Richard French, click
here to update your pages on AuthorsDen.
Blogs by Richard French
Book Promotion -- Continued 1/2/2017 8:36:45 PM
I wrote a blogpost a week ago in which I said that the growth of a book promotion project for what we now call literary fiction is a matter of little breaks and small steps. I said in that post that I wanted to make advances in marketing in the new year. I knew I'd do something if I used this blog as a monitor, so I said I'd write another post on January 2. Here goes --
There's an immense amount of advice about book marketing on the internet. Without doing a speck of research, I can name two dozen sources of information -- surely enough so that an enterprising person could set up, sustain, and grow a marketing business.
Now, some of this advice comes with a hefty fee attached. For example, one authority offers a service that sounds like it would be helpful -- at the cost of $500 US a month minimum. Another expert trains people to make successful approaches to big media organizations for $5,00.00 US.
Not for me unfortunately. I've spent money on ebook covers, a website, promotional leaflets, business cards and relatively inexpensive internet offerings like communities for writers, landing pages, and tools that so far haven't been as helpful as I'd hoped.
Money is easy to spend, so one needs to be careful. Twitter, amazon, google, and facebook all offer advertizing services, for which there are small fees at the start, but small amounts can easily multiply without bringing value in return. It may be that I'll use one of two of them later on, but I haven't yet and won't at least for this month.
What I mean to say is that I'm allergic to spending money when I can't predict that the expense will achieve good results. In other words, I've given up looking for giant steps to gain readers. That doesn't mean I'm quitting, only that I'm back to 50 little steps, which is a good, realistic place to be.
Book promotion seems to occur in two phases. The first has to do with getting exposure, the second concerns sales. Exposure is easy to come by. A person can promote most anything legal on twitter, relevant facebook forums, and to some extent on google plus. Book promotion opportunities are also available on hundreds of sites -- some charge fees, others have entry requirements, such as a certain number of reviews. It's easy to establish a presence on the internet, then, and get one's work known off-line with various on-the-ground techniques.
Getting sales -- or locating people who'll actually read a book you care about -- is more of a challenge, and one I need to take up.
I find that the field has widened now that I have 13 novels and one collection of short prose pieces available both as kindle ebook and paperback from amazon's CreateSpace. I've had two promotional leaflets printed that I pass out. During the holiday season, I gave several of my novels away as presents. I have a reading scheduled for Jan 15 at a restaurant /gallery near where I live. Since experts recommend networking, I've been going to writers' groups, as time allows.
Besides that, I've made a list of tasks I can carry out at my computer. Housekeeping chores: upgrade amazon pages, refine keywords and categories, and fix descriptions of each book. Also, define a target audience for every book, get more reviews to add to the few I already have, and publicize my work on more promotional sites. I can do all this without spending great sums of money. A few of these tasks will take time.
The point is to keep on going. Many good things can happen in a year.
