Promoting your book(s)

Here’s a post from Chuck Wendig that is, as usual, a bit long, but fun. He’s looking at it as Ways to Promote Your Self-Published Book, but obviously all these things apply to any book, whether published by you personally, a smaller press, or a Big Five publisher.

I enjoy the ratings, largely because of the snarkiness embedded in declaring that spamming BUY MY BOOK on social media is a 0/10 and even more so for the extreme snarkiness of rating thunderclapping as Who Cares, It’s Annoying.

I’d go farther for both author-spamming and thunderclapping: those are -10/10 techniques. That kind of thing will make me unfollow you SO FAST because IT IS BEYOND UNATTRACTIVE for an author to do this. For heaven’s sake, don’t you KNOW that the point of Twitter is kitten pictures? And yes, okay, links to interesting posts are good. But basically, kitten pictures, right? I mean, look at this:

See? I rest my case.

I’ve done blog book tours twice. I enjoyed doing them, but I’m not so sure they did a whole lot for sales. And they take a lot of time. So guests posts are something I’m happy to do, but preferably just now and then, not too many at once.

I should probably have an email list, though. Yeah, probably.

Giving away books: I’ve done quite a bit of this. I think it’s a good idea.

Hanging out on social media sites that actually appeal to you: well, sure. I mean, if they actually appeal to you, than it’s all good. Chuck doesn’t emphasize sticking to social media you actually like, but who could stick with it if they didn’t like it?

Anyway, you can click through if you’re interested. The comments are worth scanning, too.