A Self-Published Author’s Diary: What is that “back matter” you speak of?

Updating the back matter of my book…what do I even mean when I say that? Let’s talk a closer look, shall we?

Important: If you’re a newsletter subscriber, you’ve already gotten the full version in your email. Make sure you check your promotion tabs in gmail as this is where I received mine. 🙂 This blog post is a truncated version of what my newsletter subscribers have received, meaning I share more information with my “A self-published author’s diary weekly email” subscribers. You can subscribe here…When you subscribe you will receive access to past issues as well. 🙂

A. Update the “Little message to my readers”

In almost all my books, I have “A little message to my readers” at the end (I’m sharing that letter with my newsletter subscribers – don’t hesitate to subscribe here and I’ll make sure you receive it :-)) This email is not only thanking readers for their time (which I do truly appreciate)…I mean did you know there are more than 48 million books on Amazon. And while it seems very hard to get yearly data on how many books are being published each year, an article on PublisherWeekly based on Bowker’s data indicated that the number of self-published titles jumped 40% in 2018...So, yep, I am super grateful readers did pick mine up in an ocean of almost endless possibilities…

My “Little message to readers” aims to encourage readers to:

leave a review. Why oh why do I ask for reviews? Because reviews really help other readers discover new authors. Annnnnnd….it also helps get more visibility. Reviews don’t have to be raving for this to be true. One of my first review one of my best-selling book basically says, “this book sucks.” But the overall rating for that book is a 4.3 out of 5, so that means that even though someone clearly didn’t like it very much, it doesn’t deter other readers to pick it up. Sometimes, those bad reviews actually help other readers pick a book up. One of my low rating review for ALWAYS SECOND BEST mentioned it wasn’t the equivalent of an Oscar-nominated book but rather a Danielle Steel novel. And let’s face it, this was actually a pretty big compliment to me, because I’d love to have Danielle’s Steel career and her books are beloved by millions…Another one noted that my Gavert City series reminded them of Lifetime movies…which, again…yes, please! Those reviews actually helped me gain more readers and even narrow my marketing.
susbscribe to my newsletter: Subscribing to my author’s newsletter is very very important to me. Why? Years ago, I remember hearing how important it was to have your readers’ emails because you can contact directly with them. And I’ve seen in the past few months how true this is. Algorithms change and people may like your page that are also no longer interested in your books…So the audience might be slightly skewed…In a newsletter, if someone doesn’t open your emails for months or years, then you can remove them from your audience but even more importantly, they receive the news directly into your inbox. You don’t rely on boosting a post or crossing your fingers you’ve understood how to use social media, especially when changes are implemented about who sees what and what posts are given priority.
Follow me on social media. You might think, wait, you just mentioned how important it is for you to grow you subscribers’ list. True. But for people who might not feel like they want to receive an email from me, then they can check out my social media. It is true that social media definitely isn’t one of my forte (and I’ll go into details about that at another time) but if someone likes my page, I can at least have one more opportunity to interact with them and build a link with them and maybe, they’ll love another one of my books.
Create a connection. By adding a little message to my readers, I may create a first connection with a reader. And maybe they will follow my BookBub page or maybe they’re going to be more enclined to recommend one of my books. I do believe they’ll pick another one up if they loved the one they read but maybe they might remember that little message and talk to someone about the story they’ve just read…

B. Update the “Other books by” and maybe the sample at the end.

C. Make sure all the social media info + newsletter info is correct, as well as the short bio info had been updated, if needed: I mean for a while there, I had the wrong link to my Facebook Author Page. I had updated the handle for my Facebook Author Page to match my other social media but hadn’t updated that info into my books…DOH! By the way, if you’d like to like my Facebook Author Page it is: www.facebook.com/enowodazkij

So what am I doing.did I do this week? (I’m starting to write this on Monday and will update it throughout the week…)

Upload the bilingual version of A SUMMER LIKE NO OTHER (English/Spanish) onto Google Play and contact Kindle Direct Publishing about the metadata of that kindle book. I have chosen to list the language as “English” (I cannot list two languages for those books right now), but they got back to me saying the metadata indicated the language was Spanish. I just double checked using Calibre and it still says “English”…so trying to figure out what is happening and if I could indeed list this book as both English and Spanish. Once that it is resolved, announce the book on my blog and on social media. –> I did the first part. Still need to announce the book…
Do some promo for the audiobook of SEE ME, SEE ME NOT. Share the full bloopers to my readers’ newsletter (if you’d like to subscribe to that one, you can do so here…) –> Did that and also shared one deleted scene of Megan singing.
Finish formatting the ALWAYS SECOND BEST bilingual books (German/English) and review it. I have made some changes to the ASB manuscript and I have to make sure it is updated in the German version as well.–> I have formatted the first part of the bilingual book and am currently interviewing some proofreaders to ensure everything is correct before uploading it on all platforms.
Enroll my French Gavert City series into Kindle Unlimited. –> Well, I did update the back matter for some of my books and enrolled LA PEUR EN PLEIN COEUR in KU, buuuuuuttt I need to wait for
Finish this round of revision fo UNNAMED PROJECT (Actually it has a name. A name I kind of love) –> Still working on this. I really need to focus on this next week. It will be my main focus so that I can finally send it off to my wonderful wonderful critique partners. I started writing this book
Announce ONE, TWO, THREE in Italian and boost one of my Facebook posts. I did! Yay. I’ve announced it on my blog and I’ve also announced it on my Facebook and boosted one my posts. I’ve shared a video on Instagram which you can also see below.

My newsletter subscribers will get more information about some of the results of that particular post boosting and what I’m learning about the particular audience I’m boosting it to.