Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70
Ah, but doesn't that just mean that items 1-6 are just the bait and hook that an author uses to reel in a sale?
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I'm not a fisherman, I'm a writer.
More seriously, I agree with what Vydorscope just posted, the most long-term important thing in all those steps is the content. It's the content that will, hopefully, gain you recommendations that may lead to other sales without needing the pure chance of catching eyes with the cover. And it's the content that will, hopefully, bring the reader back to your other books. I think this is
one of the reasons why success often takes a lot of time and many books - it can take all that to build up any sort of momentum in your readership.
There are other filters in there that I've missed, but they can vary a lot with different readers. For example, when looking to take the chance on a new (to me) author I prefer to choose one with several books out - it makes the pay-off that much bigger if I like them. So somewhere between the cover and the preview my shopping would include that extra step of looking to see what else they've written - and that means the other books have to be things that don't turn me away (hence my comments to Gregg in a separate thread about self-help books).