Self-Marketing

Apparently I’m supposed to do this on a regular basis to garner readership and thus, well, readers. However I never know what to write about and then I think everything I’ve written is stupid. Then I noticed a trend. When I get a writing prompt I never know what to write about and I think the stories are stupid, however, they always seem to go over well (at least among my test group).

So I have decided to treat this blog like well, a prompt. Hopefully I’ll have similar results.

So today’s prompt... I mean topic... my beginning forays into self-marketing my self-published book.



I honestly got up one morning and decided I’m publishing today. I contacted my friend Alicia who knew it was going to happen one day and told her today was the day. She was like ‘you need to pre-sell the book’. Well I know me and I knew if I didn’t get it ‘out there’ by bed time it wasn’t going out. I decided on smashwords because it was supposed to be easiest. Someone lied. Took about half a dozen tries, but the job got done. Applied for premium, got the isbn, and “published”.

Now what?

Holy cow if I only knew!

This! is what, and joining about fifty new sites like goodreads and ARe as an author or just to promote (and be promoted to). I keep thinking – I need a marketing person! Then I reminded myself – you SELF-PUBLISHED! -- so you SELF-PROMOTE.

Well, then I decided to take matters into my own hands and plastered the town.... literally. Every book store, library, and gay bar within about 30 miles from my house got a flyer with the banner, the blurb, and where to buy it... all with the ‘it’s a local author’ pitch. Even hit a few coffee bars – even a self-marketing self-published author gets thirsty.... really thirsty... there are a lot of coffee bars with local news boards. So there I was high on caffine and sugar when I noticed that I have this blogger site that people supposedly come look at, and all these sites I’ve joined, and this old webpage which is really needing a facelift and I’m thinking.... THAT gets good billing on google. So I redo the themes on both sites to match as much as possible and figure out that the wordpress blog (that I rarely ever use) has a shopping cart.... I configure that and low and behold I have a wordpress/blogger mashup that has TWO blogs and a shopping cart.... so I get to thinking...

If I can get this marketing thing under control, I just might not need smashwords next time around because there’s a program for that!

Read, Write, Review
Lugh.