Quote:
Originally Posted by Patricia Ryan
As for how effective self-promotion is--even aside from the question of obnoxious over-promoters--that's anybody's guess. Fiction is sold largely by word of mouth, so the best advice I've ever heard on the subject, which I try to bear in mind myself, is to spend the bulk of your time and energy writing the very, very best book you possibly can.
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Quote:
Originally Posted by queentess
A thousand times THIS. Take, for instance, my recent experience with a traditionally published author. I'd heard about his work from some other people, so I bought the first in the series and read it. I immediately purchased the other two books in the series and read them right away. After that, I bought two more complete series to give to my brother and my dad, and my brother has since bought a set to give to one of his friends. If you write a book really well, it will spread organically.
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As an author, I have to assume that is exactly what has been working in my favor. I posted a freebie on Smashwords back in April, and started a thread to let people know it was available. Then every time I encountered someone complaining about authors self-promoting or endlessly bumping their own announcements, a nervous little voice in the back of my mind said, "Are they talking about
me?"
Somewhere along the way, I started doing less talking and more writing... and the more I shut my self-promotional yapper, and simply focused on being a good wordsmith and storyteller, the better that first story did. It was a simple lesson, but a valuable one: word of
someone else's mouth works far better than my own, as a promotional tool.
- M.