YouTube

Well, I'm up to 71 subscribers now and over 15,000 views. This is the way to promote, IMO. Self-Promotion for Dummies. All you have to do is give it good content and it does the heavy lifting.

I've been browsing other channels to try to glean what makes them so popular and how they get so many subscribers. This is truly a micro-niche market. I've watched channels built around un-boxing purchases, showing off shoe collections, tapping and scratching on surfaces for "ASMR" (relaxing) noises ...their subscribers are in the tens of thousands. Most have ads, and they must be raking it in if I can average $20/mo with the small base that I have.

This seems perfect for authors, too. With some imagination, come up with relevant videos and build an audience. Put your book cover in front of each vid or list it in the About section. Use the analytics to inform future videos and books. I am a fan!

A good title seems to help a great deal to attract viewers. This video received three-quarters of a million views, simply because of the title: Shark attack, Kuramathi:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGTvfJTJ8Mw

I haven't figured out how to do it - but a colleague of mine at my publisher has sold 27,000 ebooks at $2.99 since October 2013 and 1000 hard cover (I don't know the price).  Her site is cindysamplebooks.com if you care to see what she writes.

She did it with speaking engagements and lots of reviews.  She wrote three books then used the first as a loss leader to introduce the second two.  She used a lot of gimmicks for marketing that worked.

I checked out the website, she has indeed done an impressive job and looks like she's had success as a self-publisher. Her books are listed with CreateSpace, though, or maybe I missed the one with your publisher.

My point about YT is that I don't have to give speeches and relentlessly self-promote. I don't promote to anyone. If I did, I might have 3x the number of subscribers. But I'm fine doing what I'm doing. I don't have time or the inclination to self-promote and am just not good at it.

Cindy and I both had L & L Dreamspell who closed their doors after the death of the owner.  They returned our rights and provided entre to Wild Rose Press who took most of the books and republished them with new covers and some edits.

I don't know what happened with Cindy but she chose to republish herself.  I put Ghost Orchid on Kindle temporary while I decided whether to pump up the sex in Ghost Orchid so Wild Rose Press would publish it.  I wasn't comfortable with that and so I have a couple other publishers with whom I am working.  Vinspire made an offer but requires a lot of initial format and preparation on the part of the offer.  I was spoiled by L & L who did everything once they had the manuscript.

Authors Guild will do an Authors Guild reprint from the actual book. I have considered them as well.  That only requires sending them the book as I am a member.

I agree that the promotion is a major commitment.  I had pretty much saturated the local market with promotions with Arirang and intially with Ghost Orchid.  I needed to branch out but life became complicated.

I would like to take advantage of the process you are using LC but just don't have a grip on what you are doing.

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Vinspire made an offer but requires a lot of initial format and preparation on the part of the offer.  I was spoiled by L & L who did everything once they had the manuscript.

I know what you mean. I had investigated publishing my Cengage (now Bloomsbury) text with a local technical publisher who actually has pretty good market penetration with the college adoption crowd. However, I learned that what he called the "manuscript" was actually a finished, printer-ready pdf. I'd have to do page layout, labeling, the index, everything. Nor does he make electronic versions, just puts the pdfs on Google Books, which nobody visits. He prints the books, provides desk copies, and has a publisher booth at conferences, but it wasn't enough for me. I don't have the skillset to lay out a textbook (or any book, really), and am not interested in learning yet.

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I would like to take advantage of the process you are using LC but just don't have a grip on what you are doing.

You've visited my YT site, haven't you? I sent you the link. I make tutorial vids on my books' subjects. I also post vids of related interest, and a few unrelated ones if I think they're interesting enough. The unrelated ones don't promote my books, but they generate hits from a different target group, which helps with ad revenue (a secondary goal).

You would have to think up vids that might be of interest to people interested in your books. You do have to know how to make good ones (a quality microphone gets you halfway there), make a great title, and once you start accumulating views, YT runs with it.

I have a friend who does lawncare vids and he puts "weed" in the title whether it's relevant or not, because that ups the hits exponentially from people looking for pot videos. LOL.