Ya Gotta Promote!

Someone complained in a chat room I visited about it how tough it is getting to be to get a sale on the Internet. Well if your a writer, you know what it is like to get mailboxes full of reject letters, and other baloney...and then suddenly 15 years ago the self publishing business started to emerge. So I dabbled in it. I have also dabbled selling a variety of items including some of my works on eBay, Amazon, my own website for years and success comes only from perseverance and promoting what you have for sale.  Then along came Kindle, Nook, Ipads, Androids, Smartphones and the like. Of late, I published a novel on Kindle. A Game of Death: The Interstate Murders. 

 It takes time to get things going on eBay, your own site or Amazon whether it’s Kindle, merchandise, used books, new books or other store items   I have had Amazon store items and that took a year to get those widgets to see in decent numbers, but now my listings are selling.  I didn't have much luck but then I started to do on Amazon what I did on eBay. Promote .Why? I guess its part of the old simple concept  you gotta blow your own horn sometimes to get noticed.  So I promote wherever and whenever I can, especially on the Internet.

 I also wrote a niche business book on food concessions, Everything You wanted to know about the Food Concession business which I sell currently only on eBay and currently formatting for Kindle. It’s a $20 item but in 3 years it has sold 3,000+ copies. Do the math. The reason it sold is it filled niche and I promoted it.  I had spent 20 plus years in broadcast production,  promotion, advertising and now, some of that experience has paid off for me.  I promoted that book using what I learned.

Now on the other hand as I mentioned I have put one of my murder thriller novels on Kindle ( My first on Kindle) and I am getting some sales, slow but sure, and its growing but we know we need to promote it and get our name out there and so we are utilizing social media.

I bought John Locke's Kindle ditty How I sold 1 Million e-books in 5 months , a simple but fascinating story detailing how he became a top-selling author on Kindle. I am using some of his game plan and have incorporated it with my business plan.  Time consuming yes, but you must promote yourself and your wares. Other wise what you have to sell will not move off the shelf.  Obviously,   I would never have sold $60,000 in books on the web through a non-book store site if I did not promote.  I also will not sell $60,000 worth of books through Amazon if I don’t promote.

I also really have to promote lower priced Kindle books to get that kind of paycheck and I intend to do it. So here is where social media enters.   Currently we are making our selves known on the Amazon boards, utilizing Facebook and Twitter and what’s great is we are making new friends and reconnecting with others

Twitter fascinates me, because I can see the phenomenon that it is but I also see the value of following the timelines, for trends and attitudes among a lot of  potential customers in niche areas that I would not have thought  of trying to sell too..   Now the Trick will be to emulate and try to capture as well cash in on the successful methods others are using.  The other benefit is when you promote others, they will promote you in return.

 In some ways, that is hard to comprehend or even explain, but the bottom line is either the light bulb goes on in your head and you get it or you don’t  So keep trying to figure it out and research, but every tweet has the potential to earn you some money.  So be confident in what you write, in what you sell, be fair, and promote what you sell.

Then occasionally if not often rework your copy and promotion techniques and “damn the torpedo's, full speed ahead.”

A couple other notes on promotion, I  live in the same small city as another Kindle Star*, up and coming writer Amanda Hocking.  This gal is just a young writer, in her mid-twenties, who has built herself into a star, by promoting herself and now some of the big publishers are starting to take notice. 

I also learned a long time ago to look for the freebie advertising, but use it wisely.  I use press releases a lot back when I was a TV promotion director.  Follow a professional type format and send them out, some get picked up and some don’t, but any one that does is worth the stamp it was sent with and with email, now many of us use that medium to advance.  I sent a email press release out recently and a Chamber of Commerce in a City of 100,000 put it right on their new letters front page front page as I am well know at their local festival for the food I vend.  They sent that all over the country and I sold a few books because of that, both on eBay and Amazon.  They even put a color picture of my novel’s cover on the front page of that newsletter. That was neat and was well worth it.

And how about my favorite Green Bay Packers…they have promotion down to a T.  The Packers have a heritage of many super stars, NFL and Super Bowl trophies and now Aaron Rogers and teammates just won a big one over New Orleans plus last year’s Super Bowl trophy.   Talk about promotion! Not to mention a waiting list of 87,000 loyal fans  for season tickets.  Wonder what the Minnesota Vikings have on their season ticket waiting list? 

Well, I wrote a ditty that is pretty much what the last paragraph is on twitter and guess what?  The Vikings ticket office is now among my followers on twitter.  I guess they want to sell me some tickets…for the Green Bay game.

So good luck and let me promote one last thing 

 You might give me a try:

  Cheap price Good read

A Game Of Death: The Interstate Murders

 

G'day
Robbo