August 2018: Build yourself a brand, part two

Spamming reviewers, book bloggers, and reading groups with offers of free copies of your book in exchange for an honest review wastes both their time and yours, and can seriously damage your reputation. So how, as a newly published author, might you better employ your time?

Offer free copies of your book on your website
Offer free or heavily discounted copies of your book with no strings attached (though be aware that a free offer is much more likely to be taken up). By now you should have plenty of sites on which to do this. Try to ensure that the text of your offer makes the genre and style of your book perfectly clear; you’ll have much happier readers if you do. Consider the text of the giveaway at the bottom of this post for example. What can you glean from it? It’s for a well-researched cozy mystery set in Victorian times (so not exactly steampunk), it’s slightly comic, and the detective is a bit of an underdog. Possibly not one for lovers of the police procedural, then.

Review books in your own genre
Read regularly within your genre to see how other writers tackle the same material that you do. Use Goodreads and LibraryThing to publish your reviews; they make you more discoverable as a person. Never be disparaging about a fellow author’s work; if you don’t like a book, don’t review it. Your readers would much rather see the books you actually enjoyed.

Start a special interest blog
Find a topic that relates to your book and dedicate a blog to it; it’s free at Blogger.com. Put in links (especially in the sidebar) to make yourself more discoverable, but first and foremost design your blog to be useful to people who might visit the site. Take a look at Murder Most Cozy to see what I mean: the search box on the right, the clickable list of authors below it (made by using tags on posts—what Blogger calls “labels”). Even blogs you discontinued writing long ago can bring in new hits if they’re interesting enough. The Victorians Unveiled, for example, still brings me about a thousand views per year. Hardly trending, I know, but still none too shoddy for what is essentially a dead blog!—and each of those views holds the potential for somebody new to discover me.

Invest in paid advertising
You might do worse than invest in some paid advertising, for example on Facebook, Amazon, or Google. Goodreads also offers ads and here you have access to a vast community of readers. You can target your book at a specific audience, and it’s great value for money.

Keep things fresh
Keep your author photo and bio, your author pages, links, and any other online publicity material fresh and up to date. Regularly update your book to reflect these changes. Most importantly: write your next book, then your next, then another—as counter-intuitive as this may sound. At a time when the market is drowning, brands stand out.

This month’s special offer is for Octopus: Octavius Guy & The Case of the Throttled Tragedienne (#2). When the leading actress dies in mysterious circumstances during a performance of The Duchess of Malfi, Gooseberry feels duty-bound to investigate. It is, after all, a great deal more exciting than the last case he was assigned to: the tracking down of a rich old lady’s errant cat! Offer ends on August 31st 2018, and no, there are no strings attached and no review is required. Phew! You’ll find links and details on my website.

“Historical fact is deftly combined with fiction that makes Octavius’s world a new form of old London that I am eager to visit again. Pour some tea or a wee dram, put your feet up, and enjoy cover to cover.”—Gladread LibraryThing Early Reviewer (5 stars)

Happy reading!
Michael

Find me on my website Michael Gallagher Writes
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and visit Murder Most Cozy for a round up of the coziest Crimes & Thrillers reviews