For/From Indie Authors: Stacy Juba

Award-winning writer Stacy Juba is the author of the mystery novels Twenty-Five Years Ago Today and Sink or Swim, as well as the acclaimed patriotic children’s picture book, The Flag Keeper. Her young adult paranormal thriller Dark Before Dawn will be released by Mainly Murder Press in January 2012. She is a former journalist with more than a dozen writing awards to her credit. Stacy is also one of the resident authors at Bestseller Bound, a forum started by author Darcia Helle which brings together indie and small press authors, readers, reviewers and bloggers. Stacy's mysteries are published in paperback by Mainly Murder Press and she publishes the e-book versions independently. She also independently published her children's book The Flag Keeper. 

Advice:

• If you're publishing in e-book format, have a 99 cent sale and promote it heavily in places such as Amazon customer forums on threads that have been established for authors to promote their books. Let it run for a few weeks until your numbers increase and your ranking significantly drops, then bring it up to a low price such as $2.99. The more people who buy your e-book on Amazon, the more it will be featured there resulting in Kindle readers accidentally stumbling across it and leading to increased sales.
• Research book blogs and compile a long list that reviews your genre or features authors in your genre. Offer a PDF version or free Smashwords download for review. 
• Have giveaways for your book on Library Thing and Goodreads to put it on the radar of readers. Goodreads only allows giveaways for print books, and Library Thing allows both e-versions and print versions. Be sure at some point to give away several e-book versions of your book on Library Thing and ask for reviews. Goodreads reviews feed through unexpected places such as the Sony Reader Store (be sure to list the ISBN for every edition of your book on Goodreads) and Library Thing reviews show up in many library computer systems so don't overlook these valuable web sites when asking readers to post reviews.

Links:

Stacy's Web Site

Stacy's store: (for a variety of purchase options)

Twenty-Five Years Ago Today (Amazon) 

Sink or Swim (Amazon)

Smashwords author page