I recently did a guest post at Linda R Harley’s Site, Rosebuz. My post, entitled How much is too much science?, is a post on my theme of getting the science right in science fiction. I am appreciative of Linda for allowing me to guest post on her blog, that of a book blogger who reviews books and gets the word out about independent writers. She performs a great service for independent authors and the reading community, and I look forward to the review she has promised of The Deep Dark Well. I have contacted several other book bloggers who have agreed to do author interviews or reviews in the future, depending on their schedules. I hope that happens, as it is a great boost in publicity. I have also had some who promised to do something and then didn’t. I sent a great deal of information to two bloggers, as well as a copy of one book for review, only to hear nothing after. For one I actually bought a webcam for a video interview. I tried to contact that blogger (though they actually called themselves a promoter) and kept getting a reply that they were still interested. I finally gave up. If they want to contact me that’s great. If not, I move on.
I still am not really sure how much publicity or reviews play into the success of a book online. One book, The Shadows of the Multiverse, has five 5 Star Reviews and went through its five day promotion on Amazon. I had planned for it to be the next book to take off after The Deep Dark Well, only it hasn’t happened. So far less that a hundred sales, though I still have hopes that it will someday take off, and even if it only sells forty books a month for the next couple of years it will have been worth the effort. Another science fiction novel, Exodus: Empires at War: Book One, just seemed to take off on its own. 1,300 sales in seven weeks, without the benefit of reviews or likes, though it has some of each now. I can only figure that a lot of the people who downloaded The Deep Dark Well when it was free, or bought it afterwards, wanted another of my books to read, and skipped over The Shadows of the Multiverse. Currently I have my Steampunk Fantasy, Daemon, on promotion, and based on past performance, I have no idea how it will do afterwards.
Is the effort of publicizing a book, whether through promotion, reviews or book blogging, really worth it? All I can say is it can’t hurt. Over the weekend I tried another method. I put a list of all of my current book on a page at the front of each ebook, with hyperlinks to their sales page on Amazon. I have also placed a The Favor of a Review section at the end of each book, along with a hyperlink to that book’s sales page where the reader can easily post a review. Will that help? I have no idea, but again it can’t hurt.
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On 08/24/2012 I will be featured on a book blog, in fact the book blog of IndieAuthorAnonymous.
One piece of advice I have been hearing for awhile is to get in with the book bloggers if you want to get your work publicized. Good advice, and like so much such advice, it is easier said than done. Many of the sites I have checked out have required an ungodly number of reviews with an average of at least four stars. Kind of defeats the purpose of getting on their blog when your book already has to be doing well to get publicized. So far I have avoided the common strategy of asking friends and family to write reviews whether they actually read the books or not. I wanted reviews from readers, and though the books I write have sold some copies, probably sixty or so for The Deep Dark Well, most buyers do not return to the seller to post reviews. And reviews are the lifeblood of the independent publishing business. Other blogs are open to submissions, until you actually get on them and see that all the reviewers in your genre are too busy for more submissions. I’ve had one blogger contact me in the recent past with an offer to do a blog and review. I sent him a free copy of one of my books and answered his questionnaire, and haven’t heard anything since. Hopefully that just means he is backlogged and will work his way to me. But I really don’t know.
Just the other day was contacted on Twitter by IndieAuthorAnonymous, who offered to put one of my books on his blog. He stated that it was a new blog and didn’t have a lot of coverage yet. I replied that I was willing to take my publicity in small chunks at this time. Tomorrow (08/24/2012) he will feature The Deep Dark Well on his blog. I am very thankful and grateful for this opportunity. Getting a message out through the general background noise is difficult these days. I am in it for the long haul, and know that baby steps forward are at least steps forward. I am hoping that this exposure on IndieAuthorAnonymous’ blog will be another one of those steps, and this his following will also grow to his benefit and that of the authors he covers. Please follow his blog if you can. It will only take a few minutes, and maybe you will find a new favorite author out there, one who is writing and publishing books for the love of the genre they write in. So remember to check out the blog of IndieAuthorAnonymous
