7 learnings about self-publishing from a dedicated independent

Hi, here are 7+ things I have learned about self-publishing by doing it myself, researching, talking to professionals and discussions with other authors (independent and traditionally published).

Now before we start, I am the living embodiment of ‘learning from not yet succeeding’ at this point, so please consider these thoughts and how they apply to you. In other words, I do not profess to have the magic gift of how to sell self-published books, yet. I have succeeded in progressing this far and the genuine positive feedback from readers has been what has sustained me to this point. That said these are honest findings from the coal face without sanitizing to suit my sponsors. (My little joke – I don’t have any sponsors).

I have self-published two books for 8 to 14 year olds and here are some things I’ve learned along the way. Check out my books online here and here, If you know readers in this age group please support me by reading free samples of Sean Yeager Adventures either on my website here or with Amazon’s ‘look inside’ feature. If you feel inclined please purchase a copy.

• Yes you can self-publish
• The mechanics are relatively straight forward to execute, learn the ropes and DIY with CreateSpace, Smashwords and similar. Do not pay someone else huge amounts of money to format or create your book. If you need some help with e-books it can be worth a modest sum £60 / $80 to resolve formats with a first edition. You will however need a cover designer and help with editing your book, because different perspectives will help you to increase your book’s quality. The cover in particular is critical to how your book is perceived. I suggest budgeting according to how complex your cover needs to be and negotiate good terms. Editing is all about raising your game to professional writing standards, for which you will need to find a good editor with knowledge of your genre.

• Self promotion is challenging
• There are numerous articles on the internet about how to promote books. Essentially you need to have a promotional plan and ‘reach’ to sell books. I define ‘reach’ as the number of people you can put your product in front of with a promotional message. That can be real world, online or through paid advertising.  I have found promotion to be a challenge. You also need to clearly understand your target market and make sure you can reach them.  (e.g. mine is mums & dads buying for children aged 8 to 14 who like adventure books)

• Twitter – does not sell books. It is too noisy and full of pushy self-published authors and promoters of the same. I have also heard it said that people go there to dump emotions not to buy. If you find an exception go with the flow. You can gain interest about yourself as an author and possibly clicks to your website. None the less, Twitter users are reacting and want to say something, direct sales for books are less likely.

• Facebook free – rarely sells books unless your reader audience is online, typically aged 20 to 35. You need genuine organic word of mouth to encourage people to buy your books.  I have also heard it said that people are checking out their interests and connections, browsing rather than buying.

• Facebook paid advertising – is good for targeted visibility, but rarely sells books in my experience.  Now that may again be due to the ‘mode’ people are in when using Facebook. Browsing rather than shopping. Clicks to your website will help, your website then needs to convert the interest to actual sales which is the tricky part.

• Google Ads paid – rarely sell books, but will send traffic (briefly) to your website. It is complicated to use Google Ads and it can be expensive. The click-through location is where the selling would really happen, hence the challenge. Can you set up a compelling shop to convert traffic for your books into sales? It is worth remembering that you can not advertise your own website and also direct traffic to your Amazon page in the same Google Ad.

• Goodreads – can sell books, if you receive good word of mouth, reviews and give away books. Again your target audience need to be using Goodreads for this to be effective. The Goodreads audience is broader than Facebook and book-centric which helps. The rest is down to how you engage with your Goodreads audience. Claim your works, add a blog, run some giveaways, contribute to some forums, but never argue with anyone on Goodreads about your own works.

• Book blogger reviews – might sell books. I honestly would not know because hardly any book bloggers with good reach are open to reviewing new books in my genre. It seems the market is saturated and traditional publishers are targeting book bloggers. If you can have your book reviewed by a book blogger within your book’s target market I recommend it.  The visibility is probably worth the effort.

• Face to face selling – does sell books, but in limited quantities. The buyer is buying ‘you’ as much as the book. It can be embarrassing the first few times, but it is satisfying if the reader genuinely likes your book and gives you balanced feedback (which I am pleased to say has happened to me).

