How to Get Noticed on Indie Book Bargains

This post has been superseded by How to Get Featured on BookHippo.uk

Following an alarming article, Self Published Authors Get Ready, You're Being Dumped, I have decided to write a post to help indie authors get listed on Indie Book Bargains, a site that, despite its name, currently lists books published using a variety of methods. I am one of the administrators for Indie Book Bargains and I am happy to reveal that we aim for indie books to make up at least 90% of our listings by summer 2013.

Indie Book Bargains is an internet enterprise that sends out a daily Kindle book newsletter featuring 5-8 bargain eBooks. The newsletter goes out by email, on Facebook, Twitter and as a blog directly to people's Kindles, as well as being available on www.indie-book-bargains.co.uk. Featured authors benefit both from having their books promoted to an audience of over 4,000 followers and being among a small enough handful to get noticed. Indie Book Bargains are planning to expand our readership in the new year, which means that there's never been a better way to learn how the book selection process works.

Each day, dozens of books are submitted to Indie Book Bargains yet only a small number get featured, some of which weren't even submitted for consideration but added by administrators. Often traditionally published books make it onto the list. Here I will explain why this happens, and how to make sure that your book is noticed instead.

The first important thing to realise is that Indie Book Bargains is a business. It relies on Amazon commissions to cover costs (e.g. advertising and web hosting). When Indie Book Bargains refer somebody to Amazon, we get a small percentage of the cost of anything bought during that shopping trip. This means that we favour the books that we predict readers will click on. I will explain how we determine those later.

The other important point is that Indie Book Bargains has built its reputation based on hand-picking books. There are many newsletters that list large quantities of freebies and we're not criticising those, but this is a different kind of project. In order to maintain our reputation, Indie Book Bargains needs to remain relatively strict about selection.

However, because the newsletter is sent out daily, and administrators are very busy people, we have to make snap decisions about whether or not to include books. This means that sometimes we reject excellent books and occasionally, undeserving books get featured.

I am going to talk you through the criteria we use on a daily basis, to help you increase your chances of getting your well-written, professional standard indie book listed.

Does your book have many reviews?

The first thing we look at is review statistics. When authors submit books our robot calculates a score based on the number of reviews and average rating. Then, each day we get a list of candidate books sorted by score. The fewer reviews, the further down the page your book will be listed. If your book has less than six decent reviews, we may not even look at it.

This may seem harsh but if your book has no reviews, it can be very difficult for us to determine quality. Also our readers are much less likely to download a book without reviews and you could end up jeopardising your chances to be featured at a later date.

Occasionally we check a book's .com reviews for additional information.

Are the reviews credible?

Once we've narrowed down books with a fair number of reviews, we go to the product page and select two or three five star reviews at random. If they're all by people without a credible review history (i.e. reviewers who've only reviewed one book / reviewers who've only ever given five stars reviews) then we ignore the book and move on.

We look out for Top 1000 reviewers and reviewers that we recognise and know to be honest.

Does the cover look professional?

If we don't like the look of a cover, then it's unlikely that our readers will think much of it either. We don't expect indie authors to be Michelangelo, but not taking the time to make your covers look polished sends out a negative message about your work in general.

Do we know you? / Do you have a good reputation?

We will sometimes break the rules if we know a particular author and are aware that they have a solid reputation. For example, we may list a new release with no reviews if it's by an author whose other works have proven particularly popular.

Has your book already been featured?

We try to avoid listing the same books too frequently. As a general rule, we try to leave three months between repeat listings, but we do break that from time to time, for example price drops or particularly compelling authors.

Does your book cost less than �1?

Although we list books that cost up to �2 (which is undeniably a bargain), we have noticed that readers much prefer books that are priced at less than �1, with freebies being the most popular titles by a vast margin.

Title and blurb

Although I've never personally rejected a book because of title stuffing, we find it exceptionally irritating when authors fill their titles with unnecessary keywords and capital letters. If you call your book ZOMBIE WEDDING (a fantasy romance), don't expect it to be listed on Indie Book Bargains as such. Likewise, we find it tedious when we get a book description where we have to wade through pages and pages of awards, quotes and promotion details before arriving at a synopsis. Admittedly, we pull this data directly from Amazon so there are bound to be some circumstances where we legitimately have to edit a book description or title for our use, but often we find that they're full of waffle that shouldn't be on an Amazon product page either.

So in summary, to maximise your chances of getting featured in Indie Book Bargains you need to source credible reviews, price your books very low and make sure that your cover, blurb and title are as tidy as possible.

If your books aren't ready for selection, you can still get your writing into our newsletter by submitting 100 word fiction. You can also offer review copies to our readers to improve your score.

For more info see: www.indie-book-bargains.co.uk

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