Marketing to readers
There's some talk at other forums here about marketing to readers one's already published writings. I thought we could discuss here marketing issues that occur in self-publishing. Since I'm only interested in online marketing, I'll mention some thoughts that have occurred to me. 1) Review copies. Me, I'm on a tight budget; I can barely afford to buy my own books, much less give them away to other people. But it looks to me as though more and more review sites are accepting electronic copies of books. So if you have an e-book version of the book, and it isn't too hefty to e-mail, you could send it to the review site. 2) Review sites and self-publishing stigma. I figure out which review sites accept self-published works by (1) checking their guidelines, and (2) doing a Google search within their site to see whether they've reviewed any Lulu books in the past. As far as romance and erotic romance review sites are concerned, the situation looks pretty good. Unfortunately, the only GLBT fantasy review site doesn't review self-published books. 3) Excerpts at fiction archives/blogs/lists. I suggested this idea previously: Posting a self-contained chapter (one that works as a whole story) at a fiction archive/blog/list, with a note that more stories with these characters can be found through your Website. Some fiction archives will let you mention the URL to your site following the story text; some won't. At any rate, since you're self-publishing, you don't need to get a publisher's permission to do this. 4) Recommendation sites. People talk about book marketing as if it were all about official review sites, but you can also try alerting individuals' recommendation sites to what you're doing. If you write m/m, Uniquely Pleasurable's links section (open only to members, but anyone can join for free) has some original m/m rec sites listed. http://unique.logophilos.net You can track down more through the Original Slash Webring and the Slash Recommendations Webring. http://S.webring.com/hub?ring=originalslashfic;sid=3;id=3;hub http://I.webring.com/hub?ring=slashrecs Anyone else have any ideas?
There's some talk at other forums here about marketing to readers one's already published writings. I thought we could discuss here marketing issues that occur in self-publishing. Since I'm only interested in online marketing, I'll mention some thoughts that have occurred to me. 1) Review copies. Me, I'm on a tight budget; I can barely afford to buy my own books, much less give them away to other people. But it looks to me as though more and more review sites are accepting electronic copies of books. So if you have an e-book version of the book, and it isn't too hefty to e-mail, you could send it to the review site. 2) Review sites and self-publishing stigma. I figure out which review sites accept self-published works by (1) checking their guidelines, and (2) doing a Google search within their site to see whether they've reviewed any Lulu books in the past. As far as romance and erotic romance review sites are concerned, the situation looks pretty good. Unfortunately, the only GLBT fantasy review site doesn't review self-published books. 3) Excerpts at fiction archives/blogs/lists. I suggested this idea previously: Posting a self-contained chapter (one that works as a whole story) at a fiction archive/blog/list, with a note that more stories with these characters can be found through your Website. Some fiction archives will let you mention the URL to your site following the story text; some won't. At any rate, since you're self-publishing, you don't need to get a publisher's permission to do this. 4) Recommendation sites. People talk about book marketing as if it were all about official review sites, but you can also try alerting individuals' recommendation sites to what you're doing. If you write m/m, Uniquely Pleasurable's links section (open only to members, but anyone can join for free) has some original m/m rec sites listed. http://unique.logophilos.net You can track down more through the Original Slash Webring and the Slash Recommendations Webring. http://S.webring.com/hub?ring=originalslashfic;sid=3;id=3;hub http://I.webring.com/hub?ring=slashrecs Anyone else have any ideas?