The following is a guest post by Valerie Nygaard, founder of SoftCopy Publishing.
Photo: Jenny Downing | Flickr
Yes, self-publishing takes work, and working with a good service like our friends at DuoLit can make a huge difference, but in the end, it’s a known quantity. Getting a book to print these days can be done by anyone who has the smarts, creativity and outright doggedness it takes to write a good manuscript.
Before I started SoftCopy Publishing, I spent much of my career in search engine development. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in Silicon Valley, it’s this: It doesn’t matter how good your idea is if no one knows about it.
It’s the same with books. There you are, with thousands of beautiful little words lined up just how you want them. You climb to the top of the nearest hill and shout to the world, “Look, World! Behold, my amazing creation!” As you stand with your arms outstretched to greet your throngs of fans, it occurs to you that the kiss on the cheek from your mother and the “good job” from your friend wasn’t quite the onslaught of adoration you had braced yourself for. So what next?
Let’s assume a low budget — you haven’t yet made your first million from your undeniable deftness with the written word. Now, you know the basics: You know to make status updates on your Facebook page and to tweet your heart out. You know to send out your press packet and to have a website dedicated to your book or brand. (You know these things, right?)
You’ve taken all these steps dutifully, but you can’t help but notice a few things. No one has invited you to do an interview. The Facebook updates quickly slip below your friends’ important announcements about what they had for dinner, and you’re not sure how many more tweets you can tweet before it starts to get annoying.
Let’s take a closer look at some of these basics, plus a few other low-cost options for getting the word out, so that all those cleverly crafted sentences you have at the ready will get the attention they deserve.
Posting a status update is a lot less personal (and a lot more ignorable) than sending someone a direct message. You’re probably genuinely interested in what your old friends are doing these days — why wouldn’t it be the same for them? Don’t choose just a few people. If the kid you held hands with on the school bus in third grade doesn’t know you wrote a book, you still have messages to send.
Some of your old friends will have good-sized networks that are substantially different from yours. This is where status updates actually can make an impact. Ask them to give your book a shout out. This isn’t purely a favor to you; people *like* to know people who have done cool things like writing books. “My friend Awesome McSuper wrote a book! [link]” takes them very little time to post and gives them something to say that isn’t about sitting on the tarmac.
PleaseReadMyBook.com
If you have a website for you or your book, kudos. That’s great. Now, will anyone find the site useful? Will anyone find it at all?
One of the best ways to get people to your site might surprise you: Add some good content. I know, I know, it sounds crazy, but adding things that people want to read has a tendency to bring people to your site. Blogs are great for that, but any format can work. Write about something you care about, then tweet and FB update about the new content or blogpost. Now every time you add something, you have something new to shout about, and your marketing will seem a lot less pushy or pleading.
Another fine thing to do on your site is to get some associative marketing going. Put your work next to other best of breed works in its class. Add some value by writing short reviews of these books you like. It’s simple, and can give you some nice “cred by association.”
Climb Every Mountain
No matter how loudly you shouted from that first hill you climbed to announce your book, there were only so many people within earshot. It’s time to lace up your hiking boots and head toward some other peaks.
The first thing to remember is this: Writing a book is a big deal, and people are impressed by it.
Offer to speak somewhere. If you write for young adults, volunteer to speak at a local school’s Career Day, or to teach a creative writing session for your alma mater’s AP English class. If your protagonist is avid bird watcher, offer to be a guest at the local Audubon Society meeting.
Regardless of your book’s content, someone out there has a relevant podcast and, what with a book so near to their topic of interest, would love to have you as a guest. Suggest that they do.
Reaching out on the web can be as simple as offering to guest-post to a blog. You’re a writer — you can do that.
Back in the physical world, donate a copy to the library. The people who check your book out probably won’t buy it, but they might tell their friends about it. Many libraries are willing to feature local authors — propose that they feature you. If you know other local writers who are in the same boat, you can propose this as a collective. You’re even willing to do a reading some evening, bringing copies of your book, of course.
Some of these suggestions may seem small, but they’re cumulative, and I’m sure your creativity and drive will lead you to more. The point is that there are many hills to be had. Self-promotion is hard, but you’re used to hard — you’re a writer.
The truth is that self-promotion is hard, and sometimes it comes down to you and your boots. Get hiking.
Valerie Nygaard is the founder of SoftCopy Publishing, which specializes in collections of “short stories and sharp art” for the iPad and Kindle. SoftCopy’s latest call for submissions is at www.softcopypublishing.com/submissions.html.
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