Guest Blog by Birgit Kluger

How to sell your English ebook in the German market

My name is Birgit Kluger and I have been a writer since more than a decade. For a living I write about various topics such as logistics, project management and marketing. For fun –and hopefully one day for a living- I write ChickLit, Fantasy and Mystery novels.

My latest book combines these two areas since I am trying to help authors market their English books in Germany. The idea grew with my own attempts at marketing the English version of my Fantasy novel in the US and UK market. Something that was harder than I first thought.

I know I was being naive but I figured what –still- works in Germany, would also be successful in other countries. Which is why I started a free KDP promotion, the giving away of free ebooks on Amazon by signing exclusively with Amazon for 90 days.

I did the usual: Contacted some websites and Facebook pages that feature free books, twittered about my promotion and then waited to see how many downloads I would get.

The results were sobering. After three days I didn’t even have a hundred downloads. It took me a while to find out that you have to be listed with either Pixel of Ink, Ereader News Today or Bookbub to attract readers to a FREE book.

Would have been good to get information about these things, BEFORE starting the promo. My next attempts were more successful but unfortunately Amazon had changed the algorithms again, so despite the fact that I had 16,000 downloads I didn’t sell many books afterwards. Again, the information would have been helpful to have.

The good thing about these experiences was that I started marketing my English book in Germany with considerably better results. Why? Because I know the German book market very well. My ChickLit/Mystery book was the top 100 Kindle Charts for more than two months and in its Genre charts for more than a year.

I tried various marketing tools as well as selling exclusively on Amazon and using an Aggregator to reach more shops. I did blog tours, reading events and issued press releases to reach potential readers.

In my book “Going Global – How to sell English ebooks in Germany”, I am giving this knowledge to English authors.

With this guide I am trying to help authors avoid the pitfalls and mistakes I made when entering the US market. I hope it is helpful to authors who try selling their ebooks beyond the US and UK markets. In “Going Global” I explain to you which advertising sites really shift books, why free promotions still get results, which dates are the best for such a promotion and how you can sell your ebook outside of Amazon.

About the Author: Birgit Kluger published her first novel “Schau ihr in die Augen”, with Droemer Knaur, one of the big publishing houses in Germany. She is author of the best selling ChickLit-Crime novel “Trau niemals einem Callboy”. She has also published an English fantasy novel “Creatures of Fire: Demons die harder” under the pen name of J.B. Brooklin. With “Going Global – How to sell English ebooks in Germany”, she tries to help English authors sell their ebook in Germany.

Her newest endeavor is “Save Dschinnanya!” a fund raising project for Part 2 of her English Fantasy Series “Creatures of Fire”.