Help with what to do next

[lostinspain]

About 8 years ago I started writing children's audiobooks. They have an educational bias.To date I have created and self published 5 audiobooks and over the years have managed to get them in a couple of minor online stores and onto Amazon.
I have very good ratings on Amazon,mostly 5 star, although not many ratings - I think the most I have is 16 customer reviews on one of them, and a few on the others. It's niche becasue the stories are either for learning French or Bible stories. They are also on CD format.

Without any outside publisher to push my products, I am struggling. I really need some help with how to move forward. I am unsure whether I should switch to an instant download format, for a start, but I also don't know how to get my CDs more visable to parents, schools, nurserys or anyone who cares for young children and their education.

I would appreciate any help. Thank you.

 

[The Byre]

The obvious answer is to get on various social media platforms and create a buzz around your products.

With state education failing badly is many key areas, such as languages, music and science, you could find a niche to exploit.

 

[Rebecca S]

This sounds like a really awesome idea, so it shouldn't be too hard to sell!

Yes, definitely go down the social media route and create a buzz. Social media is effectively free marketing if people start sharing your content for you! Make sure that you're creating content that is of some worth, not just tweeting the same 'look at my audiobooks' kind of thing.

Talk to parenting bloggers about reviewing some of your products on their blog and sharing on social media. You will find that this is a really good route to go down, but remember that these blogs are their livelihood and a massive chance to advertise in front of thousands of parents. I've been conducting blogger outreach for quite a long time and some business owners just expect everything for free because "it's just a blog". Believe me, if you get one bloggers back up they will tell the others! Offer them a fair trade (x amount of audiobooks for a review and social media mention) and avoid the 'massive bloggers' as they won't bother. Instead, go for small to medium blogs and get a handful to post reviews. Wait a few weeks and then repeat the process (you don't want dozens of reviews going up at the same time). Look for Parent Blogger groups on Facebook and groups such as UK Blogger Opportunities to advertise.

Building a buzz is one of the best ways to market nowadays and it only costs time! And perhaps a few free products.

I hope it goes well for you

 

[Krystsina]

I really like the idea of contacting parents bloggers and offering them to review your audiobooks. It might work well for you.

Another thing you could do is to search for some website/blog listings of audiobooks for children and ask authors to include your book in there or at least let them know about your book. + Visit some parents forums, search for discussions about audiobooks for children, and offer to have a look at yours - but try not to look spammy.

You could also make some presentations for children in school (for example, your books in French might be interesting for teachers of French language to use in their work) or ask book stores in your local area to let you present your audiobook (I've been at one of such events, I don't really know how the author got this collaboration, but it was quite good and people were buying his CDs with his audiobook).

Just some random ideas, but I hope they'll help.

 

[Carl76]

Some bloggers are not worth the time or expense. Better to go down the social media route. Perhaps also post audio snippets on Youtube, the share on Facebook and Twitter.

 

[lostinspain]

Some very good ideas. Thanks to everyone for your suggestions. I have dipped my toe into social media but I find it very difficult to know how to use it my advantage. I guess I must learn!