The KFD sponsorship for IMAGINATION http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ATFC3JM on Tuesday did fairly well and once again eclipsed all my other marketing efforts in return dollars to spent ratio. I got below the 5,000 rank for a bit on Amazon and sales did increase dramatically for a few hours. As usual, I would recommend KFD as a top return.

I’ve slowed marketing efforts on my other nine novels to focus more on the four-book dystopian series I’m working on. It seems no matter how hard I try to focus on marketing, I always quickly return to the creative process of the novel writing art form.

I envy those authors who have personal publicists who handle all the drudgery involved in getting your name out there. How nice would it be to focus solely on writing? I’m not complaining however, the internet has provided the average writer with worlds of exposure at the click of a mouse. The only problem is that world is getting more crowded.

I do have a few more sponsorships this month and I expect to see some good results, but then I think I’m going to stop spending money on them for a while. The whole sponsorship process has been polluted by writers who have more money than talent and can buy up all the sponsorship space. The result is that readers aren’t taking the ads seriously anymore because they’ve been burned by bad stories.

I believe this to be true because I’ve seen my results from paid sponsorships dwindle over the past two years. A well-placed sponsorship used to sell hundreds if not thousands of copies, now I think readers are way more wary of what’s being touted as the ‘day’s best read’, ‘or book of the day’.

I still believe the best way to hit it big is by word of mouth and the luck of going viral, but I also think the secret lies in posting long samples of your work on as many sites as possible. There’s no need to try and convince someone to buy your book when they’ve got several sample chapters already in front of them and are enjoying what they’re reading. I always end my sample chapters with a simple note and link to purchase the book. I find this much more effective than spending good money on ad space consumed by “vanity” writers.

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