It’s a Jungle Out There!

Well, this is exciting.

I haven’t been down this track before, so I’m learning as I’m going, but so far so good.

A relative has very generously provided funds for me to buy paid promotions on Twitter, and now ads are going out for my novel Terror in the Ranks.

There are any number of advisory blogs to be found on the internet when it comes to writing. Blogs on what it takes to be a writer, blogs on how to write, blogs on what to write, blogs on how to be a better writer, blogs on how to publish, you name it. Taking it all in is like walking to the shore with a whisky tumbler and trying to drink the ocean. Of course, the difference between knowledge and wisdom is knowledge is what you get from reading, wisdom is understanding what to read.

A lot of advice reckons social media is a waste of time for promoting a book. Instead, promoting the brand – the author – is far more important and valuable, so social media should be about connecting to subjects the book is about. To my mind, that might be effective to a point, but unless the author has a team of people, it’s an easy way to be spread too thin, especially if the author writes across genres and target audiences.

So … I’m experimenting. We shall see what this campaign does. My Twitter followers are a diverse bunch, with some following my writing, others following my art. I retweet the campaign tweets for them, but I have less than three thousand, as opposed to the half-million the campaign is targeting. Wow!

Fingers crossed someone will like what they see and have a read. I already have a sequel in the works…