I'm going to quibble a little here, not with your Right Reader system, but with some of Victoria Jayne's suggestions.
To be fair, the post was written four years ago--which is about 40 in indie author years. (Stuff changes fast!)
While I don't think a social media presence hurts anything, its benefits will probably be slight for most people. That's because most social media companies build algorithmic walls between writers and their potential readers. To be seen much, a writer needs to have a relatively large ad budget. That didn't used to be the case, but it certainly is now. (That makes for an ironic contrast with the "Don't waste money on advertising" statement.
As for blog tours, there may be some honest ones, but let the buyer beware! The ones I checked out back in the day, including well recommended ones, were basically scams. Books on tour did indeed get posted to a lot of blogs, but they were all blogs that existed solely to host blog tours. None of them had any organic traffic beyond that, and I never saw sales increase as a result.
On the other hand, I can speak very highly of BookFunnel. While it's true that there are fees to use the service, you do get a lot for your money. The multi-author promos actually move books, sometimes lots of them. In my experience, the conversion from clicks to sales is far higher than you typically get for cpc advertising, which means you have a better change of getting a positive ROI.
Absent from the list is one technique I would recommend if one is a relatively fast writer--rapid release. I know my limits, and I can't produce quality stuff that fast, but I do know several authors who can, and having fresh material out there helps hold reader interest. (They dynamic may be a little different for Substack-acquired readers, who may be looking more for shorter form stuff and less for novels. But in that case, I assume frequent posting on Substack is better than infrequent posting.
I'm going to quibble a little here, not with your Right Reader system, but with some of Victoria Jayne's suggestions.
To be fair, the post was written four years ago--which is about 40 in indie author years. (Stuff changes fast!)
While I don't think a social media presence hurts anything, its benefits will probably be slight for most people. That's because most social media companies build algorithmic walls between writers and their potential readers. To be seen much, a writer needs to have a relatively large ad budget. That didn't used to be the case, but it certainly is now. (That makes for an ironic contrast with the "Don't waste money on advertising" statement.
As for blog tours, there may be some honest ones, but let the buyer beware! The ones I checked out back in the day, including well recommended ones, were basically scams. Books on tour did indeed get posted to a lot of blogs, but they were all blogs that existed solely to host blog tours. None of them had any organic traffic beyond that, and I never saw sales increase as a result.
On the other hand, I can speak very highly of BookFunnel. While it's true that there are fees to use the service, you do get a lot for your money. The multi-author promos actually move books, sometimes lots of them. In my experience, the conversion from clicks to sales is far higher than you typically get for cpc advertising, which means you have a better change of getting a positive ROI.
Absent from the list is one technique I would recommend if one is a relatively fast writer--rapid release. I know my limits, and I can't produce quality stuff that fast, but I do know several authors who can, and having fresh material out there helps hold reader interest. (They dynamic may be a little different for Substack-acquired readers, who may be looking more for shorter form stuff and less for novels. But in that case, I assume frequent posting on Substack is better than infrequent posting.
Good points. And I almost said something about her not mentioning an email list, but if she mentioned bookfunnel, I figured a list could be presumed.
I've done one blog tour. Didn't expect much and that's what I got.
As a reader I love BookFunnel