It’s that time again – time for me to answer your questions. (If you have any, be they about process, WiPs, published books, whatever, let me know in the comments and I’ll turn you… er, it… into a blog post.)
This week’s blog post is brought to you by Skye Hegyes who asks:
What kind of marketing do you do outside your blog? What has worked? What hasn’t?
Um. Yeah.
As I believe I mentioned last time, I suck at marketing. I’m just not good at selling anything, let alone myself.
So, anyhow…
Other than the blog, there is some word of mouth – hoping that people who read and liked my books will recommend them to others.
And my much-neglected author page on Face Book.
And Face Book in general, which actually tends to be more of a time-sucking hindrance than a help it seems. Well, no, I can’t say that. I’ve met some wonderful (and wonderfully supportive) authors there.)
And speaking of wonderful (and wonderfully supportive) authors, there are also the two blog hops that I participate in on the weekends: Rainbow Snippets and Snippet Sunday. (I need to do better at promoting one of the books that’s out instead of my current WiPs or editing projects, but I do know that I can directly attribute at least one sale to the Rainbow Snippets group.)
And once in a while I participate in self-promo days in various Face Book groups.
For the next book that I release (it’s supposed to be Onyx Sun, but we’ll see) I’m going to try a release party on Face Book. I’ve never done one before so it’s going to be totally new territory and probably full of mistakes – which just makes it a learning experience so I can do better next time, right? Right!
As for what hasn’t worked, the thing that comes to mind most is a couple events that I participated in. (They were through Face Book, but were across multiple blogs and multiple days.) They were time-consuming (more so for the hostess, most likely) and didn’t seem to create any kind of interest in my books. I think the events themselves were good but the audience was wrong for what I write.
So, one of these days, I’m going to organize and host an event tailored more to the stuff I write and see how that goes. Maybe I’ll tailor it around the release of Onyx Sun, or maybe the release of the next Elven Bard novel.
That experiment is, of course, not happening until sometime next year at the earliest.
So, yeah. I don’t do nearly enough promotion (and different types of promotion) to reasonably answer that question.
But I do have plans!
I know I have plans – I can hear the gods laughing.
(By the way, “Ask the Author” posts will be on hold until December, as next month will be devoted to NaNoWriMo insanity.)
Novel Notes 