• BookBub (newsletter) does sell e-books, but only if they accept you and you are targeting an adult reader market. And yes it is not a given that they will accept your book, they price and prioritize based on the market reach for your book’s genre. It is worth reading their price list alone to understand the market size you are dealing with.

• Your own Newsletter – can sell books, especially when you are launching a new book to an established list of people who have signed up to hear more about your work. You will though need to incentivise them and add the links into the promotion you send out.  I suggest treating your subscribers as you would prefer to be treated, with relevant, infrequent and genuine offers. I do not propose spamming with news updates or trivia because this tends to annoy people and they will most likely junk your emails.

• Your own website – might sell books. I see a steady trickle of traffic to my website www.SeanYeager.com . (Most people think I am Sean Yeager which is entertaining.) You can control your own content on your website. I suggest using a relatively cheap provider who can support what you need and where you control all the content yourself, hands-on – blog, pictures, about, product information etc. If you need a shop you need to be more careful, because it is more complex to set up a compelling store online, especially for mobile phone users. Likewise for video blogs and storage. Shop around and trial some.

• Your own blog – can sell books. However you need ‘reach’ and ‘relevance’ for this to be the case. Often authors become ‘author helpers’ or ‘consultants’. When this happens I wonder to what extent their viewers perceive them as a service provider or advisor instead of a book seller and author. In fact they may well make more income from services & advertising than books. Or from books about ‘how to self-publish’, no pun intended because it is an industry in its own right.

• WordPress is a really good platform and the free offering is great. If you need more features, I suggest shopping around for the right balance of price and ease of use. If you plan on becoming a professional blogger / expert, it is important to have enough storage for your video blogs and articles.  I have no such aspirations at this time, so I stick with WordPress Free. (And no they do not sponsor me).

• Don’t give away free e-books
• This will be controversial to some. I suggest keeping a price and protection on your e-books at all times. Firstly, because it puts a value on your work. Secondly, because people will pirate your work more easily otherwise. I do not believe that people who take free books are inclined to buy future books. Also, you would need to have a lot of different books available to benefit from any halo effect caused by your first free book. Instead, I suggest making free chapters available on your website. Or consider cheaper offers for your book for a limited period. Smashwords are good with offer codes which you could combine with your newsletter for a new release.

• Learn to think like a marketeer
• At first you need to think like a writer, because let’s face it you need a lot of good ideas and hard work to complete your book.  However, you also need to embrace thinking like a marketeer for your work as a product as well. This will be needed for all the strap-lines, brief book blurbs, the back and inside covers, your website text, how you position your work and of course your promotional plan. Fortunately it is possible to learn about marketing, advertising and promotion online using resources in YouTube and on career marketeer’s websites. This will speed up your learning curve.

• People will discriminate against a self publisher because you are not ‘published’
• Rightly or wrongly people will assume that your product is not as high in quality as a traditionally published work. The truth is that no matter how emotive you may be about this lack of fairness, it is going to happen. You therefore will need to dig deep and find your coping approach and support. There are successful independent authors who self publish and as far as I can tell they will sign a deal with a multinational to gain reach and a better deal once they have gained attention. And to be honest I would be tempted myself depending on the nature of that ‘deal’. In the meantime, you can sell books despite the discrimination, only don’t bank on leaving your day job for a while and best of luck with the selling.
• Book fairs – I was asked for my publisher to forward my back-list before even being considered to be part of a book fair. It was the published authors’ subtle barrier. Now if I knew what a back-list looked like and had a publishers’ letter head I could play along.  Most likely they would then have me marshal a car park.
• Book bloggers – most do not want self-published books to review and they say so. You could try to bypass this, but honestly you could equally annoy them into a poor review.
• Book stores – pretty much struggle as it is. Those that do not are probably open to local authors to some extent. However, if you mention self-published / independent you can pretty much see their eyes glaze over. Best tactic is to not mention it and put forward your charm to sell yourself and your sale or return books.
• Book store head office – will routinely ignore your self-published book unless you somehow manage to meet someone sympathetic to the qualities of your book. They already get bombarded with books from traditional book publishers who offer all kinds of incentives, so the competition is fierce.
• Libraries and e-libraries – may take a free gift of your book. They may also tell you that someone has to vet it first before putting it on the shelves. It’s worth a try. However, e-libraries are now locked down by a handful of suppliers who only deal with publishers who offer a minimum of 6 plus books. So you’ll need help to get around the restriction and gain an account with them.

