How to sell your English ebook in the German
market
My name is Birgit
Kluger and I have been a writer since more than a decade. For a living I write
about various topics such as logistics, project management and marketing. For
fun –and hopefully one day for a living- I write ChickLit, Fantasy and Mystery
novels.
My latest book combines
these two areas since I am trying to help authors market their English books in
Germany. The idea grew with my own attempts at marketing the English version of
my Fantasy novel in the US and UK market. Something that was harder than I
first thought.
I know I was being
naive but I figured what –still- works in Germany, would also be successful in
other countries. Which is why I started a free KDP promotion, the giving away
of free ebooks on Amazon by signing exclusively with Amazon for 90 days.
I did the usual:
Contacted some websites and Facebook pages that feature free books, twittered
about my promotion and then waited to see how many downloads I would get.
The results were
sobering. After three days I didn’t even have a hundred downloads. It took me a
while to find out that you have to be listed with either Pixel of Ink, Ereader
News Today or Bookbub to attract readers to a FREE book.
Would have been good
to get information about these things, BEFORE starting the promo. My next
attempts were more successful but unfortunately Amazon had changed the
algorithms again, so despite the fact that I had 16,000 downloads I didn’t sell
many books afterwards. Again, the information would have been helpful to have.
The good thing about
these experiences was that I started marketing my English book in Germany with
considerably better results. Why? Because I know the German book market very
well. My ChickLit/Mystery book was the top 100 Kindle Charts for more than two
months and in its Genre charts for more than a year.
I tried various
marketing tools as well as selling exclusively on Amazon and using an
Aggregator to reach more shops. I did blog tours, reading events and issued
press releases to reach potential readers.
In my book “Going Global – How to sell English
ebooks in Germany”, I
am giving this knowledge to English authors.
With this guide I am
trying to help authors avoid the pitfalls and mistakes I made when entering the
US market. I hope it is helpful to authors who try selling their ebooks beyond
the US and UK markets. In “Going Global” I explain to you which advertising
sites really shift books, why free promotions still get results, which dates
are the best for such a promotion and how you can sell your ebook outside of
Amazon.
About the Author:
Birgit Kluger published her first novel “Schau ihr in die Augen”, with Droemer
Knaur, one of the big publishing houses in Germany. She is author of the best
selling ChickLit-Crime novel “Trau niemals einem Callboy”. She has also
published an English fantasy novel “Creatures of Fire: Demons die harder” under the pen name of J.B. Brooklin. With “Going Global – How to sell English
ebooks in Germany”, she
tries to help English authors sell their ebook in Germany.
Her newest endeavor is
“Save Dschinnanya!” a fund raising project for Part 2 of her
English Fantasy Series “Creatures of Fire”.
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