C.D. Loza's Blog: Writing Post-its

Awareness

The hardest part, I find, about self-publishing is marketing. For one, I'm not the PR kind of person. I am content facing my computer in solitude without having to interact with anyone on a face-to-face basis. I don't have any marketing experience and I know I am no expert when it comes to selling stuff. In fact I have absolutely zero experience when it comes to that. I haven't tried eBay or any other auction or buy-and-sell stuff. It's just not my cup of tea.

A week after I published my book, on September 17, I had an idea to create a Facebook page to raise awareness that my book exists. My idea was this: to post quotes from the book with a picture serving as a background.

I have thousands of pictures from the travels I've had through the years--from Europe to Asia to North America (where I lived for more than three years)--I've accumulated so many that it's just a matter of sifting through the pictures that I could use for my Facebook page.

So for the nth time, I reread my book and lifted some lines and used those texts in my Facebook page.

The next step I did was to promote my page for at least a week (Sept 17-24) and see how it goes.

Today, September 22 (EST), I've already had 2,200++ likes on my Facebook page. Two more days before my awareness campaign ends and I think the campaign has surpassed the expectation I've set (My goal was to have 1,000 likes within a week.)

I don't know how everything will turn out. But letting people be aware that my book exists is a step in the right direction. I believe that self-published or independent authors have with them the capacity to succeed. This is, after all, the 21st century, where technology is available wherever we are and wherever we go.

Why I Write

I started a blog more than a decade ago, when I was still in the university struggling to finish a degree in engineering while taking up a minor in philosophy. Back then, I wrote for a specific audience--mainly my college friends. I didn't write regularly; I wrote when I wanted to. That blog is long dead now. (I can't even remember the web address anymore.)

Since then, I've had a few more blogs, a few in Tabulas.co and a couple in Blogger.com. Now (2013), I have some active blogs at Wordpress.com and Blogger.com. The audience for those blogs are small; I can count in my fingers how many people read it, because I don't give away the link to just about anyone, nor do I make them "searchable" in the Internet. I write on those blogs because I want to write what's on my mind--realizations or random thoughts that I have during the day or at any point in my life. They're just as ordinary as any other blogs online.

I've tried not to write, but I always keep coming back to writing. I may not write for a couple of months or even a year, but it's not something I will retire from.

Friends who know me, and even acquaintances who have dealt closely with me, know that I don't talk much. Between me and a wall, there's a higher probability that the wall would talk first. But my mind is a different thing: I have a very loud mind.

I have ideas for stories or even short anecdotes everyday. Sometimes, something that didn't make sense years before would finally make sense today. Other times, I'd be watching a movie or reading a book or even crossing a street and an idea would come to me for a story.

I write because I need to get these things out of my head. The "Notes" app on my phones are filled with short paragraphs or one-liners of ideas. It doesn't matter whether I get a million audience or one; I write because it is as essential to me as breathing. I simply, simply could not live without it.