• Book giveaways often do not lead to book reviews
• Book reviews on Amazon and Goodreads make a difference. Getting them and keeping them is tough. I do not recommend attempting to rig reviews because people notice and Amazon has been known to remove them. I do recommend asking anyone who is willing to write an honest review and post it on Amazon and Goodreads. Now, giving away a print copy on Goodreads may lead to a book review. The odds are about 10%. Goodreads prefer that you do not contact the winners or entrants, which is not so hot. I suggest you write a note when you send out the physical book to winners and ask for a review from them. It does not always work and sometimes the receiver can be mean in the review. However, it is still a review and decent people will give you a fair review in exchange for a free book.

• You will need trusted beta readers
  
• It’s a tricky balance – who do you trust?  Well you can start by trusting yourself. Next, hopefully your partner, though be aware they could become jealous or dismissive, it happens. What you need is a set of beta readers who are interested in your genre of book. Ideally you need them to be balanced in their feedback. That said, if you have some overly critical, some more relaxed and plenty of mistake and typo spots, you are onto a good thing. I suggest you follow-up on everything they spot even if it does not make sense at first sight. I have known five people to overlook the same typos and plot holes before now. And you need all the help you can find to maintain high quality writing for your book. Also thank them and gift them a signed print copy, it’s a win win.

Hope these thoughts help you on your quest. Best of luck. Remember to share this link with people you know and feel free to drop by www.SeanYeager.com .

Thanks for visiting.

D.M. Jarrett

 

 

 

 

Pros and Cons of Self Publishing

This article is based on my experience writing and self-publishing two titles to date. My research cuts across many sources: published books, online learning, social media groups, verbal sharing of experiences and lessons learned at the coal face. It is my intention to ‘tell it  how it is’ and of course this is my perception to date.

Pros:
1)      You have complete control

You can choose what you write, how you package, how you market. Everything. And you can retain all your rights, provided you are wise to not signing them away to a vanity publisher or service company along the way. You don’t need to, so don’t. Read every letter of every agreement and if it looks ‘bad’ for your interests find a better route to market. Self publishing means that you own all of your book rights, that’s the deal. If you decide to sell some of them, make sure you take legal advice and receive payment.

2)      You can sell your own product in the market

No one can stop you selling your works directly to the public. For example, if your ‘Memoirs of a Frog Prince’ is complete, you can publish pretty much everywhere via Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords etc. without anyone else approving your work. You can also publish for relatively little outlay in e-book and print. (But that does not mean you will necessarily sell many copies, most titles sell less than 100 ever).

3)      You can sell product to readers (almost) directly

It is possible to sell product from your own website, but you will probably reach a far greater audience via Amazon, Kobo, Smashwords etc. These platforms will take a cut, but that cut is far less than a traditional publisher would take if you were signed-up. (However, your book would be likely to reach far more sales outlets and territories in print with a good deal at a good traditional publisher).

4)      It is possible to succeed

If your work is good enough and you work hard enough to find your audience, you could succeed all by yourself. However, not all books will be good enough and not all reader audiences can be found online. The proportion of ‘winners’ in this game is relatively small. You will need luck, a strong sequence of products and a lot of hard work to succeed commercially.

Before you write I suggest studying BookBub’s advertising rate chart for several days. See it here: http://www.bookbub.com/advertise/pricing.php

I wish I had seen it a lot earlier. Basically, this is as close as you’ll get to understanding the real potential market for your books, pro-rata. Of course the total world market is bigger than this, but the proportions are valid and representative for the UK and US markets. For example, you may wish to compete in a more widely read e-book genre than ‘Teen and Young Adult’ if you are just starting out. (I wish I had).

