Looking back at the month and a half since I self-published my novel, The Guilty, through CreateSpace I can say I’ve learned that spreading the word about an independently published book is a matter of baby steps. After my free Kindle promo in early January resulted in several hundred downloads I was hoping for some reviews from those many readers. I got one. It was certainly a good review (Thank you Paul Salter, whoever you are, for saying my book was “awesome.”), but it was the only one.
Am I not patient enough? Maybe. After all, those many free downloaders (sounds a bit like free-loaders, doesn’t it?) probably have other books to read before getting around to mine, and I suppose getting one good review is better than getting trashed. But still…
As for actually selling copies with Amazon and CreateSpace, I can’t say that I’ve been that successful so far in getting the horse to water. A number of friends and family have been kind enough to buy copies, and hopefully they’ll pass on recommendations to their friends. A few copies seem to have been sold to total strangers as well, which makes me hopeful, since I am a terrible marketer. On sites like Author’s Den the book is getting more exposure (eg. with Book Ads), but this hasn’t necessarily led to people clicking on it or reading about it, let alone buying it. Forget making the horse drink, just getting him to water is more of a challenge than I thought it would be.
A small irony: Like many struggling authors writing blogs, I hoped this would be an effective marketing tool to drum up interest in my book. According to my page stats on Author’s Den almost 10 times as many people have clicked on my blogs as have visited my book page in the past month or so. Now those are just visits to my book page; not even actual purchases! So, while I guess I’m flattered that I have a steady stream of loyal readers for this blog, as a marketing device to push sales for The Guilty, it has been a bust. Oh well; I hope you’re at least enjoying the blog.
I do have one other marketing tool which I will be using soon. I’m looking forward to my first interview about my book, with Journalist Rebecca Byfield, who also writes fiction under the pen name Riley Banks (“The William S. Club”). I will be sure to post when and where the interview will appear, but I expect it to be fairly soon.
Am I not patient enough? Maybe. After all, those many free downloaders (sounds a bit like free-loaders, doesn’t it?) probably have other books to read before getting around to mine, and I suppose getting one good review is better than getting trashed. But still…
As for actually selling copies with Amazon and CreateSpace, I can’t say that I’ve been that successful so far in getting the horse to water. A number of friends and family have been kind enough to buy copies, and hopefully they’ll pass on recommendations to their friends. A few copies seem to have been sold to total strangers as well, which makes me hopeful, since I am a terrible marketer. On sites like Author’s Den the book is getting more exposure (eg. with Book Ads), but this hasn’t necessarily led to people clicking on it or reading about it, let alone buying it. Forget making the horse drink, just getting him to water is more of a challenge than I thought it would be.
A small irony: Like many struggling authors writing blogs, I hoped this would be an effective marketing tool to drum up interest in my book. According to my page stats on Author’s Den almost 10 times as many people have clicked on my blogs as have visited my book page in the past month or so. Now those are just visits to my book page; not even actual purchases! So, while I guess I’m flattered that I have a steady stream of loyal readers for this blog, as a marketing device to push sales for The Guilty, it has been a bust. Oh well; I hope you’re at least enjoying the blog.
I do have one other marketing tool which I will be using soon. I’m looking forward to my first interview about my book, with Journalist Rebecca Byfield, who also writes fiction under the pen name Riley Banks (“The William S. Club”). I will be sure to post when and where the interview will appear, but I expect it to be fairly soon.