Need newbie promotion/marketing tips.

[John T. K.]

I published my first eBook this past Sunday to Amazon and just yesterday enrolled in KDP because I noticed I had zero bites after five full days and figured it was because the market is so saturated that it takes at least some marketing and self promotion to get any hits. Is this an accurate assessment?

Also, my story is only 30 pages long but is the first part of a serial.

Any tips on how i should go about promoting this in hopes to gain a following for the first segment and future segments?

How much money do you think I am looking at to market/promote something like this after all the 'free' avenues have been tried?

I know this is a difficult question and impossible to know the answer with any amount of certainty but I am really in the dark here and would love to hear any and all inputs.

Thanks!

[gmw]

My advice would be to write some more and worry about marketing later. I doubt if anyone is going to look very seriously at a new author with one very short ebook that is the first part of a serial. Get a few more instalments out there for people to see the story is going to grow in some reasonable time, then think about it again.

Is the story able to stand alone (effectively) as a short story/novella? That might change my perspective a little ... but not much. Your marketing efforts will largely be wasted while you have no larger list of work to benefit.

[John T. K.]

Thanks for the reply. I did not think that readers would pay attention to how much an author has published. Thank you for that perspective. This will be a learning experience for sure.

[mr ploppy]

Everyone and their granny's dog is writing books these days, so unless you already have a following or they're in a very small genre they'll get buried. For a serial from an unknown writer ... most people would wait until it was finished before they looked at it. There's too much of a risk of being left hanging if the writer loses interest. I noticed that when I serialised on my blog a few years back, nobody was interested until it was finished.

[Dr. Drib]

What Mr Ploppy said is true:

"Granny's Dog: A Lifetime of Fleas"

By

Granny's Dog

[gmw]

Originally Posted by John T. K.

Thanks for the reply. I did not think that readers would pay attention to how much an author has published. Thank you for that perspective. This will be a learning experience for sure.

If it was one self-contained short story going for free on Smashwords you might find people taking the chance on a new author for something to fill in their next commute. Anything larger is a commitment of time and effort, and readers can be leery of making that commitment - there is just so much coming out to choose from that they can afford to be picky, they'll find something else to read while they wait for you to show that you're serious about it.

A backlist can be important in various ways. (There are exceptions, people who make it big on their first published book, but these are rare ... and you're even less likely to do it with 30 pages.)

One way it's important is that there are many readers like myself out there, that really do look at how much someone has published. If I'm going to take a chance on a new/unknown (to me) author I want to know that if I really like them there is more to pick up. This is especially important with series/serials, I don't want to wait 15 years for the finish.

There are also many people that firmly believe (with some justification) that a writer needs to do their apprenticeship. A backlist shows you've had plenty of practice.

It's also important to your marketing. If you can get a few readers to actually read one short work of yours, you're ahead of the game, doing well, pat yourself on the back. But, unless you have written something exceptionally memorable, if you have nothing ready for them to follow up with they are going to move on and probably forget your name, so your efforts in getting them to look will have been wasted.

And another way it's important is that you don't get to choose which of your books gains attention. If you read around you will hear about what's called the "breakout book" - it's the book that, for reasons that may remain unclear, gains enough attention to get real sales momentum. It's the sort of thing that marketing may lend a spark to but is unlikely to achieve on its own (at the scale self-publishers can do it).

Given that I have not yet gained fame and fortune (I don't want the first, I wouldn't mind the second ), I might also suggest that you could listen to all my advice and use it as a guide for "How not to become a famous writer" . However I can give you a more substantial source for what I've been saying.

Hugh Howey, in My Advice to Aspiring Authors, says:

[...]My father at the time wondered why I wasn’t spending all of my time promoting that first book. I told him I had my entire life to promote my works. I only had now to write.[...]

My father now agrees with this approach and sees the value of having a dozen titles available. This is going to sound strange, but you are MUCH better off with your 10th work exploding than your 1st work. You’ll never have quiet time to crank out quality material ever again. And when your backlist matches the growth of your first breakout, you’ll do very well for yourself. Be patient. It’s been said by many others, but I’ll repeat it here: self-publishing is a marathon, not a sprint.

[John T. K.]

Much appreciated.

I did not know any of this until here. And, well, I started to suspect as much this past week.

When I wrote it i had only a vague notion of ever publishing it. I was separated from my family and so had the extra time. I wanted to write when I was younger but never pursued it, though I dabbled on and off thru the years. Anyway, got serious about it last year until now and of course thought it had a chance of going much better than this, as long has it was good enough for people to like. I guess it is going to be a longer road. That is almost comforting in a way because it will give me more practice and I will know how committed I am depending on how long I stay at it, even with a low amount of sales.

Long story short: thanks!

[gmw]

Now I'm worried that I've been excessively negative. I don't want to put you off from writing, I just think it's important to have realistic expectations. And this early in your publishing career (if that's what it becomes), it's too soon to get too worked up about marketing.

