Hi folks, my name's J.E. Taylor or JET for short and thanks to eXcessica, I'm now a published author learning a crazy amount of information on how small publishers work thanks to Selena and company.
Before eXcessica, I didn't realize how much goes into publishing e-books. From editing to formatting to uploading to the diffrerent sites and even review coodination and advertising that happens after the fact. Some of this is carried by the publisher, but the marketing efforts land in the lap of the writer these days.
I did a fair amount of research into what works and what doesn't on the marketing front and given my books aren't on the shelves of the big distributors brick and mortar stores, signing stock wasn't an avenue that I had at my disposal, so the greatest incentive - face time with potential readers - was limited.
Of course the networking sites out there are a great tool, but beating someone over the head with your product is a total turn off - at least it is for me, so while I have a decent following, and I occassionally tout my wares, I am usually not talking shop - at least not in the buy me, buy me sort of way. Even my blog is a soft sell type endeavor, where I focus on other authors, finding out what makes them tick and driving traffic to their sites as well as mine.
So what DID I do to market my debut? I focused on a self produced blog tour with several stops throughout my release month and while it is fun, I'm not sure what the return on time investment was. Of course, the biggest incentive I gave also garnered the biggest blog turn out - a $50 Amazon gift certificate and that brought over a hundred active commentors, but again, I still don't know the turnout to sales ratio. I'll find out when I get my third quarter royalty statement and then adjust the plan for my November releases.
The one bit of advice I'd give novices out there is find a good support group. I have been blessed with a support group of great writers here at eXcessica as well as over on the Backspace forum and their experiences on both the writing and marketing front have helped shore up my own plans and kept my head together even during the darkest days.
Thanks for swinging in and taking a gander at my post.
See you next month!
Ciao
JET
Excessica is a funny animal... is it a small publisher? Well sort of. Is it a co-op? Well sort of. I imagine we'll see more and more co-op type publishers pop up in the new era of self-publishing. There is power in numbers, after all!
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