5)      You can achieve commercial success without the gatekeepers

The definition of ‘success’ is probably a case by case matter by writer and genre. Certainly, there are (some) professional self-published writers who make a decent living from writing books. They tend to be writers of multiple books for adult genres. They tend to be very hard working and strong minded, as well as good, solid writers.

For many writers, self-published (or indeed traditionally published) books are likely to be an additional source of income rather than a primary source, at least for the early part of their careers. And this is not unusual historically. Many famous writers held substantial jobs while writing their major works. J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S. Lewis being two notable examples.

Cons:

1)      It is all down to you

The flip-side of control is that you have to do it all yourself. Or you need to find people you can pay who can assist you. Editors, cover artists, e-book designers and print book designers being essential services you will need. Most of your competitors will be using professional help as well, so be aware. You are all competing for repeat readers!

You also need to learn as much about online book marketing and promotion as you do about how to write a quality book. Omit this step at your peril. If you hope to sell in volume, you need to know how to oil the gears of your own selling machine. And that learning continues for years…

2)      Big companies will block you

It is a fact of the world we live in that big businesses will block out smaller businesses until the start-ups somehow ‘breakthrough’. At which point, they will consider buying them out, if they can. Sorry to kill off the romance, but you are basically selling a product which the world does not  want to know about until it sells a lot of units. Yes, it is a catch-22. So to slay some more dreams in the bud while I’m on a roll:

• Chain stores will resist all attempts by you to stock your books in preference for their deals with established publishers and authors. (Independents are still an option.)
• Libraries will resist attempts by you to stock more than a handful of ‘local books’ in their county.
• Online libraries will refer you to their partner – probably Overdrive – who will refuse to deal with you directly and will refer you to an ‘aggregator’ such as Smashwords.
• Bookbub will refuse to take your advertising unless you meet their criteria or are very fortunate. (They won’t elaborate on why) This is because they have plenty of other paying customers for their advertising space and can afford to pick and choose their customers (lucky them).
• Agents will send you standard rejection letters (or emails) unless you are incredibly diligent and lucky. Because they have plenty of other books to sell. By the way ‘Not suitable for our list’ means ‘we don’t think we can (or want to) sell your book’ . It’s a sugar coated ‘no way’. (And many of them also rejected J.K. Rowling – so what do they know?)
• Publishing companies will likewise reject your work, unless you are incredibly diligent and lucky. Because they also have plenty of other books to sell. And they listen mostly to Agents.
• Publications will blank your attempts to request reviews in print or online. Because they have plenty of other published books to review and are (probably) paid in kind for such reviews. (It’s easily done in this world).
• If you have personal contacts in any of the above use them!!!!!!!  (And then share them with me please)
  

3)      You will have to give away and heavily discount your product

Because everyone else does. Therefore you will end up giving away hundreds or thousands of units in the hope of picking up ‘visibility’ on Amazon and climbing sales charts. The precise details of ‘why’ vary with the manner in which Amazon compile their sales charts. However, the premise is simple – your work is unknown and will remain so until it appears on some ‘best selling’ lists. If it is seen and reviewed well, people will buy it. To achieve that push you will need to give away some copies and discount some copies. (Ouch!)

You will also have to provide an incentive for people to subscribe to your newsletters. A discounted or free book being an appropriate ‘gift’.  Likewise to gain those illusive online reviews, readers and bloggers will expect free books in exchange for their time and (hopefully) their kind words.

4)      It is also possible to fail commercially

You may succeed in writing a great book, your best ever book etc. However, commercial failure is entirely possible. Even if you learn and work hard at marketing and promotion, it is not a certainty that enough people will buy your books to make you more than 100 sales. Life is not fair, there are no guarantees and it does hurt. Sorry, but that is the truth.

It is also possible that you may not be cut out to be a writer in a commercial sense. That is not to say that you have ‘failed’ as such. No. Simply, that you will need to have other income available to live on while you write for your own pleasure or for other goals. At some point, a competition win or a big name review could change your fortunes as an author, but until that time….

