Every book should have certain things in the front of the book, and at the back, after the story is complete. Flip through a few books and you’ll get a feel for what these are. As a marketing matter, generally we’re most concerned with that part of the book that comes while the reader is on the happy moment of just having enjoyed the story. They might want to read more in the series, or if there is no more (yet) then perhaps they want to read more by you, the author who just gave them a few hours of enjoyment. In an ebook, this can be made quite easy by the provision of live links to your other work on the page immediately following ‘the end’ and you really should provide this.

It’s simple enough to do, and it might be one of the most effective ways to sell other books once you’ve shown your readers that you can deliver the goods. I know that I, as a reader, can and will binge-read through a series by clicking those links at the end of an ebook. If you are Amazon-only, you can insert a direct link to the kindle ebooks. If your books are wide, you’ll want to provide a link to a landing page on your website, book funnel, or some other place. Keep in mind the less clicks the reader has to jump through, the more likely they are to persist and buy at the end (of course, having books in KU makes this even easier, which is partly why that program is so profitable). I generally live-link the first book in a series, not necessarily all of the books, since I have a lengthy bibliography. I also include, without live links, a few books by friends who write books that vibe with my books, so my readers have lots of options for more reading material.

Something I’ve just done in the latest release, Tanager’s Fleet, is to include a newsletter sign-up link, with offer of a freebie for the readers if they subscribe to a periodical mailing which will only send them email about once a month. This will be a short newsletter informing them of my latest release, upcoming convention appearances, or other news about Cedar-the-author. I’m using a Substack for this, not my primary blog which is also hosted on Substack, as I’m familiar with the platform. The freebie I’m offering to dedicated readers is an album of music crafted for Tanager’s Fleet, and that zip file I’ve hosted on Dropbox with a link from the newsletter. Time will tell if this is an effective tactic. I’m not great with setting that up smoothly, but it will be an initial data-set. For upcoming projects I have in mind things like Della’s Cemetery Etiquette and Receipts for the next Groundskeeper novel. Often these reader freebies can be a short story that appears nowhere else, of course. You want to offer an incentive for them to sign up for your newsletter, above and beyond the simple idea that they will hear about your latest book in a timely fashion.

So! It’s a lot of work to go back through the catalog of your work, if you are like me with a few dozen titles to update. However, this really is necessary as you never know where a reader is going to discover your books. You want them to be able to find more by you.