Advanced Magic Bakery… Chapter Nine

Chapter Nine… Easy Promotion That Makes Money

So you have over 20 pies in your magic bakery and also some short story pies.

(If you have not read the previous eight chapters plus the introduction, don’t blame me if you are confused and lost.)

Most importantly, you have stopped all your anti-promotion of your bakery. (I bet any amount of pie crust you have not.)

So going to spend this chapter on easy, money-making promotion that costs very little to nothing. In a future chapter I will bring up ads and such, but for now if you think you have to spend much money at all on promotion at the stage you are at, or any stage for that matter, more than likely you have been listening to far too many scammers.

So what is your best promotion for your magic bakery?

A Great Web Site…

Need to make sure the web site is clear where readers can find your books. Study other author’s web sites (not this one, it sucks) until you find ones that fit for you. WordPress has about a billion templates. Imitate ones you like and make sure it has your current books and such.

Use Books2Read links to give readers a choice if you do not have your own store.

You do not have to blog, just keep it active a least once per month by doing updates or things like that.

This has a small cost per year, but not much.

A Great Shopify Store…

Shopify has about a billion templates as well. Find one that fits what you are looking for. If you are under ten books, do not do this. Twenty books and a bunch of short fiction is great time to start a store.

You can use this instead of a web site if you like. Many authors are doing that.

If you have this, all links go to your store, not to Amazon. You set up your downloads through Bookfunnel to give your readers a choice of how they read your stories.

If you have a store, you can also do merchandise for no charge. Another small cash stream and fun.

You can do sales, discounts, and a ton of other things. Promotion is limited to only what you can imagine if you have a store.

Shopify has a monthly charge, a template costs money, and Bookfunnel has a small fee. But this kind of control of your work is priceless, plus you make 95% on each sale instead of 70%.

A Great Mailing List…

You build this one customer at a time. one follower at a time. This takes time to build, but will be your best promotion avenue. There are a thousand ways to do mailing lists and get people on them. But only fans and customers. Avoid the scammers here promising you more names. Go slow, one person who wants to be on your list at a time.

Do a Small Kickstarter Campaign For Your New Book…

It might make you $500 if done right, but it will get you new readers and fans. Do not bother if you don’t have a Shopify store, because with a store you can add in merchandise and fulfill all the rewards through the store and get all the addresses of backers.

Give the Kickstarter backers first look at the books while at the same time putting the book up on preorder. Then after you have given all the backers their books, publish the book wide.

Some writers like to think of this in the old 1990s term as a “launch.” Actually launches don’t work in the old ways because modern readers don’t much care. A book is new to a reader when they find it.

Kickstarters are free and make you money if you make sure you set your prices correctly.

WRITE THE NEXT BOOK…

Of course, all the above takes a little time and energy to set up, but one of the most deadly things you can do is stop writing and work on all that, thinking it will make you more money. It might for a short time, but this is 2025 as I write this. Readers want more and more and more.

You can stop for a bit, but then the readers will forget where your store is at and why they like your magic pies.

You do not have to be prolific as I am, but you do have to produce product, refresh older books with new covers and sales copy at times, and stay active as much as possible with your readers and fans.

Refresh your store at times, do give-aways, specials, bundles, you name it.

Not very often, but often enough to keep your store/web site/magic bakery active and alive and interesting to visit.

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Blog note: I will not answer questions at this time about ads. You want to learn how to do that really advanced stuff and not spend a fortune and how all this works together, jump into the Writers Career Camp. (Information four days ago on this blog and questions answered three days ago.)

And yes, still spots open. I will announce here if we are close to filling, but only one week left for the lower price.