Results from using "Easy, Sleazy Book Marketing Tips" for a month or so.
1) Facebook Fans: added 75 fans (Now 1961 up from 1886)
2) Twitter Followers: added 270 followers (Now 444 up from 170 from 270)
Still not sure if I get Twitter or it's useful for fiction writers in my situation, but plowing ahead anyway.
Also, used an online tool called friend or follow to dump people I was following who didn't follow me back. My opinion: It looks better to have even number of following and followers.
3) Linked In: added 90 connections (now 890 up from 800)
4) Goodreads, I've just been clicking away and added 92 friends (142 friends up from 50)
What does this all mean? Not sure -- my numbers still aren't big enough to impress a publisher or agent. If I keep at it for a year. Maybe. How much time am I wasting? A lot. Probably an hour or two a day.
Has all this boosted my all-important traffic to my blog? No. Seems only sure way to increase traffic is to write more good blogs. Which also takes time. Time that should be spent FINISHING MY DAMN BOOK.
Has it increased sales of my little ebook? No.
Can I offer any useful advice?
What are you kidding?
1) Facebook Fans: added 75 fans (Now 1961 up from 1886)
2) Twitter Followers: added 270 followers (Now 444 up from 170 from 270)
Still not sure if I get Twitter or it's useful for fiction writers in my situation, but plowing ahead anyway.
Also, used an online tool called friend or follow to dump people I was following who didn't follow me back. My opinion: It looks better to have even number of following and followers.
3) Linked In: added 90 connections (now 890 up from 800)
4) Goodreads, I've just been clicking away and added 92 friends (142 friends up from 50)
What does this all mean? Not sure -- my numbers still aren't big enough to impress a publisher or agent. If I keep at it for a year. Maybe. How much time am I wasting? A lot. Probably an hour or two a day.
Has all this boosted my all-important traffic to my blog? No. Seems only sure way to increase traffic is to write more good blogs. Which also takes time. Time that should be spent FINISHING MY DAMN BOOK.
Has it increased sales of my little ebook? No.
Can I offer any useful advice?
What are you kidding?
2 comments:
Randy,
I feel your pain. I'm in the same position. I had a book come out last month. Got good publicity on NPR and CNN. The book has been well-reviewed. But of the 200,000 book published each year in the US, just 5% sell more than 5,000 copies. And translating publicity or clicks into sales is an art form in which I'm a novice. I'm trying to build an online presence that starts with new book-related content every day, but book marketing is canabalizing many many hours. It seems to me that it's a multi-year effort both to find people who create good posts/blogs/tweets/etc and to begin to interact with them in a meaningful way. And, at the end of it, the hope is not just book sales, but to be connected to a vibrant community that enriches us as we try to enrich it. That's the conclusion I've just come to as I was writing this!
david mcdannald
I'm not feeling very altruistic. Seldom do. Wondered last night what PETA's take is on mousetraps. Into ePub just less than two years. Just inching past their "typical" definition. Smashwords numbers okay. Amazon in tank. But got three royalty payments from Amazon this week and one from Smashwords. Guess I just don't understand it. Happens every time I think about throwing in that towel.
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