Consider this: A writer produces a quality book that is well presented and does not fit easily into an established genre. They try all the regular routes to self-publish and promote. However, what they may not realise (ever) is that their work might be an acquired taste or a niche work. That is not to say that their writing lacks merit. It simply means that – like the vast majority of books – it will sell in trickles rather than floods, because that book’s market is relatively difficult to find or is quite small.

Or this: A writer markets their work to the hilt and writes for a genre that sells well. They produce a few books, promote them well etc. What they may not realise (ever) is that their work basically ‘sucks’. It falls short of the standards their potential readers require to pass on a recommendation. This may be incredibly tough to accept, but it happens. And no one will tell you for fear of causing offence. (You may not believe them anyway). On the plus side you can always improve! And in time, you will recognise on reading back your own work how good it really is. Meantime, keep up the day job!

Luck, hard work and persistence remain key factors for any ‘overnight success’ and writing is no different. (I’m very much at this stage right now).

As an informed guess, you will need at least three titles to make a serious impact and probably four. The first will likely fail, but you will learn from it. The next two will be better quality and you will be better placed to promote them. By the third you have enough product to ‘sacrifice’ to giveaways and heavy discounts. And you will gain in cross-sales with your other titles. Plus, you will have built a name within your reader population. Blog followers, subscriber lists, twitter followers etc. all add up and provide better chances for you to directly promote your books to interested readers.

5)      You will still need to negotiate with ‘gatekeepers’

It would be great to think that ‘gatekeepers’ with approved ‘lists’ will go away when you self-publish. (Agents, Publishers and PR people run a ‘list’ of work they represent or are trying to sell for). Unfortunately the ‘gatekeepers’ won’t go away, instead they morph and change.

To succeed as a self-published author you will still need endorsements and acceptance for your work from a number of people. Not all of who will be as open minded to the merit of your work as you are. These include:

• Book bloggers – generally they want genre and quality consistent with their values and interests. (Vampire bloggers are not ‘into’ sci-fi for example)
• Book advertisers – ditto with their audience goals and their income models.
• Amazon – can (in theory) reject/take down works which have reader complaints against them. It may be rare, but it can happen.
• Customer book reviewers – need an angle to want to like your work. It is not a level playing field (sorry) An ‘okay read’ will not usually result in a review. A high profile book will attract far more sales and therefore far more reviews. Not all of them good I hasten to add.
• Your first readers – will obviously judge your work against their own likes and dislikes
• Your social media contacts – will generally want to associate more with ‘rising stars’ than ‘unknowns’
• Your potential ‘fans’ – by definition will like the work that ticks their boxes. If they are ‘your’  fans you will want to look after them. Nurture them. Hug them even.

In conclusion, while there is no one recipe for success in an ever-changing world of book publishing (thank goodness), there are some truisms:

• The winners take almost all of the cake – see the published book sales figures for any given year
• The harder you work, the luckier you will become
• Success breeds success – fiction books (like pop music) is a very polarised market with a very ‘long tail’ of low volume selling titles.
• Successful titles come from the most popular genres – which is de facto a statistical certainty and relates also to demographics.

Good luck and happy writing

David Jarrett

www.SeanYeager.com

Sean Yeager and the DNA Thief available now at Amazon, Kobo

Sean Yeager Hunters Hunted. Available now at Amazon, Kobo etc

Self publishers – how to reach your future readers…… tips and learnings

Hi,

I thought I would share a few learnings before I start taking what I have picked up for granted. After many hours I’ve learned one thing more than anything – authors need to keep learning and connecting with their readers and peers. Because self-publishing is a constantly evolving enterprise and world.

How to reach an audience online? Partly it’s about luck, mostly it is about toil and being interesting for your audience.

Here in no set order are some tips. I hope you find them useful.

1) Set-up your own website with your own branding and content relevant to your books. Cross-link your online presence in all directions with your website as the hub. Brand your website and link to reviews, sales points, samples and everything else you can think of.

