Self-Promotion

Paul Stewart wrote:

@ DK Christi
Apparently JK Rowling got many rejections, even the Beatles got turned down. That's life.

I will PM you.

That best what you can do is maybe start an youtube marketing campagn. The leadership in facebook will show you the way. Social media is the key for a high performance marketing. These two points are very good for distribute your books..

yes it's incredibly difficult. i am a writer, not a promoter! i'm also just not the right kind of personality.

Years ago I probably made about every mistake a beginning author can make. The worst was signing a contract with a company that billed itself as a "traditional" publisher. I had sent my book out to other companies and had got rejections. Then I found a listing in the Writer's Digest Market Guide for a publisher accepting unsolicited manuscripts and guaranteeing a fair look at submissions. Best of all, you could do it online, via e-mail. I figured that if it was in the Writer's Digest Market Guide the company must have been vetted, so I sent in a query, was promptly asked for a full manuscript, and a few days later got an acceptance letter. It was only after I signed the contract that I discovered that what I'd basically gotten myself into was just a variation on self-publishing. Granted, the company didn't charge me to publish my book, but they also did no editing (which I felt my book needed), no proof-reading, and no promotion. They did pay an advance. One whole American dollar. And they paid royalties -- 8 percent (below accepted market standards). But the real kicker was that they priced the book so stratospherically high that it was an obstacle I could never overcome. I tried every imaginable means of promoting that thing. Everything within my capabilities, at least -- including availing myself of any free advertising on the Internet, publishing a free e-book novella related to the book (which was extremely popular, but netted me no remuneration), joining author websites, setting up my own website, and even handing out thousands of flyers in my area. At one point I even gave readers free access to half the novel in e-book form (all they wanted was the rest of it free). Nothing worked and ultimately I simply abandoned the whole thing.

It was not a good time for me, and I almost gave up on writing altogether. But my nephew persuaded me to consider a different genre from the military SF I'd been writing, encouraging me to try my hand at YA fiction. I figured I'd nothing to lose, and soon came up with what I felt was a great mash-up of genres that would make an interesting and appealing YA read. It took me a year to write Becoming Darkness, and by the time I finished, few publishers were accepting unsolicited manuscripts anymore. You had to have an agent, but getting one was easier said than done.

I spent weeks researching agents on the internet and crafting query letters to suit each of those who had made it onto my list. I then sent them off (by snail mail) at weekly intervals, with the first letter going to my most preferred choice. I fully expected rejection slips, so I was flabbergasted when a couple of months later I received an e-mail from an agent who was responding to the first query. She wasn't actually the agent I'd sent the letter to, but that agent had passed my work onto her, feeling it was more in her wheelhouse. Anyway, the gist of it is, I landed a good agent, worked through several rewrites of my book with her, and a little less than a year ago signed a contract with Capstone. I received a five figure advance and an offer of first refusal on my next book. For the last few months I've been working with the editor of Capstone's Switch Press imprint (their new YA division) to smooth out the kinks in the manuscript. The book is in the design phase and will soon be going to ARC (Advanced Reader Copy).

There's still a long way to go. If feedback from the ARC shows problems with the story, then changes will undoubtedly have to be made. The ARC distribution to reviewers and people in the industry (other writers, etc.) doesn't occur until sometime early next year, with the actual release of the book scheduled for the fall of 2015. It's exiting, but it's also kind of terrifying. If the book doesn't do well, then I have a major rethink ahead of me. And that's what worries me a lot, because even though the publisher will do marketing for the book, it's considered a given in the industry these days that the author will do some of the lifting to promote the work. I have no compunctions about doing anything my publisher might set up for me, but going out there and doing any of that stuff on my own may be beyond me. I don't have marketing and self-promotion acumen, nor do I have the resources to travel far and wide on my own. And I certainly don't have the means to buy advertising. I'm not saying my publisher expects that of me, but I'm certain they don't want me just sitting back and waiting for things to take off. The fact is, it seldom happens that way. There are literally millions of writers out there now, and we only ever see or hear about a handful of them. Generally the truly successful ones, who, ironically, no longer need the kind of promotion they often get because they're already so well established that their books now sell themselves (J.K.Rowling being a case in point).

It's difficult for a writer not to feel a little bitter when he or she sees how some unknown writer has had incredible success without even having made much of an effort. The publishing world is full of stories of nascent authors getting six and seven figure advances for books that aren't even finished. Recently I heard about three young women who had all published fan fiction and who were subsequently each given six figure advances for books -- based simply on what they'd submitted to websites like Wattpad and the like. And then there are people like the woman who wrote Fifty Shades of Gray, whose success beggars the mind.

