re: #173 chadu

Meanwhile, my book of fairy tales has sold 14 copies total.*

(eyes Drano cocktail)

_{* Upside, got a kickin’ review today from a fellow Lizard at herosandwich.net . Thanks, mang!}

ok, a little playing. I’m going to start with the assumption that your publisher does standard publisher marketing games. So the big deal for you is getting noticed. What follows are tricks and techniques for someone who actually has a book (or more than one book).

- Free story. Take one of the stories in the book to which you have the rights, and post it online with a link to the book from which it came.. Yes, it’s the amazon or baen book sample principle. The thing is it works. Especially if you use that as a cornerstone for further actions I’m about to list. But first, if you don’t have rights to independently produce that story, write another in the same style and use it for the hook. On to building on the cornerstone.

— Business cards. Purchase a batch of business cards that have a copy of the cover on one side and your info on the other. Oh, the cover isn’t the whole card. You’ve also got a QR that links to that free story. Give them out frigging everywhere. Send them to friends and family to pass along and drop in those bowls restaurants and such tend to have. (And who knows, you might even get one of those free meals. Bonus.)

— self-pirate. Make a torrent link to the story file and put it on every pirate/P2P site you can find.

— Go to library conferences. You’re not going to be able to afford all of them, so focus your attention. In a perfect world you go to the ALA (American Library Association). In the real world you can’t afford that. Instead find where your state’s public and school librarians (the latter are called media specialists, by the way) are holding their conferences and go to both. Talk to the organizers to see if you can do a presentation on writing or game design. If they accept make sure the link to your sample story is in your blurb. If they don’t still attend and try to shake the hand of and give your business card to each and every person there. An amazing number of those librarians will take a chance at reading your story. A smaller portion will buy your book based on that story.

— Because your book is gaming connected you can try this at gaming cons. You won’t have as much success but that’s not zero success.

— Every forum you’re on should have a means of backlinking to both your story and your book. You’ve linked directly to the amazon site here (good for you). A better option would be to link to a website that had the story and a further link to the amazon site.

- I am convinced that smart publishers should send copies of their books to key libraries gratis and count it against advertising. If you can do this, at a minimum try to send one to the largest public library in each state.

- You are in wikipedia. Or rather some games you’ve made are in there, and they mention your name. Play nice by the rules, but get a wiki page for you and another for your book.

- Write and publish more stories and books. There’s a habit readers have of checking to see what else you’ve done. One-shots do ok, but repeat writers do better: not only cumulatively but on each item individually.