How many of you have stuck through your 2018 resolutions?
A great hats off to all those authors who have!
As we enter the New Year 2019, many of us have this habit of making New Year resolutions. Though it becomes close to impossible to keep up the New Year resolutions for most of us, there are some resilient ones out there who stick to their goals all throughout.
It doesn’t matter if we keep up our resolutions, what matters the most is the effort we put in. As an author, you may have career-oriented resolutions like writing at least 3 books this year or spending a minimum of 4 hours a week for marketing your books. Whatever your resolutions are, it is important to take in the current trends in the market and take a lay of the land and adapt to your resolution accordingly.
So here are some of the book publishing and book marketing predictions for you that will be at its high in 2019. You can try to incorporate any of these trends of 2019 to your resolutions to make a better version of it!
More Audiobooks on The Shelf
Audiobooks have been gaining a lot of momentum in 2018 and this is predicted to reach new highs in 2019. With the introduction of voice commanding devices like Alexa that can talk and read out things and many applications which supports audio books, the volume of audiobooks is estimated to grow by folds. Amazon is also aiming to concentrate on audiobooks which means more offers, more exposure and high earnings. Kobo has new features for authors to directly upload their audiobooks and of course, Apple users have iTunes to hear the audiobooks. Many young people are starting to prefer audiobooks because of the ease with which they assimilate the book with less effort and time. It gives people the option to hear to a book while they are on a subway, waiting in the airport or driving in the car.
It can be a little difficult for new self-published authors to start creating audiobooks as well. But it is a work in progress which can be slowly learned and developed.
Increase in Preordering of eBooks
This is something that all authors can work with. If you have opened your books for preorder, you have missed out on a huge advantage. But it is not too late. 2019 is expected to see a lot more ebooks making great sales through preorder and laying a solid foundation for their future sales. Many authors who registered huge sales in their preorder were able to collect that momentum and keep it rolling to enter the bestseller list. So if this isn’t among your book marketing techniques, then it is high time to make a note of it.
Shorter Books
Let’s get something right. Not all readers are as patient as fans of Dan Brown’s books to waddle through more than thousand pages to complete a book. Efficient, quick and easy is the mantra. Readers look for books that impress them fast, keeps them on their toes and delivers the content to their expectations. Nowadays, even books of around five hundred pages are considered a bit lengthy by some readers and they look for books that can be completed fast. So now authors are also trying to split their one lengthy book into a book and its sequel to give the readers the satisfaction of reading two books instead of one.
If possible, it is important to keep the book length shorter; if your story takes you for some extra pages, then try to split them into two short books with a cliffhanger at the end of book one. Who wouldn’t love that!
Also, when you have two books instead of one, there are more chances of increased sales with less marketing efforts.
Better Amazon Advertising
A lot of self-published authors make most of their earnings from Amazon. There had been some issues with the way the prices went down in 2018 but if there is one thing that is steadily growing is the Amazon advertisements. The Amazon ads can help authors to reach more readers and make good sales with just a few dollars worth of investment. There have been signs that Amazon is working hard to better their advertisements which means more pointed ads which could increase your conversion rate or at the most, get you a lot of leads.
You can easily ace the Amazon advertising with just a little practice. By targeting the readers based on the genre and the localization of your book, you can expect to increase your sales and may even get on the bestseller list!
These are some of the simple trends that can be expected in 2019. These trends can be easily put on any author’s New Year resolution and followed without much efforts. If not all, add one of these predictions to your resolution 2019 and let us know how it goes.
Are any of these predictions already on your resolution 2019?
If not, share some of your interesting resolutions in the comments below.
