Doing Nothing Gets You Nothing
So, I did a ton of marketing for Trouble in February, mainly in the beginning and middle. I saw a wonderful spike in downloads, with long term effects of this marketing still being seen.
Books in the series are being slowly purchased, a few reviews have come in, I couldn’t be happier with the results.
Except they tapered off when I stopped marketing. It was half-test, half-running out of places to market. Trouble has slumped in downloads considerably. I’m not back to where it was before, but I’m pretty close.
The message really is: if you do nothing, you will get nothing.
On the Internet everyone assumes that if you haven’t updated, that means you’ve quit or just fallen off the face of the earth. You aren’t doing anything for whatever it was that you were talking about before. Readership drops, interest drops, and when you come back out of hiding you have to start all over again.
From the bottom.
So, time to update all the things. I have a list I’d like to go through over the next two weeks. It is as follows:
1 – New author pic : barring if this cold develops past more than a sniffle. I don’t photograph well while healthy, let alone sick.
2 – Update author bio: maybe write something that doesn’t sound like I’m beating my head on a proverbial wall. Then update all the sites.
3 – Create a new author interview for Goodreads and Smashwords.
4 – Update book page on WordPress. Hopefully to include an in-page link to jump to the new series. Need to figure out what it’s called first, so I can look up the coding for it.
5 – Create book pages on GoodReads for Highest Lord and Five Years Dead, if they’ll allow me to without the cover pages.
6 – Finish edits on Highest Lord, maybe cover that sucker and get its hard copy formatted.
7 – Continue trying to market Trouble.
It might seem like a lot, but in reality it’s not much. Maybe a little much for someone who works full time, yes. But I’m not going to get anywhere by sitting on my hands and sniffling about how I don’t have enough time to do what I want to do.
It is important to me, I will make the time.
Being self-motivated as an indie author is very important. Being able to talk about yourself and your books with confidence is an absolute boon. That’s not to say that you can’t sell books as an introvert, just that it’s easier to do when you talk about yourself.
All the authors I’ve met in person tend to be humble. I haven’t met any big name authors I should add… but they don’t talk about their books constantly, they aren’t loud and brash about it. They definitely don’t have that speel at their back of their minds constantly like I’ve seen so many writers in movies and shows.
They struggle when asked, “what’s your book about?” Unless they have something rather generic like vampires.
Myself, I stumble anytime I’m asked.
“What’s your book about?”
“Uh… it’s a series?”
“What kind of a series?”
“Fantasy… er… with… Uh…”
“You don’t know what your own book is about?”
“Shut up. You can’t just ask what it’s about, there’s an entire world and history behind it and you can’t just sum it up in a sentence and I know you aren’t interested in the speel.”
Of course, get a couple drinks into me and ask about it, I’ll ramble for hours on end.
In order to sell, you need to talk about it. Even if your book is free and you’re giving it away, you need to talk about it. Doing nothing will get you nothing.
And sure, sometimes doing all the things you can think of gets you nothing too, but at least you can tell people in the real world that you are self-motivated and a self-starter.
