Chapter 13 - Into the abyss
There are those for whom self-promotion is as natural as breathing. If you are one of those people who post endless self-photos on Facebook and Instagram, then you fall into this category. If you are one of those people and you happen to be an author, then you are already one significant step ahead of most of the competition, because for lots of us, the whole concept of promoting ourselves gives us nightmares, cold sweats and makes us slightly nauseous all in one go. Unfortunately, for any writer who aspires to be able to do just that day in, day out, this is a painful yet necessary step out of one’s comfort zone, towards the dream. (Other options considered include marrying a superbly wealthy man (that ship has sailed), robbing a bank, and winning the lottery; all rejected as the self-promotion option, although challenging, seemed like the more realistic of the four).
Thus, once the (relatively) easy writing, editing, formatting and uploading part was done, the hard work had to start. I read a statistic the other day that said 170,000 books are published each year in the UK alone, and as an author you have to try to make your book stand out from this exceptionally large crowd. Most self-published authors don’t sell copies to many more people than their immediate family and friends and a lot of this is down to the inordinate amount of work required to generate some momentum behind book sales. Regardless of how good the book is, this doesn’t happen overnight and requires some serious dedication to the cause.
Furthermore, as more and more indie authors seek out and use the methods of other successful authors, these ideas become harder and harder to utilise. For example, Amanda Hocking (an extremely successful, young, self-published author) found that with her books, book bloggers picked them up and started to spread the word for her, apparently without very much effort on her part at all. Unfortunately, every indie author out there now seeks reviews from book bloggers and as a result, they have formal submission processes, are inundated with book review requests, and funnily enough fulfil a similar role to the one agents do in the traditional publishing world.
Alongside writing to bloggers to request reviews, successful authors are generally on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Pinterest, Google+, they write blogs, attend events, offer interviews, and they do this ALL THE TIME. There are so many opportunities, especially through the internet, but the problem is it’s a full time job finding and exploiting them and authors are generally filled with more passion about the prospect of writing books and less passion about promoting them. The good thing is that once you’ve generated enough of a following, you get to start having conversations about the things you are passionate about - the world and characters you’ve created. However, sadly, for a large number of authors, they simply never gain sufficient momentum to ever reach this stage; shameless self-promotion is, for many, just too challenging a process.
Thus, once the (relatively) easy writing, editing, formatting and uploading part was done, the hard work had to start. I read a statistic the other day that said 170,000 books are published each year in the UK alone, and as an author you have to try to make your book stand out from this exceptionally large crowd. Most self-published authors don’t sell copies to many more people than their immediate family and friends and a lot of this is down to the inordinate amount of work required to generate some momentum behind book sales. Regardless of how good the book is, this doesn’t happen overnight and requires some serious dedication to the cause.
Furthermore, as more and more indie authors seek out and use the methods of other successful authors, these ideas become harder and harder to utilise. For example, Amanda Hocking (an extremely successful, young, self-published author) found that with her books, book bloggers picked them up and started to spread the word for her, apparently without very much effort on her part at all. Unfortunately, every indie author out there now seeks reviews from book bloggers and as a result, they have formal submission processes, are inundated with book review requests, and funnily enough fulfil a similar role to the one agents do in the traditional publishing world.
Alongside writing to bloggers to request reviews, successful authors are generally on Twitter, Facebook, Goodreads, Pinterest, Google+, they write blogs, attend events, offer interviews, and they do this ALL THE TIME. There are so many opportunities, especially through the internet, but the problem is it’s a full time job finding and exploiting them and authors are generally filled with more passion about the prospect of writing books and less passion about promoting them. The good thing is that once you’ve generated enough of a following, you get to start having conversations about the things you are passionate about - the world and characters you’ve created. However, sadly, for a large number of authors, they simply never gain sufficient momentum to ever reach this stage; shameless self-promotion is, for many, just too challenging a process.
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