Here's all I do to promote my writing: Blog, Twitter, a Facebook fan page (which I never use...), the free ad at Critters Writers Workshop, and working on having a lot of work available for convenient purchase.
Not particularly shameless, but it also doesn't distract me from what I'm supposed to be doing. Once I get these books up, I might do a little bit more self-promotion (guest posts, review copies, etc.). Just for the experiment.
I'm sure at least one eBook trailer will be spawned. It'll be a video of me talking on Skype with a suspiciously enthusiastic person who looks like me wearing a mask, to wit:
"So How Do You Get Your Ideas, David!?!"
"From the tears of Angels."
That's a good synopsis of the book, I guess. And a sweet new title and/or theme song!
From the tears of Angels/I left you yesterday...
I knew you wanted to talk/But I had nothin' to say.
If only you'd get better, then I'd be happy to stay...
From the tears of Angels/I don't want to see you cry.
Eh.
(Bonus points to the first person to notice the new thing I've managed to figure out how to do with the blog design!)
 |
| Link |
Speaking of self-promotion, cover art is pretty important. My cover art is serviceable, but I'd really like to take it up a notch at some point. Trawling the internet I find a lot of great artists and I'm pretty sure there'll be no problem finding an artist who's willing to make an awesome cover. For money!
Of course, that'll be when this Experiment enters Phase II: Making Money.
----
250 words? Yes
Book "Lived Too Long To Die"
- - - -
Reading - ?
*098
Book ads amongst the widgets!?!
ReplyDeleteCover art is going to be more and more important for this e-book stuff, I think, because the cover really sells the book to me personally, and I believe that everyone is just like me, only less attractive. That's one of the challenges of going solo, I guess: you've got to find (and possibly pay) the artist.
Photos are pretty convenient, and yours look a lot better than some I've seen, but, well, the other day... I discovered there's photography, and then great photography. I was hanging out with some photo' buds and the stuff they do with Photoshop literally blows my mind. And I thought I actually knew how to use Photoshop!
But yeah if I do an e-book what I'd really want is someone who could draw really awesome stuff, like, actual printed art; and how do you find those people? My guess is deviantArt, but I haven't actually attempted to verify that hypothesis.
Anyway, that's the bummer part of it all. Because how much are those guys and gals going to want for their work? Gosh darn. I need another hobby viz.: painting.
Hi David,
ReplyDeleteSince I jumped into this New World of Publishing just last week, I've been following different indie authors, trying to get a feel to what they're doing.
I've come pretty much to the conclusion that self-promotion isn't that important. At least not as important as WRITING THE NEXT THING.
For example: Of all the readers I know, I'm the only one who searches out authors' websites. The readers I know browse through the shelves, pick up books they think might be interesting, read a few pages, then buy the ones they think will work for them.
Blogging, Facebook, Twitter, etc -- they have no idea their the writers they read are doing that.
The more stuff you have on the shelves, the more people will find you, read you, read your back list, and pass your name onto their friends.
That's how it works.
Ben: Yeah, that's my feeling, too. I can take a picture and it'll look good, but that's only because I'm living amongst actual picturesqueness. It's hard to point the camera somewhere here and not get a good picture, and my camera is perpetually set to the "take 5 pictures at once" option so I can ensure at least one will not be blurry.
ReplyDeleteWhen I really get serious with cover art (and that is an obsession of mine) I'll start at $50 and ramp it up in accordance with my success to an absolute ceiling of $2000.
I can make cover art by myself, sure. But other people can make it so much better, so much quicker.
Jeff: That's so true. It's a numbers game, and since I love the process of building those numbers a lot more than the process of tricking people into looking at my previous numbers...it works out for everybody.
ReplyDeleteI'm obviously at the entry level of this New World, but I'm going to roll out and see what happens. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.