2) Make absolutely certain that your books are as good as you think they are AND as good as they can be. Find some critical readers and correct ALL the typos, mistakes and rubbish parts. Polish, polish, polish. IF the feedback is poor or ‘iffy’ STOP. Re-write your book until it shines under all lights. If you cringe when you read back a section, it is because it is not good enough, YET.  Or it might need to be cut out completely……

NOTE: Omit this step at your peril. Bad reviews can not be deleted later when you attract a level of interest. If your book(s) suck paying customers really will tell you so….. and in so doing tell the whole world. Plus you could spend a lot of hours promoting yourself and your work with a relatively poor product to sell. And that will ultimately prove painful.

3) Join a group or two of like minded self-publishers. I recommend the Alliance of Independent Authors. This will help you to stay in touch with developments, meet helpful people and ultimately keep you relatively sane. And contribute what you can in return as well – it’s good for the soul.

4) Set-up and use Twitter, being authentic, interesting and book / fiction centric in the main. Your aim is to connect with people who can help you, read your work and people you can help in return – by entertaining them with great books or sharing learnings.

If you use Twitter automation tools be aware that Twitter could suspend your account. So be careful and as low key initially as you can be. I do not recommend buying followers or for that matter book reviews.

5) Set-up and use Facebook. Create a Facebook page for your books. Upload interesting content and cross link to everywhere. Friend authors, readers, book clubs and anyone you reasonably ‘know’ or share an interest with. Avoid complete strangers and people peddling non-book stuff.

6) Set-up and use Goodreads. Become an author and ‘claim’ your books. Use the groups to make connections. If you have print copies, create ‘giveaways’ over a 2 to 3 month period. Use a ‘pull’ model to attract and invite interest. Do not chase or hassle on Goodreads, they don’t like it! They could bar you.

7) Set-up and use Librarything. Load your books etc. Use your Bio (that you created way back for your website) and run e-book or print giveaways.

8) Set-up and start writing a blog. Use it as your own lessons learned log and a way of talking about your journey. It’s your blog so experiment with the style you prefer. Do you want to be a book / writing tips consultant? Or maybe a reviewer / blogger? Or perhaps a commentator on a particle genre of media that ties in with your books? Your blog. Your call.

9) Keep writing your books. All the above is pretty much useless until you have written your next and subsequent books. Why? Because it will take you time to do and you need multiple titles to cross-sell to your audience. Satisfied customers will ask – ‘when can I read the next one?’

10) Commercials matter. Price appropriately and DO NOT give away too many books. You are a business and you do not want to promote yourself as a ‘free writer’ who values their work as only good enough to give away. Possibly run promos for limited periods across titles, possibly have a sacrificial promo title that will always be free. Remember basic maths – making one thousand bucks is a whole lot easier if you are charging 2.99 than if you are charging nothing or 99 pennies. Remember, the big indie authors usually have lots of titles and a huge audience. You don’t. Yet.

11) Monitor your SEO and presence online by regular Google and Bing searches. Check what sites are moving up the rankings and promoting your work. Your work will still have to sell itself ultimately, but your page rankings matter if you want to attract browsers. You will also have to take a realistic look at your book market and Google Adwords analysis of terms ‘searched for’ can be a sobering exercise. Are people really looking for funny books about duodenal ulcers and the family consequences? That’s not a dig, but you do need to be realistic about your market expectations. Not every genre sells and that’s a reality.

12) Treat all your online contacts (messages, posts, responses, emails) in a consistently jovial and constructive manner. Never enter a slanging match EVER online. Because it will not go away, it will be recorded for a long, long time. Ignore bad reviews; block inappropriate followers and comments; delete what you have control over if it is plain abusive. HOWEVER – leave constructive comments alone and learn from them.

13) Write this out and repeat it daily. ‘I will learn more from a constructive and harsh critic of my work than I ever will from my friends’.

It’s true. You will. It will hurt initially, but you have to learn how to open your mind to the reality that no one’s work is perfect. Everyone can improve how they write, how they plot, what they write about etc etc. Even the pros. Check out any successful book’s reviews on Amazon to see the array of thoughts if you don’t believe me.

And of course you can select which parts of the feedback to action. Often people will give conflicting suggestions, so look for the patterns. Consider whether they have a point. (That is after you’ve (privately and offline) fumed and vented your initial reaction).

