Did you know they do this if you are Stephen King but if you are me they do NOTHING?
You had to do everything just like now as an indie author. They couldn't care less about midlist authors and that is the sad truth. Still is the sad truth.
There were a few years where there were more readers than ebooks and everything was peachy and now we're out of that dreamyworld and into virtual reality. Writers have to find ways to promo their work. Let's not talk about outliers. You can't duplicate whatever makes an outlier an outlier.
What does this take? Work. Specifically, you will either have to do it yourself or pay someone to do it for you. You need to do interviews, guest posts, giveaways and on the rare occasion find someone who will review your book. Your life will become one long book tour. This is true. I'm sorry.
I try to do one promo thing a day whether it's find a blog who wants to host an interview or a post or what I did over the last few days and that was finding bling I could afford for giveaways.
Why isn't it enough to give away a free copy? Because the people who gave away $200 Amazon gift cards spoiled it for the rest of us.
The difference between you asking bloggers for a review and the person you pay to ask them for a review is time. If you ask it'll take two months or more for them to get through the To Be Read stack they already have. If it's a tour arranger asking, it seems to happen more rapidly. Either way you should be working on your own trying to make those connections and get your book on blogs.
Does it help? It doesn't hurt and there's not a lot of other things to do right now. I know a writer who is very committed to promotion and the hard work has paid off. She's the kind of person who doesn't have the discouragement gene.
Get out there and push that book.
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| Paris Forever--Trey Ratcliff |
2 comments:
It is kind of depressing, isn't it? Maybe especially for those of us who went indie because we wanted to be free from all of the tradpub BS.
I don't think there is a magic bullet. There used to be sure things in advertising, but they're all drying up. TV and newspaper ads, for example. Banner ads haven't been effective in a long time. People are being dumped on constantly, and getting them to pay attention is hard.
I think personal connections are probably the best payoff. They take more time to form, but are also much more powerful.
It is very much attaining the feel of tradpub for me.
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