It’s the first
Wednesday of the month.
Today is my birthday, the last before I hit the cringe-worthy half-century mark, and here I sit, six weeks passed The Mistaken’s debut, and I’m feeling a little…oh, I don’t know… deflated, perhaps. I know, this is a marathon, but still, the momentum has eased and I’m working hard to regain it.
Honestly, I didn’t know what to expect following the launch
of my book, either from me, or from the book itself. What I’ve learned is something I’ve heard many
times but never truly took to heart:
An author needs to connect with readers.
That probably seems fairly obvious, but I’ve spent most of
my time connecting with other writers.
This was done out of necessity, you see, to learn all I needed to
someday get published. But that journey
went a bit faster than I anticipated, and I didn’t take the proper time to make
more connections, the kind I should’ve made in order to help sell my book. Writers make great friends and give wonderful support and advice, but, for the most part, they're not really buyers. Readers are buyers.
I could blame it on my genre, talk about how hard it is to
break into anything that’s not romance or YA, but that’s only partly true and, frankly, comes off as whiny. And I’m tired of
whining. It doesn't help a dream come true. So now it’s time to buckle down
and make those reader connections.
I’m not quite sure how to do that, but tomorrow, Writers4Writers,
the group led by Stephen
Tremp, Mary Pax, C.M. Brown, and Christine Raines, will be lending me a hand and
featuring me and The Mistaken
on its debut campaign. Participants will
join in and help bring awareness to my novel and hopefully increase sales, as
well as drive new traffic to my blog, increase my following, and create a
verbal and viral buzz.
Besides that, and in addition to those my publisher has
arranged, I’m lining up my own regiment of book reviewers to read, rate, and
review The Mistaken on their blogs, Goodreads, Amazon, and the myriad of other reader resources, because...
I’ve been learning all about Amazon algorithms and what it takes for a book to make an Amazon list and how beneficial that is to future sales. It’s quite a science, it seems, but what it comes down to is…I need readers, those willing to shell out $3.99 for the ebook, who will rate and hopefully review on it Amazon.
Reviews and ratings are the fuel that drives sales, so authors, like me, crave them.
I’ve been learning all about Amazon algorithms and what it takes for a book to make an Amazon list and how beneficial that is to future sales. It’s quite a science, it seems, but what it comes down to is…I need readers, those willing to shell out $3.99 for the ebook, who will rate and hopefully review on it Amazon.
So let my naïveté be a lesson to all you pre-published
writers out there. While difficult, the hardest part is
not writing the book, or landing an agent, or signing a book deal. It’s finding those readers who will hopefully
be interested in your book. So while connecting
with other writers is beneficial and extremely gratifying, connecting with your
potential reader before you even launch is downright critical.
Do any of you have
words of advice or wisdom for this anxious author?
I sure could use it!
If you’re interested
in the Writere4Writers
promotion tomorrow,
please feel fee to
sign up using the Linky Tool.
I could use that,
too!!
