promising Australian micro/indie publishers that they can get their book listing out to 39,000 retailers/libraries is misleading. As a proud author-publisher, I do NOT expect that online book retail partners like Booktopia and The Nile to not list POD books, or list them at over-inflated prices! Actually, The Nile still stocks NONE of my books as partners of Ingram. Retail Prices As an experienced user of Print on Demand, I list my titles prices with consistency. To encourage sales, I set a…