14) Last and by no means least – be yourself across all sites, media and in the real world. Have fun and consider all the new skills you’re learning as positives. In theory, you could now promote almost anything online. You will also have to learn firm time management and how to stay healthy – another time perhaps for those topics.

Good luck

David Jarrett

Sean Yeager Adventures

Sean Yeager Hunters Hunted

So how on earth do you reach new readers with social media?

Welcome,

Today’s big question is an ongoing experiment in social media and content promotion. Yep, you guessed right first time, I’ve no clue how you reach anyone including my own family on social media. By ‘reach’ I mean to make a meaningful connection with as opposed to randomly spam or annoy. ‘Reach’ as in – interest them enough to go to your website, read a sample of your book and perhaps consider a purchase. Because they want to, not because of a guilt trip, pity purchase or a clever bit of key word marketing and coding.

So here’s my run down so far in relation to my experiences promoting Sean Yeager Adventures Admittedly on a zero budget and now with two entertaining books published. And let me tell you – the writing was the easy part, the reviewing was horrible but way more productive than attempting ‘social media connections’. As I joked recently, ‘I could sell more books standing next to a motorway than via social media’.  And it’s not about some mental block thing or lack of trying – there is a giant, electronic, elephant in the room.

Amazon – virtually useless, search engines optimised for top sellers only. It’s a shop for the top, period. You’ll be dead before someone finds your book or Kindle board note. And then it’ll be a mistaken browser looking for someone else. Catch-22 is – they don’t know you, so they won’t look for you. Your book may as well be buried 300 feet beneath the ocean,

KDS Free days – virtually useless. So you give away free books, then what? Sales spike and all is well? Dream on. It might work for big name authors with tens of books in their canon, for the rest of us I doubt it is of any use at all. It also devalues the writing and the book. Also a great way for pirates to obtain content without doing anything remotely clever.

Twitter – virtually useless, an echo chamber of people selling stuff to other complete strangers who are selling stuff to complete strangers. Might work for ‘real’ celebrities, if we can glean who they are online these days. Could be their cat for all we know. More likely an impostor or an intern with a crush.

Facebook – virtually useless, a cage of rules for not bothering people and then a non-stop stream of content from people who like to transmit. Always best when you have no idea what  on earth the original event or question was – all you see is a response and some pictures. Right, for light relief of the comedy kind it’s okay, that’s all I seem to see. Jokes, viral images and comments. The spam you learn to look through and ignore. And why wouldn’t you?

Facebook has some great info groups online. Promotion – forget it.

Yes Facebook do advertising, unfortunately they do a really bad job of explaining to me why I should pay a bean for it. Free trials, stats, breakdowns – it’s not happening for me and yes of course I’ve a zero budget anyhow. Social networking and connecting? Not any more, you could throw some money into the void and pray. Now that’s a sound business investment decision right? Not on my planet.

Linked-In – fine for articles and groups, rubbish for promoting fiction. Another echo chamber.

Goodreads – good for presenting stuff, great for giving away stuff. I’ve yet to be convinced that anyone actually buys and reads unknown fiction as a result. Maybe some people do.

Scribd – good for presenting stuff, great for giving away content. I’ve yet to be convinced that anyone actually buys and reads unknown fiction as a result.

Librarything – ditto, seems to be for ‘serious fiction’ really. Held breath and died before anyone read a simple posting. Now a ghost haunting the site out of morbid interest.

Book Blogs – difficult to judge, no one is interested in reviewing Sean Yeager as it’s an adventure /  sci-fi book. (Yep, real niche stuff alongside underground stuff like Star Wars, Star Trek etc) So de facto useless, but it may work if you write books that are reviewed and hence promoted on book blogs. Which seems to be anything written for a female audience and blogged about by a lady with a love of books (who also happens to write romantic supernatural stories about vampires and men with six packs and no clothes on (I blame the TV) )

That’s all for now, I’m off to the pub for some research, And a primal scream.

AHHHHHHHHHHH!

That’s better.

Happy reading

D.M. Jarrett