Monday 2 May 2011

Hello! I've Published Books, Too, You Know!

So I Kindled by earliest title Goalden Girl, but I'm faced with the age old problem.

Marketing! It always boils down to the marketing! If you don't market it, you won't sell it.

Yeah, yeah, I know; and don't I just love it?

No. In fact, I hate it. I always have and I always will! I've been trying to work out why, and I've come to three conclusions:

1. Mucking around on forums, blogs and Facebook means I'm not writing my books. As I write this I could be writing half a page of Big Brother, but I'm not!
2. I'm rubbish at it. I haven't got the nerve to go a step further begging for radio interviews, for instance.
3. A lot of marketing costs time and money and I have neither. I've got a full time job to hold down and when I'm not doing that I want to write.

Goalden Girl has been live on Kindle since April 17th 2011 and I've sold four copies on the UK site (price £0.92) because I've Twittered and told people and UK customers have picked up on it, but I've sold nothing in the US ($1.52) or Germany (Euro 0,99) as yet, so I have to figure out a way of promoting my books overseas. With the Kindle edition of Goalden Girl being a lot less in price than the print edition, you'd think that would help...yeah, right! And what about trying to promote the print copies of my titles listed in countries like Denmark and the Czech Republic? You'd think in this electronic world that would be easy, but it isn't! There's only so much you can do on Twitter or Facebook, if no one's interested, they're not interested, end of!

As someone wisely told me recently, step out of your comfort zone, girl, get actively promoting your books. He's right, I'm not doing nearly enough, although with each new book I've produced I've been getting bolder. My new promotional bookmarks are on their way and people have asked for some to distribute them on my behalf. With Epiworld I approached some organisations who support epilepsy and two were kind enough to publish snippets of news about the book, but the newspapers weren't interested. It's that level of rejection which puts me right off! Still, I'm going to develop a media kit for Big Brother, something I've never done before (and the guidelines look like hard work, but that's been my problem all along - marketing is too much like hard work!) I'm also trying to promote my Facebook page more, and I've received three new likes this week.

I'm even going to add The Scribbler blog to my Author Central page on Amazon! Big wow!

I'm doing my best, but whatever I do I always feel it isn't enough. My only comfort is I'm not the only one with this problem! Even traditionally published authors have it, so all I can do is keep on plugging away until the message gets through that hello, I've published books, too, you know!

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