Aussie Readers discussion

I am relatively new to Aussie Readers and and am a self published author.

I have a dark series of 5 books set in the Australian Outback which get many thousands of ebook downloads in the US and UK but are largely unread in Australia.

I am looking to build up my Australian reader base as a prelude to having the print books on sale in bookshops in 2018.

So from now until the end of October 2017 I have all the ebooks in this series free at the following link and would love any interested readers to download a copy.
https://www.smashwords.com/dashboard/...

Regards Graham

This is such a good idea Graham, thanks so much. I have downloaded to my computer and sent to my Kindle, so I look forward to reading your book soon. Maybe you could post sometime after end October and let us know how many have downloaded? In principle, I don't think authors should make their books free, but as a promotional tool, it seems to work. I see that you are doing this to prompt Australian readers buy print books in bookshops in 2018. You mean, books other than this series? How are you planning to do that? Are you having your books printed by a commercial printer? I have two Australian themed books of short stories ready to go to Kindle with print copies on Createspace and Ingram Spark, but bookshops won't generally accept these forms of print. I wish there was a Goodreads Group just for authors to discuss their writing and publication issues. Or maybe there is one and I haven't found it. Australian indie authors face very different issues cf US ones. I wrote about this a bit on my blog annette-hamilton.com. Anyway, all the best and I look forward to some concentrated reading soon.

Annette, thanks for your comment.

I think it would be great if there was an Australian Goodreads author group as I agree we have lots of common issues in how to get discovery of our books both in Australia and internationally. It is particularly a problem for us Indie authors but also for others.

As an unknown author the best way I found to get known was to give away the first ebook in each series and then at times do a free promo of other books. I have found this leads to increased paid sales of other books in a series.

Using this approach my books sell pretty well as ebooks in US and UK. I get a handful of print book sales in these markets as well. For example "The Old Balmain House" (first in this series) was for most of last year No 1 ebook on Amazon US and UK for Australian historical fiction (now down to No 3). In this case I have first edition free and second edition for $3.99 and this gets steady ebook sales of Second Edition of Book 1 (Little Lost Girl) as well as books 2 & 3 in series. (Lizzie's Tale and Devil's Choice)

However despite this success overseas I have found it really hard to get Australian readers. The only effective approach I have come up with thus far is using Goodreads Giveaways as a way of finding Australian readers. I have tried a bit of paid advertising but I am doubtful it has had any benefit.

This year I released books 1 and 2 of my OBH series into several Sydney and Canberra bookshops and I have had a dribble of sales from unknown readers, as well as the friend sales.

Next year I want to release my other series into Australian bookshops but this time try to get some more local readers first through ebooks in the hope that their interest will generate a bit of interest in the wider Australian reading community.
This crocodile centred book is a much bigger story than the OBH one and has a lot of my experience from living and working in the NT built into it. It has built a loyal following of keen readers on the other side of the world. So now the challenge is to find the Australian readers as well as it is foremost a local story.

Hence I would be delighted if you would read - review if you think it is worth others reading and also pass on free download offer to anyone else you think may find interesting. As suggested I will put info up on this post in early November as to whether it seems to have worked.

I note you also have an NT background having written a book about aboriginal society in the Alice. I will try to get hold of a copy of this - can you advise where it is available from. You may also be interested in the memoir I have written about growing up in an aboriginal community in Arnhem Land (Children of Arnhem's Kaleidoscope), which is permanently free as a ebook on the same site as well as on Amazon, iBooks, Kobo etc.

Regards

Graham