The resounding silence that follows the self-publication of your first book can be disconcerting. (If you're interested, I wrote a blog article about my reactions. It's not a big blog so it's not hard to find - see Dec-2012.) It wasn't a whole lot better with my second and third books, although by then at least I was expecting it. I've done very little marketing at all (not on Hugh Howey's advice, which I only came across fairly recently, but for a series of reasons that probably boil down to not enjoying that part of the process and not being very good at it). I will probably continue to do little/easy marketing things as they turn up, but otherwise I'm just going to keep writing whenever I can find the time, because that's the part I enjoy.

[John T. K.]

I do not consider your post overly negative, just more realistic, which is what I need at this point.

[dorotea]

My two cents :

I think the most important part of all is to create high quality stories. If the few people that start reading your stories like it, they will pass along the word and the stone gets rolling. Therefore, I think that a good way to start promoting your writings is by 'befriending' influencial bloggers. A.k.a. you ask them to read your story and write an honest review about it.

Also, I think it's important that people have the chance to get to know the author. This means you have to get yourself out on the internet! Make sure that when people read about you, they will also get triggered to read your story. You don't have to make a fancy website, a Wordpress template will do as well. Just make sure it looks nice & professional, e.g. for wordpress blogs I would buy a package that includes your own domain and has some webspace (like, for example, this one: http://www.1and1.co.uk/wordpress-blogs ). Also, make sure you use a nice template design and ofcourse, that the information on your website is well written.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by dorotea

My two cents :

I think the most important part of all is to create high quality stories. If the few people that start reading your stories like it, they will pass along the word and the stone gets rolling. Therefore, I think that a good way to start promoting your writings is by 'befriending' influencial bloggers. A.k.a. you ask them to read your story and write an honest review about it.

Also, I think it's important that people have the chance to get to know the author. This means you have to get yourself out on the internet! Make sure that when people read about you, they will also get triggered to read your story. You don't have to make a fancy website, a Wordpress template will do as well. Just make sure it looks nice & professional, e.g. for wordpress blogs I would buy a package that includes your own domain and has some webspace (like, for example, this one: http://www.1and1.co.uk/wordpress-blogs ). Also, make sure you use a nice template design and ofcourse, that the information on your website is well written.

I guess I'm one of the weirdos. I have precisely zero interest in the author, their personal life, their dog's life, etc. I think that getting to know authors is, by and large, probably like finding out about movie stars--that's absolutely diminished my enjoyment of many, MANY movies, once I find out what a twerp somebody really is. I also think that blogging is an overrated activity for most authors, and that it takes away from their commercial writing time. I've read exactly two blogs, by authors (I own over 6K books) over the years. So....take that for what it's worth.


I'll also say that I would NEVER consider a 1st part of a serial from an unknown. I won't even buy GOT until it's finished. I got burned by an author on a trilogy, nearly two decades ago--she STILL hasn't written the last book--and I'm not getting hung out to dry like that again. Lots of writers have one chapter in them. Many have 10. Not many can finish a book that will keep my interest, and if they do, I want to be sure that I'm not stiffed. LOTS of readers check to see what you've finished and published previously. 3 is the magic number--THREE full books. Not 3 parts of a serial; three complete books, anthologies--something.

Offered FWIW.

Hitch

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Hitch

I guess I'm one of the weirdos. I have precisely zero interest in the author, their personal life, their dog's life, etc. I think that getting to know authors is, by and large, probably like finding out about movie stars--that's absolutely diminished my enjoyment of many, MANY movies, once I find out what a twerp somebody really is. I also think that blogging is an overrated activity for most authors, and that it takes away from their commercial writing time. I've read exactly two blogs, by authors (I own over 6K books) over the years. So....take that for what it's worth.
<snip>

Offered FWIW.

Hitch

I am in your camp.
I am buying into a BOOK, not the author.

3 Screens of raves (fluff) is not going to sell me.
That you have Horses, Birds, a MONKEY ain't gonna do it! Cats, Maybe

If I want to know more about the Author:
SYNOPSIS is almost everything.
NYT Best seller is ZIP
Amazon Best Seller ZIPsquared

My best friends

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by theducks

I am in your camp.
I am buying into a BOOK, not the author.

3 Screens of raves (fluff) is not going to sell me.
That you have Horses, Birds, a MONKEY ain't gonna do it! Cats, Maybe

If I want to know more about the Author:
SYNOPSIS is almost everything.
NYT Best seller is ZIP
Amazon Best Seller ZIPsquared

My best friends

YES, that^

Exactly!

Hitch

[David910]

Originally Posted by theducks

I am in your camp.
I am buying into a BOOK, not the author.

You are absolutely right. I don't care who the author is, if the story looks interesting to me, I'll buy the book if I have time to read it. I don't have much time nowadays, and that's my biggest restraint regarding how much I get to read.

It's about the story, not who's writing it. I would rather buy a thought-provoking piece by an unknown author than to see an author, let's say for the sake of this post, J.K. Rowling, quickly write up a bunch of garbage late one night and be made to feel like I had to reading it because of the author's "prestige".