Quote:
Originally Posted by Luffy
Luck played only a supportive part in Rowling's success. She had her fair share of rejections. Also her books make for great reading.
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That's pretty much the key. Harry Potter didn't really become the massive success until book 3. In general, word of mouth brought in new fans until it reached the point where it exploded. I found out about the books from a friend who had kids who were in the targeted age. The key was that a lot of people really liked the series. One of the phrases people use for such a situation is catching lightning in a bottle. It certainly isn't something one can count on.
SM can be useful for word of mouth on a new book, but as I said earlier, I was really talking about established authors. Some authors crank out books on a predictable schedule. Patricia Briggs has been coming out with a new book every spring from almost 20 years. Her publisher does a good job of getting the date out months in advance, and I assuming, paying Amazon to make sure they send out notices to customers who either follow or buy her books. I get the notice, I pre-order and the book shows up in my library on schedule.
On the other hand, even though I follow Roger Zelazny on Amazon, I have to remember to look to see if any of his books came out in ebook recently, because I sure don't get any notices.
There are a number of what I would call mid-tier authors, who I read a few books, liked them ok, but I unless I remember to check, I have no idea if they have a new book out or not and forget about them after a while. I have no idea if they stopped writing (fairly common) or if they have new books out.
That's really the sort of author who would do well to try to keep their fan base engaged. Perhaps they are on social media and that's working for them, but social media is kind of fickle. Platforms come and go. A lot of authors are on facebook, but facebook has become unpredictable with regards to if your post appears on someone else's feed.
One indie I like is Marc Alan Edelheit, who writes the Stiger's Tigers books. He has a web site, which gets updated when a new book comes out. It's a nice enough web site, but has zero info on what books are coming out next and when they will be out. His last blog post was about a year ago. He writes really good, award winning books, but dang son, how about letting fans know what your basic writing schedule is? What's the next book and when do you think it will come out? Maybe throw some tidbits out every so often.
On the flip side, there is another author that I really like, Michael J Sullivan, who started as an indie, still does some indie publishing but now has a contract. His web site is excellent. It has all the books, books that have been written, but aren't published yet, when those will be published and what's in the pipeline. Hum, he just published his most recent book Age of Empyre yesterday. Both ebook and audiobook are available. Awesome! Something new to read! BTW, you might want to check out his website and read through some of the pages. It give a lot of insight in how writing and publishing works.
https://riyria.blogspot.com/