Sunday, October 27, 2013

Finding new avenues to promote

Finding your place as a writer can be a tricky process.  I have been writing for a long time and in the beginning no one saw my work.  As I grew more confident I started to share my work with friends and then on the net.

The various places that allow you to post your work for free are amazing as a tool in the beginning but there is only so much you can do in those places.  Spring boards like Wattpad and Storyenet or Fictionpress and fanfiction.net are great if you are say a teenager writing YA fiction but if you write things that are a bit too odd for them ore take a more adult mind to understand well you are over looked or at worst slammed .

but the thing is  once you start selling your work you don't want to put them up for free.  I have 60 odd titles up for sale, which makes me proud but the hard thing is getting sales.  As a barely noticed author I don't have a lot of readers and I don't have any cash.

In the old days you had publishers who did the marketing.  Now a days you have to do it yourself.  If you have money you can advertize and hopefully pull in those readers that we all live for.  If you have no cash, like me, you need to hit up social media.

Now like a good online person I have done my best not to flood the places that I have access to.  the MOA boards on Amazon, Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, Google Plus Group and twitter.  These places can bring awareness if you are lucky.  If you arent well you just have to hope for the best.

I am happy that I get some sales each month.  So far I have thirteen for the month of October.  Not great but not shabby.  The thing that surprises me is that most of those sales have come from barnes and Noble which I have no way of nudging and from my erotic titles which I do not promote.

Does this mean I should be just an erotic author?  Should i give up on trying to sell my novels?  Well I don't think so.  I want to see my novels finding readers, getting reviews and yes of course making me a little bit of money.

As a writer I have made about $150 over the past year and some but that is $150 that I didn't have before.  I might not be rich, I might not be famous but I am enjoying what little attention I get. 

So in conclusion of this ramble, go look up those less popular titles, check out the less expensive books and then review them.  Help some poor struggling author like me.  We have tales that are new or old and told in new ways.  Some are bad, some are good and some just might be great. 

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