Marketing Blues
Marketing doesn't work unless you are either independently wealthy or already have a large reader base.
I've been reading more and more articles about marketing your Kindle book. The ones that are backed up by solid marketing data are also the authors who ALREADY have thousands of sales. In other words, marketing for them is about increasing their audience or more effectively selling to an existing one.
For people who start from an audience of a handful of friends? There are no effective marketing strategies. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Fuck all.
Yes, you can "buy" a marketing campaign, but there are authors who spend up to $60,000 a year to rise above the chaff to get noticed. Sixty THOUSAND DOLLARS. That's a "six" with FOUR zeroes after it. And that's just to rise above the chaff.
You look at Hugh Howey, who wrote "Wool" and went on to a huge career in writing fiction. He basically got lucky. He was discovered without any real marketing on his part and suddenly he got a reader base that spiraled upward (which goes to show that EVERYTHING you publish better sparkle, because you don't know when it's gonna fall into the hands of a completely random blogger with an audience).
And Andy Weir, who did "The Martian"? NO one can explain how his book exploded in popularity. It was an oddball story posted in segments in an out-of-the-way blog. He posted it on Amazon so he could distribute it more easily. It was basically abandon-ware. He did nothing to market it. Zero. Zip. Nada. Nothing. It just kind of randomly exploded on Amazon.
Time and again I see that the largest discoveries of the indie author world are made with the author doing little to absolutely no marketing whatsoever. The only thing that they share is a high quality to their writing, so when the magical luck fairy comes for them, they actually have books worth reading.
There's nothing I can do short of robbing a bank to pay for tens of thousands of dollars of marketing to increase the visibility of Love/Kroft. I wish I could come to another conclusion. So, if it's a matter of writing the best fucking stories I can and hoping for lady luck to give me a French kiss? Then I'll write the best fucking stories I can and live on that hope.
I've been reading more and more articles about marketing your Kindle book. The ones that are backed up by solid marketing data are also the authors who ALREADY have thousands of sales. In other words, marketing for them is about increasing their audience or more effectively selling to an existing one.
For people who start from an audience of a handful of friends? There are no effective marketing strategies. None. Zero. Zip. Nada. Fuck all.
Yes, you can "buy" a marketing campaign, but there are authors who spend up to $60,000 a year to rise above the chaff to get noticed. Sixty THOUSAND DOLLARS. That's a "six" with FOUR zeroes after it. And that's just to rise above the chaff.
You look at Hugh Howey, who wrote "Wool" and went on to a huge career in writing fiction. He basically got lucky. He was discovered without any real marketing on his part and suddenly he got a reader base that spiraled upward (which goes to show that EVERYTHING you publish better sparkle, because you don't know when it's gonna fall into the hands of a completely random blogger with an audience).
And Andy Weir, who did "The Martian"? NO one can explain how his book exploded in popularity. It was an oddball story posted in segments in an out-of-the-way blog. He posted it on Amazon so he could distribute it more easily. It was basically abandon-ware. He did nothing to market it. Zero. Zip. Nada. Nothing. It just kind of randomly exploded on Amazon.
Time and again I see that the largest discoveries of the indie author world are made with the author doing little to absolutely no marketing whatsoever. The only thing that they share is a high quality to their writing, so when the magical luck fairy comes for them, they actually have books worth reading.
There's nothing I can do short of robbing a bank to pay for tens of thousands of dollars of marketing to increase the visibility of Love/Kroft. I wish I could come to another conclusion. So, if it's a matter of writing the best fucking stories I can and hoping for lady luck to give me a French kiss? Then I'll write the best fucking stories I can and live on that hope.
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