Comments on: Sending out an SOS… (or Book Marketing? What?)

By: the Wandering Author

the Wandering Author — Sat, 31 May 2008 17:24:04 +0000

Your post has sent me scouring the web, and I've found an incredibly interesting concept from Kevin Kelly: 1,000 True Fans. You can read it here: http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fans.php. I think this is an idea many authors could adapt to their own use. I hope it helps! Note that there are caveats; each author would need to figure out their own details, or perhaps a new type of 'agent' will spring up, managing 'True Fans' for those who are unable or unwilling to do so directly (of course, that would increase the inherent costs).

By: the Wandering Author

the Wandering Author — Fri, 30 May 2008 21:15:02 +0000

I’m not sure if comments are moderated (no message to that effect came up) or if my last comment was just eaten. Either way, I won’t be annoying and try to rewrite it right away, but I did notice one other point: this post would be more ‘visible’ to search engines if you followed basic SEO techniques in how your blog generates URLs. (Title or subject of post in URL, to be specific, not an enigmatic number: Google and the others will be less sure what this post is about, and it will rank that much lower.) Writers, when trying to gain notice / build name recognition, need to learn these types of things as well. (And no, I don’t do SEO, so I’m not trying to sell you anything – I just know a bit about it as I work in social media.)

By: the Wandering Author

the Wandering Author — Fri, 30 May 2008 21:09:56 +0000

I reposted your appeal here. I’ve been worrying about this issue for a while now. I’ve tried to get people interested, but most of the response has been “there’s nothing we can do”, or “publishers worry about that stuff” – ha!

I have self-published, but that was too long ago to be any help to you now. I have spent a lot of time looking and thinking, and if you don’t mind a few suggestions:

Check out Cory Doctorow’s blog – Craphound – he seems to have been very successful in marketing his books. If you approach him, he might consider sharing his wisdom.

Building name recognition seems to be the key to selling anything in the Internet age. Writers may have to learn social media marketing techniques…

Holly Lisle is pretty busy, but she does try to “pay it forward”; if you approached her, she might share her experiences – which aren’t all that hopeful in themselves, but she has some good ideas for writers to keep going.

Many published writers have written, here and there (see Cory Doctorow, or Baen Books site) to say that giving away free e-books helps sell published copies. As an extension, I have considered giving away free e-books (perhaps anthologies of short stories, which won’t sell for much, anyway) in the hope of building name recognition.

I understand, and appreciate, your desire to find out what works from published authors. I do suspect, from my own reading, you won’t find that many different ideas. Things have changed too much. I posted some thoughts, very raw, just brainstorming, on one writers’ site – and nearly had my head ripped off by those who don’t want to think about how different the world is becoming. If you’re interested in discussing untested ideas (and I suspect writers are going to have to discuss, and consider, a lot of ideas before figuring out the best approaches), I’ve been thinking about things for a while, including potential future changes and how those might affect marketing. My ideas aren’t worth much on their own, they need to be discussed, kicked around, cross-pollinated, etc. But if you want to start that type of discussion, please let me know. You have my blog link in this comment…

By: Ian

Ian — Fri, 30 May 2008 02:28:30 +0000

My post is up now, and I emailed you with some relevant information.

Ian

By: Jennifer McKenzie

Jennifer McKenzie — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:43:18 +0000

Web presence is huge.
When I began my journey to publication, I made a “Five Year Plan”. Start small, move up.
I started with smaller epublishers. Though I sold, I had few sales. I promoted on blogs, forums and Yahoo groups.
But the longer I kept at it, blogged consistently, updated my website etc. the more sales increased.
Also, once I moved to a publisher with higher traffic, sales jumped.
Name recognition is the only way I’ve gotten increased sales.
That’s my two cents. Is it okay if I post this on a writer’s forum for more input?

By: Sassy Mama Bear Writes

Sassy Mama Bear Writes — Thu, 29 May 2008 18:44:20 +0000

a post will appear by 4pm CST today hopefully, using this to test the scheduled postign feature. Hope it helps love, and do let me know if you’d like my thoughts.

By: Amy Ruttan

Amy Ruttan — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:42:31 +0000

I’m multipublished.

You can contact me, and I’ll try to help the best way I can.

I’m published through E-publishing.

By: Sassy Mama Bear

Sassy Mama Bear — Thu, 29 May 2008 17:37:25 +0000

Linking to my writing blog, and offering to post about this, to catch the attention of published book authors for you. I could contribute, but I have not yet sent a boo for publishing yet, have to complete one of the 3 in process. I am however a published author for the web, and magazines. Let me know if you are interested in my thoughts.

By: TWM

TWM — Thu, 29 May 2008 07:44:10 +0000

*shrug* ha ha ha ha ok OG.. I went ahead and reposted your query. Funny thing is your so good at this internet thing that all of the links in the post seem to have traveled hot and working.

Hell I can’t even make a link hot.

Now I am going back to my regularly scheduled experimental broadcasting…hey you’uns come on over so I can pander some more opines from people.

Peace

By: » Thursday Thirteen : Sourdough Bread

» Thursday Thirteen : Sourdough Bread — Wed, 28 May 2008 22:51:07 +0000

[...] Comments jameil on Sending out an SOS… (or Book Marketing? What?)Open Grove Claudia on Sending out an SOS… (or Book Marketing? What?)Dr. John on Sending out an [...]