One thing they never tell you when you start this ‘self-publishing’ thing is that you also need to be a ‘self-marketer’ and boy, can it be a big learning experience!
Don’t get me wrong, I’m enjoying every step of it, and so far it’s not half as ‘scary’ as I thought it might be, it’s a lot of work, but the things you learn along the way, the people you meet, they’re amazing.
Last week we started this journey with a look at some of the things that I’d already done, that didn’t take long as there wasn’t that much. But quality does sell itself and after two years on Amazon, they’d sold a few, though it wasn’t much more than a trickle.
Actually, as I thought about it, the fact is that most of us want to do a bit of marketing and hope that it turns into a huge flood right?
Guess what, ever taken a look at any of the rivers here on this wonderful planet of ours?
I remember as a kid being fascinated by the story of David Livingstone and his journeys, his quest to ‘find the source of the Nile’
Guess what, it doesn’t have one source, or even two, it has literally hundreds, all tiny streams that flow into the slightly bigger streams, and then into the small rivers, then the bigger rivers, and finally into the huge torrents that we know as the ‘White Nile’ or ‘Blue Nile’, not to mention the other bits that flow into ‘Lake Victoria’
Guess what, good marketing is like that! Take a look at any product on the market, they’re in literally thousands of shops and stores.
This week I started to look at marketing my books on the Market, and the results haven’t been totally what I expected.
See, no books sold, not so far, but there were extra visits to the Team’s facebook fan page
So, that’s a boon right?
And it gave me some pretty good ideas.
One thing that I did was list the book for a paid advert on a site called Awesome Gang, here’s the link to the site
Awesome Gang, ‘Sting of the Scorpion’
But that gave me an idea, see the first one I listed was a ‘paid’ advert. but there’s also a ‘free option, granted it doesn’t get you ‘featured’ on their site, but it does get you listed.
I wondered if there were any other sites that you can list for free.
There are more than a few, but for the sake of being brief, I’ll talk about the ones I went ahead and did something with.
Just go over to my page on Goodreads, I’ve got my two books listed there, along with other books I recommend reading.
And another I signed up for, and listed the books on, though they aren’t showing up yet is
So, I’ve been pretty busy in that area, and I hope that it gives any other authors struggling with ‘getting the word out’ ideas on how they can make inroads in making their books known. By the way, one thing I discovered is that my book ‘Sting of the Scorpion’ actually had five-star ratings from readers (okay a reader) on Goodreads, and it wasn’t one I put there! So that goes to show, quality does sell itself, but sometimes it appreciates a ‘little help from my friends’
Bye for now.
Lawrence
Lawrence's letters 