Ekiuwa Aire was born and raised in Benin City, Edo, Nigeria. She moved to England when she was nine and it was here, away from all she had grown up with, she discovered her passion for writing.
Ekiuwa co-wrote her first book while finishing high school and continued developing her craft while earning a Bachelor of Economics and a Master of Business Administration. She is passionate about African history and incorporates the richness of many cultures into her books.
Now a mother living in Canada, Ekiuwa hopes that her books will help kids develop an appreciation for African history, and to value the wisdom and pride that will come from this knowledge.
That beautiful pre-colonial African history exists and can be shared with kids.
What are the top three tools you are currently using to write, publish and promote your books?
- Google’s suite for writing. I use google sheets and docs for research, manuscript writing, and communicating with service suppliers
- Later for social media: I schedule 90% of my Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest content one month ahead
- Upwork and Fiverr for service suppliers. From copywriters to editors to illustrators.
What were the top three mistakes you made publishing your book what did you learn from it?
- Not budgeting: I spent a lot of money on my first book. I built and rebuilt my website paying freelancers more than I should have paid. From the get-go, I should have known my gross and net margins for my book and used this to determine what to spend money on.
- Paying too much attention to detail: I am a perfectionist. And for this reason, I take longer to churn books out as I spend a lot of time pouring over my illustrations, designs, website pages. Though it is important to churn out a good quality product, a balance is required.
- Targeting the wrong audience: I spent a lot of time and effort researching African history and culture and creating blogs about the information that I came across. While this attracted people to my pages, they were not converting. This is because the information I was provided was for an audience that was too broad. My specific audience is not just people interested in African history but parents interested in African history. Now I’m revamping the content that I create on social media.
In your opinion is it better to self-publish through Amazon KDP or go with other platforms like BookBaby or IngramSpark?
I’m not familiar with BookBaby. But I don’t think an author should have to choose Ingram or KDP. Why not both? Especially when you own your ISBN. The higher your reach, the higher your sales.
Start. Join Facebook groups. Keep going.
What is the one thing you wished you knew before publishing your first book?
The effort that goes into marketing. It is A LOT of work. Writing the book is the easy part!
I have tried almost everything in marketing my book. The most success I’ve had so far has come from a super niche repost from an Instagram influencer and from local media coverage. The funny thing about the article on the local newspaper is that the traffic and traction did not come from the article itself but from sharing that article in niche Facebook groups.
If you had the chance to start your career over again what would you do differently?
I don’t think I’d do anything differently.
These next two are not groups or courses but these Facebook groups were very useful to me and I highly recommend them.
- Facebook Group: Children’s Book Authors and Illustrators: Publishing, Marketing and Selling
- Facebook Group: 20BooksTo50K
How can we get in touch with you?
- Ekiuwa Aire Books Here.
- Email: contact@our-ancestories.com
- Website: www.our-ancestories.com
- Instagram: @our_ancestories
