Guillermo Stitch
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jun 4, 2018
- Messages
- 171
This post will be long.
A few months ago when I was busy marketing my novella, Literature®, I had a couple of private conversations with members here about the work I was doing on it. It was the first time I had self-published anything and, going by my Goodreads page and Amazon reviews, as well as a handful of pro reviews, I must have done something right and some curiosity was expressed as to how I had gone about it. I said I would post about my experiences when the dust had settled and this is that post.
In no way do I offer it as an 'expert' post. How could it be? It is the account of a first-timer. And I apologise in advance for taking up so much space. But maybe that first-time-round experience will be interesting to any here who have yet to take the plunge and, equally interesting to me, maybe more experienced members will be able to spot any misapprehensions I'm under and put me straight.
Everything from this point in the post on rests on the assumptions that you have written a half-decent book that you can put some genre tag(s) on, that it has been formatted and proofed and there's an at least acceptable cover on it—that you have a ready-to-go print-on-demand product, in other words. I do think that some of the marketing methods would equally apply to small press authors who are left to do much of their own promotion.
I started work on the publication date 3 months prior to the publication date which I had set (and which I religiously stuck to). This was to give myself time to build whatever buzz I could. Doing it again, I would have no hesitation whatsoever about making that 6 months.
My main tool was, of course, the spreadsheet. To give an idea of my work flow, the sheets I opened up on mine were: press release submissions, personal and semi-personal (online) contacts to solicit reviews from, pro reviewers, Amazon reviewers, sci fi writers to follow on Twitter, Goodreads influencers, promotions companies, expenses, a 'to do' checklist, people to receive postal copies, book bloggers, other Twitter follows.
By far the most used tag was book bloggers. Between them, pro reviewers, journalists (being Irish, I sought to use that angle to leverage Irish journalists...and failed...), press releases etc I probably emailed close to 500 people in the end, book blogger accounting for around 400 of those.
I think it's important that you write a good email and have a media kit so you can attach a professional looking press release and a book cover. You should probably be as keen to workshop your pitch with other writers as you are your actual work. You also need to tailor each email to the individual you are addressing and their preferences (and get their name right!). In terms of book bloggers specifically, the return on that so far has been 15 reviews, with a further 12 agreed but no sign of them yet. If that seems awful then consider the alternative – not doing that work and not having any reviews. Some bloggers reply to decline to review your book, but mostly you just don't hear back.
I don't have many reviews by people who personally know me, although there are some. I've read a lot about how Amazon can be very persnickety about that and indeed, some reviews that went up on Amazon later came down, for example when someone posted a review from the same IP address as someone with whom they shared a surname, both reviews came down. So I personally would not recommend relying on personal contacts to make your Amazon page look good.
The returns with pro publications were if anything more meagre than with book bloggers, although at least there are fewer of them to contact. I was successful in getting reviews from a couple of hard sci-fi publications that normally don't accept self-published (get that pitch right!), Tangent and SFCrowsnest, but it was a mixed blessing. Neither seemed to like the book very much and the reviews were very much at odds with reviews from elsewhere. Note to self – my work does not really click with hard sci fi aficionados.
One piece of excellent luck I had was getting a cracker of a review from Anne Cunningham, who reviews for the Irish Independent, Irish Times, Sunday Times UK and so on. She loved the book but couldn't get the review into a national, instead getting it into a regional, the Meath Chronicle. Of course, that hasn't stopped me from mentioning the nationals she writes for whenever the opportunity arises. I was very surprised to hear back from her originally (the ONLY Irish journalist who ever responded to me) but I now have a theory as to why she noticed my email and it's this: my email included some blurbs and testimonials that I had solicited and one of them was from a Siun O'Connor, and Irish film-maker and an old friend of mine. Turns out Anne Cunningham knows her mother. I don't know if that's the reason, but...you just never know what will catch a person's eye.
Every time something good came in – a blurb or review – I would update my email to give it more clout. I do think I noticed more interest when I started including Anne Cunningham.
Underground Book reviews then picked my book as a nominee for Novel of the Year and that also gave me ammunition. A review from Publishers Weekly is forthcoming, they tell me – I submitted the book via their Booklife website. Fingers crossed it happens and fingers crossed it's a good one.
The reaction from book bloggers has been overwhelmingly positive. Ironically, even though I originally though that the sci-fi element was the book's most marketable quality, the good reaction has come more from mainstream and other publications, rather than sci-fi mags.
The rest of the reviews that have amassed on Goodreads have been organic, and almost all positive.
I still have feelers out there for pro reviews but of course the more time goes by the less hopeful I am about them. I sent a couple of requests out just the other day but overall, activity on the book is coming to an end.
I have done a free promotion which resulted in around 3000 downloads. I don't think I'll do it again – people just click on it because it's free, and I think it's a very low-grade transaction. But I will try discounting (via KDP), especially if I get a good Publishers Weekly review.
I'll stop now and add anything else I think of to subsequent posts. None of the above has had any miraculous result on sales, which have been poor. I am still searchng for that mythological elixir - traction. But then I am not self-publishing's preferred model. It seems that to find sales success then you need to commit to one of the popular genres, produce several books a year and make sure those books are part of a series. That seems to be the prevalent model and it will never apply to me. I'm just some bloke that makes art with words and is bloody-minded about the way he does it. Maybe that limits the insight that can be gained from my experience but there you have it. I hope this has been of some interest and am very interested myself in discussions and other people's experiences.
