MAKE SURE YOUR BOOK IS SEEN! Get In Readers’ Faces

I often drive twelve miles from my home to Stamford, a very pleasant Lincolnshire village.

The drive takes me through archetypal English countryside, and the journey passes really quickly. I never regard it as a chore, and quite often I arrive in Stamford not being able to remember passing certain landmarks. This is not because I’m losing it, more that the journey is so easy that my creative imagination often runs riot and I’ve sometimes plotted a short story during the thirty minute journey.

But last Tuesday the journey was different. My attention was demanded by a host of people, animals and vehicles. All clad in high visibility markings. They all meant to be seen, and they were seen.

They also made an impression. I can recall every single one of them. Horses, workmen, policemen, cyclists, all dressed in eye-catching day-glo jackets. All vying for my attention. I can even tell you exactly where I came across each one, and how I reacted.

This  doesn’t form the basis of a new novel, but it did show me that our books should probably be demanding more attention than they are.

Your book should be highly visible. It should be forcing people to consider buying it. Not really by sporting a jazzy new jacket. It’s no doubt got an enticing front cover already. I hope so because readers do often judge a book by its cover. No, it should be highly visible by virtue of it popping up and shouting “Buy Me!” everywhere that readers browse.

Now I don’t spend my waking hours stalking readers to see where they go to search for books. But I do spend a lot of my waking hours enticing them into INDIETRIBE. And there are lots of them. And their numbers are growing daily.

I know how long they spend on INDIETRIBE, how many and which pages they browse during their visits, how many click throughs they make to Amazon, and what books they buy as a result.

I know that they love our Showcase, they read our reviews, they crowd into our Indie Book Store and they show a great interest in our weekly Top 10. And the funny thing is, most books that appear in our Top 10 appear nearly everywhere else too.

And that’s not a coincidence.

Gary Player, the golfing legend, was once accused of being lucky. He responded by saying the funny thing was that the more he practiced, the luckier he got.

And it’s the same with your books too. You actually make your own luck.

The more places within INDIETRIBE that they can be seen, the more readers will browse them, the more they will click- through to Amazon and the more they will buy.

And the whole thing becomes self generating. The more click-throughs and sales, the greater chance they will appear in the weekly Top 10. Then, when they’re in the Top 10, visitors will click-through to Amazon to see what’s so special about the books.  And hopefully buy them.

And so it goes – round and round and round. That’s how effective marketing works.

But you’ve got to be in it to win it! And it’s not all free. Nothing worth having is. I know most Indie authors are not awash with funds. But I also know, after all the blood, sweat and tears of writing it, they want to give their book the best chance they can.

The fact is you can be seen everywhere on INDIETRIBE for a fairly modest fee per book.

If you put your book in our Indie Book Store, get it  Showcased, create a News Flash about it, send off a line of it to our Best One-liners, leave messages in our Chat Room, get your book reviewed, get interviewed on INDIETRIBE, and get your book guested, in other words, treat your book to everything going, it would stand you at £85, approximately $130 U.S. Dollars.

If that would break your bank, you can always schedule each part of the whole and market your book bit by bit.

Either way, you should seriously consider bombarding potential readers with your book.

Just like my journey to Stamford, make sure your book is highly visible and popping up at every turn.

BE SEEN, not simply passed by.