A WRITER'S WIT
Everyone is out for himself. Not everyone will say so but everyone behaves so. And those that don't say so often behave in an even more grossly selfish way.”
― Adalbert Stifter, The Bachelors
Born October 23, 1805
More about Marketing Your Self-Published Book
CONFERENCES—At conferences you can pay to set up a table where you can sell your books. But the greatest opportunity you have is to network with others, including agents.
SOCIAL MEDIA—“I liken Facebook and Twitter,” Marian says, “to tasks like loading the dishwasher, grocery shopping, feeding the dog . . . something that, like it or not, needs to be done for one’s own good.” She set up an author page at FB to keep her personal life separate from her “book stuff.” “All the look at me, look at me posts get tiresome, but there’s no way around it if you want to connect with readers—or maintain contact with readers you’ve attracted in other ways.” She has reconnected with college classmates at FB and LinkedIn pages. “It’s always a last-minute thought before switching off my laptop for the day—gotta check Twitter.” Ah, guess I’ll just have to give in to what I believe is merely a socially accepted form of gossip!
CONVENTIONAL MEDIA—As a Houston resident, Marian Szczepanski wrote feature-oriented press releases for community papers and all were published! As a former journalist, she was able to undertake this task herself, but she says there are good templates available online for the rest of us. Any good writer should be able to write his or her own and send it out. She also contacted places where she had worked when a student at Notre Dame University, places that also gave her some attention. “I only rarely check Amazon numbers, but it’s always interesting to me how sales increase whenever I go somewhere.”
Marian Szczepanski closes her e-mail to me by saying: “Remember you have to do it your way. You know better than anyone else who your target reader is and what publications might be most interested in it, what the media climate is like in Lubbock.” Right. But it is good advice to us all. Locate your target audience and go after it!
NEXT TIME: NEW YORKER FICTION, 2014
NEXT WEEK: DIY Publishing: Working with the CreateSpace Staff!