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A terrific service for entrepreneurial self-published authors looking for tools to make their books more successful and drive book sales.
Author Marketing Club is an online community of over 20,000 authors, along with a collection of targeted tools and advice.
If you want to increase your self-published book sales, check out Author Marketing Club. Whether you write fiction books or nonfiction, there’s something for every author.
Members get access to valuable services and practical tools — and they are very good tools, too. And to answer the question, “Is Author Marketing Club worth it?” — the answer for entrepreneurial authors and self-published authors is definitely YES!
Key Features of Author Marketing Club
Author Marketing Club started in late 2012, as a free members community. About a year ago it added a premium membership.
Members get a combination of tools and marketing-related services to help them market their books. Today there are two levels of membership: free and premium.
If you’re thinking premium = expensive, you’d be wrong. The premium level is $105 annually. For the value you get, it’s a bargain.
Premium members, of course, get access to more tools and services than free members.
This isn’t a community beating its chest about how wonderful self-publishing is and trashing traditional publishers. This crew doesn’t have time for that. Instead, the focus is on learning and taking advantage of every possible technique to drive bestsellers as a self-published author.
The founder, Jim Kukral, is an author himself. He’s been published by a traditional publisher and has self-published a number of books. So he is familiar with the world of publishing from both the traditional and self-published perspectives.
But he’s also an experienced, pragmatic and creative marketer. He knows that the money comes to those who keep their eye on the ball. And the ball in this case is about selling books.
To sell books you need to write a good book, have determination, and have access to the right knowledge and the right tools. The writing and determination come from within you. The knowledge and tools come from Author Marketing Club.
Why Join Author Marketing Club
Everything is practical and targeted. There’s nothing purely theoretical or abstract — or off-topic.
There are so many tools and services with Author Marketing Club, it’s hard to cover them all. They include:
- Webinars and mastermind groups: For instance, a recent webinar discusses the difference between book titles for fiction (straightforward titles work best) and nonfiction (more creative titles work best). Kukral, who hosts these, gives advice that shorter titles (6 words or less) sell better than long titles. And similar advice is given.
- Bookalyzer: If you want to check out the competition, or analyze your own book, this tool tells you the book’s rank on Amazon, how different size cover images will look, and other analytic information.
- Description Generator Tool and ebook: This gives advice on writing effective Amazon descriptions, and generating the copy for you.
- Reviewer Grabber Tool: Reviews by consumers are essential to validating social proof. People are more likely to buy if others reviewed it. This tool helps you identify people who have reviewed books similar to yours. Then you can reach out to them via email and ask if they will review your book.
- Pre-made book covers: Each premium member is entitled to one free pre-made book cover (value of $30). Other premade covers are available for purchase ala carte.
- Free Book Submission Service: If you have a free book, this helps you find lists and services that promote free ebooks.
- Author services marketplace: Those who do editing, formatting, cover design and other services can list them here.
- Daily emails highlighting author ebooks: These emails are great for discovering new books. And they help authors spread the word.
- Free blog upgrade service: If you have a website, you can get a WordPress blog installed for free, along with 10 free plugins.
- Live events: In September the Club held its first live event, called Author Marketing Live. It was a fantastic event. About 150 authors attended, including some very successful Kindle authors in fiction and nonfiction.
This chart from the site outlines key features:
What Could Be Better
The value is there, and Kukral keeps improving and adding to it. There are no major negatives to point out in this Author Marketing Club review.
As far as future improvements, it would help to have more author discussion and sense of community. There had been a forum, but it wasn’t very active. Currently it is being upgraded. There is a Facebook Page, and it has over 7,000 fans. There’s also a private Facebook Group for those who attended the Live event in September. But with so many places to find updates and community, it feels scattered.
Also, most of the advice is targeted toward Amazon and especially Kindle ebooks. Jim Kukral says that’s because Amazon is still the 800-pound gorilla. And that’s true. Still, going forward it would be useful to see more tools for platforms like iTunes and Google Play.
Who Author Marketing Club Is Best For
Author Marketing Club is ideal for book authors who recognize that writing is not only a creative endeavor, but a business. According to founder Kukral, those who work at marketing their books, and who write more than one book, tend to have more success.
