If you use Smashwords, click on your title, then edit book settings then affiliate referrals. Here you can adjust the percentage of profit affiliates earn for selling your book. If you increase the percentage above the standard 11% bonus, you can attract third-party affiliate marketers to list your book on their sites.
Affiliate Marketers are bloggers, website owners, publishers etc. They sign up for free at Smashwords and earn generous commission (between 11% and 80.5% for selling Smashwords listed ebooks on their sites.
All ebooks are automatically enrolled in the affiliate program when they are published at Smashwords. If you don't want a third party to sell your book for you, you can opt out. If you want the marketing boost, you can choose to increase the standard 11% payout to attract Affiliate Marketers to promote your book. The larger cut they get, the harder they will work to sell your book.
It's called juicing. I juiced The Pet Washer to 60%. My goal is to attract readers at this time, not make a lot of money. If a third party website can successfully sell The Pet Washer ebook for $2.99, they will get 60% of the profit. I'm happy to share my profits in exchange for the increased exposure.
If you have a website or blog and you want to sell The Pet Washer for this commission, sign up for the Smashwords Affiliate Program for free and follow the instructions to add The Pet Washer link to your website. It's a win for everyone involved!
To Do: Authors: Juice your ebook today! Book Sellers: Check out the Smashwords Affiliate Program, it pays more than the Amazon Affiliate Program (and there's no reason why you can't use both!)
Jennifer Lynn Alvarez
Author of The Pet Washer
A novel for children aged 6 and up!
You're amazing with your research. I'm a newly minted author from India and have been a faithful reader of your blog.
ReplyDeleteThank you for that wonderful compliment! I'm pleased you find my blog useful. What book did you write?
ReplyDeleteBlog owner having a great opportunity to increase income. Affiliate program helps a lot in this regard.
ReplyDeleteTrue. Thanks for reading!
DeleteI juiced my novel, The Minotaur Medallion, to 25%, but so far no takers. Any thoughts on how to contact affiliate marketers who assume smashwords is all 11% to look at my specific title?
ReplyDeleteBill
Hi Bill, I think that's a good idea, but one I haven't looked into. You could google affliate book marketers that sell books in your genre and contact them I suppose.
ReplyDeleteI also suggest giving the book away for free to as many people as you can. Generating "Word of Mouth" will reap more rewards than anything else you do.
Don't look at it as lost income. Look at it as free advertising (if you give away an ebook.) Nothing sells books better than one person telling another person, "You have to read this book!". If you give away 1000 books and 100 of those readers are outgoing and tell their friends to read it--you are directly marketing to hundreds if not thousands of people.
Let your readers sell your book for you, but rather than randomly offering your book for free to anyone (tons of people will take it and never read it)--try to find websites for mystery readers and offer it to them for free. If they like it, or love it, they will promote you online and in person to their friends and followers. It's powerful!!
Good luck and thanks for reading my blog!
p.s. I looked up your book and I loved the description of it. The only thing I would change (and you didn't ask, so sorry!!) is the last line, "What if it's Caroline?" That one line removed all my curiosity. As a reader, I assume that if the author says the killer might be Caroline--then it can't be her, so I'll never believe she's a threat for the whole book, no matter how much it appears she is. I will believe it's a trick. It doesn't matter if I'm right or wrong--it only matters if I want to buy the book! So keep me guessing, keep me curious!!! I hope that makes sense!! Your cover and description are great, I expect you'll do well.