Never hurts to be compared to Stephen King
Stumbled across this on the internet.
Cool.
http://musingsofanindiewriter.blogspot.com/2011/09/pulling-em-in.html
Pulling ‘Em In
The indie author’s severest challenge remains what it’s always been: persuading readers to give him a try. Few of us, no matter our skills as storytellers, approach that task with anything but trepidation.
There are a few well-known techniques, and each of them works now and then: giving away bits of your work as “loss leaders;” obtaining recommendations from better-known writers; leaving your books around where others might notice them; using blogs and Twitter as vehicles for promotion; and so on. The efficacy of these approaches varies from writer to writer, and from book to book, and from season to season.
Recently, while looking for some indie SF to read, I stumbled over young-adult writer Jalex Hansen. Miss Hansen displays a charming quirkiness in her brief SmashWords bio:
Jalex Hansen was conceived during an interplanetary war when her mother, a high ranking officer, captured and interrogated her father, a triple agent for the opposing side. She is fluent in seven ancient fighting styles and has cured cancer on her home planet. Jalex has mastered time travel and occasionally watches through your window at night for data in her human sleep study. Sometimes she writes.
The first of her offerings, Lux 1.1: Seeds, is free to all comers, so I downloaded it and read it. Though it has a few low-level problems, it’s an impressive start to herLux saga: impressive enough to impel me to purchase the next two segments at $0.99 US apiece.
Note the sequence:
An interesting “biography;”
A free introductory segment;
Each of the subsequent segments, issued at three-week intervals, at an extremely modest price.
Friends, as a reader-seduction technique, this one has considerable appeal.
Just in case you’re unaware of it, the foremost storyteller of our time, the great Stephen King, issued The Green Mile, his “serial thriller” and one of his very best novels, in just about exactly the same fashion. It was a tremendous hit, and generated considerable excitement among readers precisely because of the method of issuance.
Now you might say to yourself, “Okay, it worked for Stephen King, but I’m not Stephen King.” And unless King himself is one of the readers of this modest little blog, you would be indisputably correct, at least as regards technical matters of identity. But if you’re struggling for recognition in a sea of independent writers, this is an approach worthy of consideration.
Of course, your book must be susceptible to serialization. Not all novel-length works can be segmented thus; I don’t think mine can, with the possible exception of Which Art In Hope. But if yours can, and if you’re willing to take a modest chance on your ability to hold a reader’s interest through three or five or seventeen time-sequenced segments of your saga, the idea is worth some thought.
If serialization isn’t for you, then perhaps a loss-leader strategy would serve as a near equivalent: Pick something to give away — hopefully, one of your stronger stories — and include an “Other books by” page at the front or back. If Miss Hansen’s experience is any guide — her Lux series stands among the top-rated SF offerings for the Kindle on Amazon — the results might please you greatly.
Posted by Francis W. Porretto at 5:48 AM