A few months ago when I was busy marketing my novella, Literature®, I had a couple of private conversations with members here about the work I was doing on it. It was the first time I had self-published anything and, going by my Goodreads page and Amazon reviews, as well as a handful of pro reviews, I must have done something right and some curiosity was expressed as to how I had gone about it. I said I would post about my experiences when the dust had settled and this is that post.
In no way do I offer it as an 'expert' post. How could it be? It is the account of a first-timer. And I apologise in advance for taking up so much space. But maybe that first-time-round experience will be interesting to any here who have yet to take the plunge and, equally interesting to me, maybe more experienced members will be able to spot any misapprehensions I'm under and put me straight.
Everything from this point in the post on rests on the assumptions that you have written a half-decent book that you can put some genre tag(s) on, that it has been formatted and proofed and there's an at least acceptable cover on it—that you have a ready-to-go print-on-demand product, in other words. I do think that some of the marketing methods would equally apply to small press authors who are left to do much of their own promotion.
I started work on the publication date 3 months prior to the publication date which I had set (and which I religiously stuck to). This was to give myself time to build whatever buzz I could. Doing it again, I would have no hesitation whatsoever about making that 6 months.
My main tool was, of course, the spreadsheet. To give an idea of my work flow, the sheets I opened up on mine were: press release submissions, personal and semi-personal (online) contacts to solicit reviews from, pro reviewers, Amazon reviewers, sci fi writers to follow on Twitter, Goodreads influencers, promotions companies, expenses, a 'to do' checklist, people to receive postal copies, book bloggers, other Twitter follows.
By far the most used tag was book bloggers. Between them, pro reviewers, journalists (being Irish, I sought to use that angle to leverage Irish journalists...and failed...), press releases etc I probably emailed close to 500 people in the end, book blogger accounting for around 400 of those.
I think it's important that you write a good email and have a media kit so you can attach a professional looking press release and a book cover. You should probably be as keen to workshop your pitch with other writers as you are your actual work. You also need to tailor each email to the individual you are addressing and their preferences (and get their name right!). In terms of book bloggers specifically, the return on that so far has been 15 reviews, with a further 12 agreed but no sign of them yet. If that seems awful then consider the alternative – not doing that work and not having any reviews. Some bloggers reply to decline to review your book, but mostly you just don't hear back.
I don't have many reviews by people who personally know me, although there are some. I've read a lot about how Amazon can be very persnickety about that and indeed, some reviews that went up on Amazon later came down, for example when someone posted a review from the same IP address as someone with whom they shared a surname, both reviews came down. So I personally would not recommend relying on personal contacts to make your Amazon page look good.
The returns with pro publications were if anything more meagre than with book bloggers, although at least there are fewer of them to contact. I was successful in getting reviews from a couple of hard sci-fi publications that normally don't accept self-published (get that pitch right!), Tangent and SFCrowsnest, but it was a mixed blessing. Neither seemed to like the book very much and the reviews were very much at odds with reviews from elsewhere. Note to self – my work does not really click with hard sci fi aficionados.
One piece of excellent luck I had was getting a cracker of a review from Anne Cunningham, who reviews for the Irish Independent, Irish Times, Sunday Times UK and so on. She loved the book but couldn't get the review into a national, instead getting it into a regional, the Meath Chronicle. Of course, that hasn't stopped me from mentioning the nationals she writes for whenever the opportunity arises. I was very surprised to hear back from her originally (the ONLY Irish journalist who ever responded to me) but I now have a theory as to why she noticed my email and it's this: my email included some blurbs and testimonials that I had solicited and one of them was from a Siun O'Connor, and Irish film-maker and an old friend of mine. Turns out Anne Cunningham knows her mother. I don't know if that's the reason, but...you just never know what will catch a person's eye.
Every time something good came in – a blurb or review – I would update my email to give it more clout. I do think I noticed more interest when I started including Anne Cunningham.
Underground Book reviews then picked my book as a nominee for Novel of the Year and that also gave me ammunition. A review from Publishers Weekly is forthcoming, they tell me – I submitted the book via their Booklife website. Fingers crossed it happens and fingers crossed it's a good one.
The reaction from book bloggers has been overwhelmingly positive. Ironically, even though I originally though that the sci-fi element was the book's most marketable quality, the good reaction has come more from mainstream and other publications, rather than sci-fi mags.
The rest of the reviews that have amassed on Goodreads have been organic, and almost all positive.
I still have feelers out there for pro reviews but of course the more time goes by the less hopeful I am about them. I sent a couple of requests out just the other day but overall, activity on the book is coming to an end.
I have done a free promotion which resulted in around 3000 downloads. I don't think I'll do it again – people just click on it because it's free, and I think it's a very low-grade transaction. But I will try discounting (via KDP), especially if I get a good Publishers Weekly review.
I'll stop now and add anything else I think of to subsequent posts. None of the above has had any miraculous result on sales, which have been poor. I am still searchng for that mythological elixir - traction. But then I am not self-publishing's preferred model. It seems that to find sales success then you need to commit to one of the popular genres, produce several books a year and make sure those books are part of a series. That seems to be the prevalent model and it will never apply to me. I'm just some bloke that makes art with words and is bloody-minded about the way he does it. Maybe that limits the insight that can be gained from my experience but there you have it. I hope this has been of some interest and am very interested myself in discussions and other people's experiences.
and if they are representative of what they are trying to sell...... I've been vaguely keeping an eye on ads to see how it is done )
