The dos and don'ts of Promotion - blog post

[A.L.]

Ok, I found this on googleplus. I am not sure I entirely agree as, certainly on GR, mentioning one's book at every available opportunity is likely to make one rather unpopular. What are your thoughts?

http://voices.yahoo.com/article/98967...

[Michael]

As ever, there's a time and a place for everything.

Talking in absolutes is always a bit daft.

[Jim]

Yes I'm with Michael here.
As you increase the dosage of Promotion it seems to pass very briefly from being 'mildly interesting' through to irritating, through to spam in no time at all

[Patti (baconater)]

Oh god yes.

[A.L.]

Yes, there is a bit of good advice but I think promoting on and on and on tends to be bad. Especially as some times it is not appropriate. Example my book is a dark fantasy/fantasy romance with erotica elements now I doubt very much should I happen to bump into a friend of mine who frequents the local church and mention my book and ask her to tell her mates that will be advantageous ;)

[David]

I don't think the article suggests putting a promo in every post you make on, say, Goodreads. I think he's simply saying when you meet someone (that means hand-shake chat actual human contact) you might want to mention you've written a book. And putting a link to your author page on Amazon in your e-mail signature isn't really spamming unless you are actually mass-mailing folks, which is spamming with or without the links. I think the point is just you can't be shy if you want people to find your books.

[A.L.]

Yes, could be. Lol I managed to sell a book to my doctor, he hadn't seen me before and asked what I did so I told him my main job and the writing and he bought one:)

[Kate]

The fact is, most writers need to realise readers do not owe them a living. I spent the morning re-visiting an article I wrote in 2005 about the economics of eBooks for my Goodreads blog. The truth is, there may be more eBook readers than there were in 2005, but nothing has changed.

Intellectually speaking, it's been a wild, wild weekend so far. http://www.goodreads.com/author_blog_...

[Patti (baconater)]

Ha! That spam piece is great, Kate!

[Kate]

Thanks Patti. The other day I got an email from a lawyer writter in German, sent from a French email informing me that I owe on an invoice with a company in the US I have never purchased anything from. When I googled this so-called "lawyer" I got links to Nigerian email scams. Spam keeps getting more and more entertaining if and when we actually look at it.

[Patti (baconater)]

I love this site.

http://www.419eater.com/

Just be prepared to lose a day in there if you click the link.

[Kate]

Patti (Number 69) wrote: "I love this site.

http://www.419eater.com/

That's amazing Patti! Thanks for the link.

[Patti (baconater)]

And suddenly the group goes silent...

Lol!

[Kate]

Patti (Number 69) wrote: "And suddenly the group goes silent...

Lol!"

I am losing a day on it.

[Patti (baconater)]

Oops

[Jim]

Kate wrote: "The fact is, most writers need to realise readers do not owe them a living. I spent the morning re-visiting an article I wrote in 2005 about the economics of eBooks for my Goodreads blog. The truth..."

Hi Kate, as someone who has also had to feed the family from the results of writing, I agree entirely with you. Even yesterday I was pondering collecting the blogs I've written, doing a little light editing and packing them off at some point into a sub-£1 ebook :-)

[Kath]

I'd buy it if you did! :-)

[A.L.]

Not a bad idea.

I am wondering if I have any short stories I can use. I do but only about 5. The rest is all fanfic or, well terrible;)

I do have some poetry, although the market for poetry is not great.

[Patti (baconater)]

I'd buy Jim's blog book too. Love his blogs.

[Jim]

Well I've saved the posts into a word document, a shade over 25,000 words. That should make a year's worth a sensible length.
At some point someone will have to explain to a total idiot how you convert a word document into a Kindle file :-(

[Patti (baconater)]

Darren should be able to help you. Or several others.

Just start an agony aunt thread when you're ready.

[A.L.]

Wow that is great.

Has anyone done the yahoo thingy where you can post up stories, non fiction stuff and blog posts and get paid per click. Not sure what it is called.

[A.L.]

http://selfpublishingadventure.com/co...

That might help.

[Jim]

I'll check with them when I'm ready.
How may words would be reasonable for the £1 charge?

[A.L.]

Oh I have seen 5 pages for that lol. I wouldnt buy it I would say for 25 k that is fine. Maybe even a little more.

I wouldn't pay 2.99 unless it was something I really wanted for that word count but I would pay more than £1

[David]

Jim, You just upload your word document into KDP. The most important thing is to make certain that the formatting is correct first.

[A.L.]

They recommend saving it as webpaged filtered. You get to preview it before it goes live.

[Jim]

Thanks for the tips