Like for a lot of new indie authors, the most difficult part of the self-publishing experience has been promoting my book (It's called Talking to Lobsters and you can get it here! https://tinyurl.com/talkingtolobsterscollection). Hence, therefore, and in accordance with the prophecy, you're now reading my shiny new blog, which is a cynical attempt to "build a profile" (gagging sound) and then hopefully sell some books. Except really, I've loved writing this blog so far, and I think I'll keep doing it even if no one reads it, because it's really cathartic for getting stuff off my chest!
So, anyway, book promotion... Like a lot of new indie authors, I started by offering my ebook for free for the duration that Amazon allows. That, combined with the constant spamming of all my friends and family on Facebook, got me a good few downloads in the first couple of weeks. This led to a much smaller number of sales of the paperback version from close family who wanted to own a book with my name on it, and an even smaller number of paperback sales from people who were genuinely excited about the book's content.
Unfortunately, this brief flurry of interest led me to develop what's known as Over-Confident New Indie Author Syndrome. This is a very serious condition that can only result in devastating heartbreak when, a couple of weeks later, your sales figures drop to nothing.
This seems to happen to almost every single indie author out there, so the big question is, how can you bring those book sales figures back to life like an undead creature of the night which shambles its way onto every Kindle in the known universe? Well, I'm not going to write you yet another handy 'how to' guide to book promotion, I'm just going to tell you what I've done, and whether any of it has worked or not.
The first thing I did was to revamp my Twitter profile (@danysbrain): I got a ko-fi.com account so that people could support my work, and I put the link in my Twitter bio along with the fact that I was now an author. Then, I created a pinned tweet that advertised my book and changed my banner photo to one of the front cover of the paperback. Now my Twitter profile at least looked like I was an author with a book to sell.
Then, I started to take advantage of Twitter’s promotional hashtags like #writerslift and #shamelessselfpromosunday, which people would put on posts where they were supporting other writers/creators in promoting their work. I tend to only share my work with people using these hashtags if they either seem to be explicitly queer friendly, or they have their pronouns on their profile. Otherwise, I risk running into transphobes, which sadly, is an occupational hazard. Using Twitter in this way does seem to occasionally result in people reading my book through the Kindle Unlimited subscription, so if you publish through Amazon, make sure that your book is registered to be included in this service.
The other way in which I’ve started using Twitter is to set up the @transwritershub account. I’d hoped that I could use it to connect with other people within my community, and that together, our voices might be louder than if we were apart, so that we would all benefit as a result. I haven’t really had much response to this at the moment though, but I’m going to keep on plugging away at it to see if I can generate some interest.
After that, I started this blog, which has been going quite well. As I said before, I enjoy writing it, some eyeballs have definitely read my posts, and it’s nice to do some non-fiction writing too. The plan is to release a blog post every other week, and on the adjacent weeks to release an episode of a podcast called Stories from Dany’s Brain. The format of the podcast is that each episode is a recording of one of the short stories from my book. This allows me to produce an audio version of the book without too much hassle, and it gives me another place to put my ko-fi.com account details so that people can support my work (https://ko-fi.com/storiesfromdanysbrain). It’s early days with the podcast, so I can’t yet tell you how successful it’s going to be. Again, I’m just going to keep plugging away at it and see what happens.
Later this year, when I’ve recorded all of the stories from Talking to Lobsters as podcast episodes, I’m going to start a YouTube channel containing videos of the stories being read. Hopefully, this will be another avenue that will generate some interest. I’m also thinking about doing some flash fiction for Tiktok, but I’m not sure about that yet.
The most important thing that I’m trying to keep in mind with all of these routes towards generating interest in my book, is that I need to continuously reevaluate what I’m getting out of them compared to how much time and effort I’m putting in. I’m enjoying writing this blog and making the podcast, so even if they aren’t too successful, I’ll probably keep doing them, but I may stop doing some of the other things I’ve discussed if they prove to not be generating the amount of interest I hope they will. Otherwise, I’ll end up wasting all my time on flogging dead horses. In conclusion, I’m just trying everything free that I can think of, and I’ll see what works. I think the most important thing is to try some stuff that you’re going to enjoy doing alongside your writing, so that promotion doesn’t feel like an irritating add-on that you’ve got to do in order to call yourself a writer.
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