One would like to think the cream rises to the top in the publishing world, but the truth is, it doesn't. There are plenty of incredible books out there that never became bestsellers; plenty of incredible authors who have had to abandon the field or are considering doing so. The well-known and acclaimed Australian author, Richard Flanagan, claimed to be on the verge of giving up writing to go work in the mines because he was making so little from his craft. Winning the 2014 Booker price has spared him this fate -- at least for now -- but it proves that even writers considered exemplary do not have an easy time of it in today's publishing climate. It has never been easier to get published; but it also has never been more difficult to be successful. It is a sad truth, but often the status one achieves in the publishing world doesn't come down to hard work and great writing, but as a result of luck and happening upon whatever the publics fancies at a particular moment.

For most writers, there are no easy paths to success. There's no sense in getting caught up in those visions of glory and fame that arise from seeing the success of other unknowns, because the likelihood it'll happen to you is about as good as winning the lottery. The self-publishing route is probably one of the most difficult paths, and for the majority of writers who go this way (more than 99 percent, I'd say) success will have to be measured by a few sales and possibly a few good reviews. The number of copies they'll sell will probably never amount to more than a few hundred. A few thousand if they're very lucky.

I'm not going to say you can't hit it big this way; it has been done. But, again, it's rare. In fact, it's rare no matter how you publish. But for me, the self-publishing path was the wrong one and I don't know whether I'd ever venture down that road again. Personally, I recommend getting an agent. A good agent can make all the difference in the world. But even if you don't get an agent, there are a few things you should do. Top of these is getting your book properly edited by a professional. Don't rely on feedback from family and friends, because it won't be enough. You need a completely objective third party to go through your work and point out the flaws. And there are going to be flaws. We all want to think, when we write that last line, that our book is great as it is, but I can tell you from experience that it's amazing the things you don't see -- even when you've gone over your manuscript dozens of times. A well-edited book is going to have much more of a chance of success than one that is full of plot holes, inconsistencies, poor grammar, and typos. Readers will forgive some of this stuff if they're getting the book for free (though even then they can be incredibly merciless), but they'll rail against it if they pay good money for a novel and find it littered with such failings.

Perhaps more so than ever before, word-of-mouth (via the Internet) is possibly the most fundamental force in the success or failure of a book. If you can't somehow generate that, then you face an uphill battle to get noticed amidst the plethora of books that are out there. Every year literally hundreds of thousands of books are published and your title has to fight to be noticed amidst them. There are millions of books listed on Amazon, so what are the chances of someone simply stumbling upon yours? It's like being one tiny voice straining to be heard amidst an enormous choir.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Becoming Darkness, but I'm not sitting here believing for a minute that in a year's time it'll be at the top of the New York Times bestseller list and I'll be rolling in the dough. It could happen; but I'd be a fool to bank on it. I do, however, want my book to be successful enough that it'll lead on to other things, so I'll be doing whatever I possibly can to make that happen. Hell, I'll even jump out of a plane (with a parachute on, of course) if it'll get me some attention.

Anyway, good luck to all.

Good luck with the book! Keep the ball rolling by writing another and you might just create your own luck!

I've actually got a sequel written and I'm two thirds of the way through the first draft of a third and final novel. I've also got two books of a proposed three completed in a high concept YA science fiction trilogy. I'm about to do a rewrite of the first, following notes and suggestions from my agent. Also in draft form are two novels that are semi-fictionalized accounts of my mother's life from the early 1920s through to the end of WW2. She was not a famous person by any stretch of the imagination, but she had a rather extraordinary life, nonetheless. This was a project I did more for myself, and I'm not sure I'll ever seek publication. Of course if I get famous (wink, wink), maybe I'll change my mind.

I just heard from my editor at Switch Press (Capstone) that the design department is coming along with the cover for Becoming Darkness. It sounds really intriguing and I'm excited to see the results.

It's taken a lot of time and patience to get this far (literally years for this one book), but the real test is yet to come. If the ARC does well, then the next step will be to see whether the buying public feels as enthusiastic about my novel as the people at Switch Press have been. Unfortunately, you can never know what will catch the fancy of readers. I'm hoping the mash-up that Becoming Darkness is will pique the interests of readers. I tried to do something different with this book, rather than following trends (which I think is a mug's game, given that by the time your book works its way through the system -- again, something that generally takes years -- the trend will have probably passed).

One thing I'm really looking forward to is walking into a bookstore and seeing my novel on the shelves. It's something I've dreamed about since the day when I was a kid hammering out material on my mother's old mechanical Remington typewriter.