It is perfect for authors who are hands on and entrepreneurial do-it-yourselfers. In other words, if you’re the kind of author who not only writes, but wants to be actively involved in the editing and formatting of your book (at least at some level), the tools will be very valuable to you. If you want to take control of your success through marketing your book, Author Marketing Club will be perfect.
On the other hand, if you are the kind of author or aspiring author who prefers to send book proposals to traditional publishing companies, and not get involved with editing and formatting and uploading to Amazon, there’s certainly nothing wrong with that. But Author Marketing Club may not be as much help to you.
If you are an author who thinks you shouldn’t have to do any marketing because “a good book will sell itself,” then Author Marketing Club is not for you either. But remember, you’re not doing justice to a great book if readers can’t find it. In today’s world you can’t leave book marketing to chance. It’s all about getting your master work found.
Take a look at the huge list of testimonials, from successful real authors, on the site. See who uses and gets value out of Author Marketing Club. Would you like to be among authors like them someday? Then Author Marketing Club will be great for you.
The market for ebooks and self-publishing has become very crowded. At the time of this post, the number of ebook titles available on the Kindle platform exceeded 3 million (thereof about 2.4 million English titles). Ebook supply on this platform is growing by more than 30% a year; this means more than new 70,000 titles every month. In such an enviornment, self-publishers should look for support such as offered by Author Marketing Club. For example, the top selling genre on Kindle is “Romance”. What what are the odds of success, given that this genre has 192,000 English titles that sell at only $3.24 on average. This means, precise niche definition and selection, having a high quality book in the first place AND effective book marketing are absolutely key to success. This is where services such as Author Marketing Club can be of help.
Alex Newton
CEO
K-lytics.com
ebook market intelligence for success
Thanks for the detailed review. MY new book is almost ready for launch – and I’ve not only written it, but been heavily involved in formatting it, designing the cover and I now need to learn as much as I can about how to market it well. I think the point about doing your book justice by making sure the people who would get the most from it will actually be able to find it is absolutely key. But it’s something that has taken me a while to get my head around. And even if the message clicks, you then have to work your way through all the different choices you have to promote your book – and it’s dizzying! So something like this sounds perfect – I know I’ll still be doing the hard work, but having someone guide me in the right direction is invaluable.
The description tool can be done in wordpress too, just bold, color orange etc and click text and here you are! the review grabber tool is col , so the email but I emailed over 100 # reviewers and ended up with only 1 review. Author Marketing Club is in the 90/10 activity. I listed my book in every single promotion – Sunday book promotions, Friday 99 deals, new book, etc and guess how many sales I received? That’s right – nada.
Though the free book submission tool is cool and it’s available for free members. I liked also sell your first 100 copies with Brian Cohen too and how to prepare your first Bookad. Hopefully I subscribed only for one month not for an year.
Hi Antara Man,
I know it is frustrating to not get results that you’d like. However, I have a few things I wish to add.
(1) While one “could” theoretically create an Amazon description in WordPress, most people will get it wrong. For instance, what you described about formatting is actually wrong. And it’s wrong in an important way. I suggest people try doing what you described, and then also use the AM Club description generator. Then compare the results side by side showing the HTML code. You will see the differences. As far as SEO and findability in Amazon, those differences are very important.
(2) As far as reviewers, it’s hard to get reviews and I empathize with you. But I would like to point out that your experience actually isn’t all that far off from a typical conversion rate. A typical conversion rate would be 2% in most contexts. You got 1%. Without seeing the text of your email, it’s hard to know if you could have gotten another review or two by changing the text, etc. All I will say is, getting reviews is a numbers game, in the sense that only a small fraction of people who read a book or who are offered a review copy actually will end up doing the review. That was my own experience with my own book. That means, instead of becoming discouraged, send out MORE requests. The more requests for reviews you send (and the more gentle follow-ups you send), the more reviews you likely will get.
Don’t focus on how many people say no or don’t respond — focus on getting more requests out there so you can get more yes responses.
Not every tool is going to work the way you want it to work. But don’t let it get you down. Keep trying. Don’t give up!!!
I hope that helps, and good luck with your book.
Anita
I want to join and pay the annual Premium member fee, but I can’t seem to find how to join. Please notify me in this matter. I have submitted my email and a password but nothing happened. I’m confused.
When I attempt to send this comment a screen appears stating that I already said that???? HELP!