How to sell books without spending money

(I don’t have the answer btw)

I have self-published two books (Daughter, Disappeared in Nov 2016 and Glasdrum in April 2017) and sales have been better than I expected. However… those sales have cost me. I have used facebook targeted posts and they have been effective (I’ve sold over 1000 books already), but the sad fact is that my advert spend and royalty payments are pretty much equal, i.e. my books are being bought, which is lovely, but I’m not making any money – not so lovely. I would ideally like to recoup some of the pre-publication expenses – approximately £1800 per book on editing, design and proof reading. Self-publishing is an expensive business but just as the writing of a book is a long-term process, I’m hoping the profit-making element of it will also be long-term.

So, how do you sell books without spending money?

You give them away for free!

I haven’t been advertising lately and sales are stagnating so I thought I’d try a 5-day free giveaway on kindle. Still not making any money but if the books are being read, that’s reward enough for a newbie Indie Author like me. And maybe if people give it a try and like it, they’ll recommend it to their friends. I live in hope…

So – Daughter, Disappeared, which has 52 top Amazon reviews, is FREE on kindle from 12-17 May 2017 – please take a look: http://amzn.to/2eCnZRf

I will report back in due course.

(If nobody even downloads it for free during this period you’ll find me at the Recycling Centre getting rid of my laptop)