How can I promote my short story?

[super nurse]

Hi all. I'm wondering if anyone can help me. I have recently self published a short story on amazon for kindle and am wondering how I might begin to 'get it out there'. I have obviously used the normal channels such as facebook but I wondered if i could promote it here too or on other forums?? Would that work?? Who knows.

Advice/guidence would be great and thanks in advance
Simon

 

[The Judge]

Hi

We've plenty of advice about promoting novels in the Publishing section so I'll move the thread over there. Meanwhle, no, we don't allow people to come on here and promote themselves and their work. We are delighted to hear of the efforts of well-established members but those who come here only to promote won't find a warm welcome -- in fact first post self-promotion is usually an instant ban.

But we are always happy to greet new members who are as interested as we are in SFF. So if you want to be part of the Chrons family, settle in and get to know us, and we will help you as much as we can with this and any other writing issues.

 

[Boneman]

What the Judge said.

But thank you for asking in the first place - you'd be amazed how many arrive here just to promote their books and then disappear, having contributed nothing. Now, they disappear before we see them, which saves us time and effort - our moderators are damn good, you know.

You could search for the thread 'How to Market your book online' on this forum by I Brian, and there's oodles of advice which can equally apply to short stories... it's all freely given, and by joining in and contributing, you will learn more than you thought possible! Hope to see you around...

oooh, wait! Did you say 'short story'? We have 300 word and 75 word challenges on here - check 'em out on the 'writing challenges' section, but please don't post brilliant entries - it's sooo hard to vote these days!

 

[Abernovo]

Well, just to add my two penn'orth to The Judge and Boneman - join in and make friends. There are a lot of writers here: some aspiring; some self-published, including at least one pretty successful one, from what I can gather; and some 'traditional-route' published authors. And a lot of smart people, at that. More than that, they're friendly and always ready to help, so long as you're ready to contribute to the community as well.

If you want to get your story 'out there', then it probably means getting yourself out there, making a name for yourself. Which means more writing, more stories, practising your art. You could also try selling stories to magazines.

Anyway, welcome to the Chrons. Please stay and join the fun.

 

[super nurse]

Thank you so much guys. I will take a look around. I am new to this site so need to do some 'investigating' and see whats to offer.

The Judge: My main aims for posting on here are to get advice and to potentially make friends with other like minded Sci Fi souls. I will take a look around.

Boneman:I will check out the shorts challenges, I love a challenge *cracks knuckles*.

Adenova: I'll contact some on-line magazines and try to sell the book there, thanks. I also have a 51,200 novel too, but I want to see that in print one day.

Thank you all again.
Regards
Simon

 

[Gary Compton]

Try selling a PDF version of your book on Ebay. Do it auction format, 1p starting price. Do one everyday. All Ebay listings show well in Google.

I'm not sure if you can save your book as a Kindle file or whether your tied completely to Amazon but give it a go.

Also put adverts on Gumtree etc etc

 

[Montero]

I have obviously used the normal channels such as facebook

Just wondered - where on Facebook? I did a search the other week on Facebook for science fiction and all that turned up was groups that seemed to be full of spam posts.

 

[Mr Tagomi]

Here's my tuppenceworth on Facebook.

I decided to make my SF novel available early last year having concluded that it's unsellable to a publisher. It's not a bad effort as far as I can tell, but seemingly unmarketable.

So I released it as a paperback through CreateSpace and as an e-book through Kindle.

For various reasons I did not try to push it actively. For one thing, having two babies in the house I find parenting leaves little time to think about that kind of thing.

Basically, I just wanted the book 'out there' so I could draw a mental line under the project.

However, a couple of things I did do to promote it were to set up a website and a Facebook page specifically for the book.

I then spent $50 on some Google advertising. This directed people to the website, where I have a plug-in in which people can 'like' the book on Facebook.

Checking the Google advertising stats, I seemed to get a reasonable number of click-throughs, and a reasonable number of complete strangers 'liked' the book.

I fully expected most of these to translate into sales. A grant total of 0 of them did.

So I am dubious about the value of web advertising a novel, and the worth of Facebook at all for this kind of thing. I suspect that all of these strangers 'liked' the book by accident.

In all I have sold about 20 copies of the novel in the available formats. Of these, maybe 7 are to total strangers.

Although my expectations are low, so to sell even 1 to a complete stranger is gratifying.