Quote:
Originally Posted by mr ploppy
Why would they do that? If they liked you enough to want to get a friend to read one of your books they would also be looking at your blog. You've made it pretty clear on there how you feel about people reading your books without paying for them.
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Firstly, I don't assume
anyone reads my blog. Less than 6 people regularly read my blog, and most of those are other writers who've never bought a single one of my books. My blog is
my exercise in futility, the stuff I write knowing no one reads it.
Secondly, you seem to be equating "tell others" with "give all your friends a ripped copy of my books." Although I'm sure some (insert impressive string of expletives here)s do that, I'd still like to think that most of my customers would not, whether they read my blog or not. (Okay, so I'm also
stupid.)
My point was this: What is the most powerful way of promoting/selling something on the web? Word of mouth; it trumps every other promotional method on the web, and in most other media (I believe TV commercials are still more effective overall, but probably not by much). Most things sell on the web by people who buy it telling their friends to "go get this great thing... go see this great thing... join me in this great thing." "Going viral" is done by people sharing links with others. This is how you sell on the web.
It was always my intention to create such a great product that those who bought it would tell their friends, "Hey, you gotta check out this writer: He's got great stuff, he sells it at a great price, he doesn't use DRM, and it's in a lot of formats... just like we like it!" (I had to bank on this, since I'm a lousy salesman, and wasn't likely to create a promotional campaign that would go viral and steer people to the books.) Soon the 200 people who'd seen my books would be 2000, then 5000, and the ball would be rolling.
Obviously, that hasn't been enough, to my chagrin; it's always a shame to think that someone who's good at what they do can't do it successfully, and may have to find something else to occupy his time.