Marketing, oh marketing! Some people are fantabalous at it while others quite frankly suck at it. I think I land in the sucking at it category, but I’m actively trying to change that. I published my first novella on Amazon in April, 2015 and I’ve sold 45 copies to date. My sister bought one copy and I bought 43 copies(for reviews). What about the other copy, you ask? Well, that was my sole sale to someone that doesn’t know me. I was sooooo excited when I saw that sale and literally skipped all the way home from the coffee shop that day. I thought I was well on my way to having a successful career like J.K. Rowlings, E.L James, Hugh Howey because their careers all started with one sale, right?
Yes, they started with one sale but to convert that sale into millions of sales, they also had good marketing strategies in place. It’s the age old conundrum. You can’t sell books without good marketing and you cannot market books you haven’t written. I’ve read tons of articles about how to market a self-published book and it’s a tad overwhelming, but I really need to learn how to become stellar at marketing so I can get more sales. From what I’ve read so far, it seems like a good marketing arsenal entails the following: tons of book reviews, word-of-mouth, FB ads, guest blogging, video ads.
I haven’t paid for reviews, but I did buy my book and gifted it to friends and family and asked for honest feedback. I gave it to 43 people and I only got six reviews. People are busy, I guess! In all fairness, I only gave them one reminder to review my book because I didn’t want to come off as too annoying.
Now, I’m reading about how to effectively use FB ads for marketing ebooks. I stumbled across this website, http://www.selfpublishingformula.com, and Mark Dawson seems pretty genuine and helpful to new authors looking for marketing/advertising advice.
As I said before, doing all of this at once is a bit overwhelming, but it’s necessary if you want to have a serious career as a writer. I think for now, I need to learn how to effectively divide my time between writing and marketing. One cannot exist without the other and it seems like the people who are successful are the ones who have figured out how to solve this conundrum.
Till next time….
writersparadise 