What I've Learned So Far

As a fledgling marketing agent at The Road of Fathers, Inc., I’ve learned a few vital lessons. Some are disheartening. Some will be invaluable for my next go-round. Some probably could have been predicted. I think the most important thing I’ve learned is…GET THE BOOK OUT THERE.

So I will break it down into a few areas.

REVIEWS

• Reviews are very important. I was handed a great piece of advice in having 25 reviews uploaded the day that I uploaded the novel to Amazon. I received 6 within 4 days and of those, 2 were taken down. So there are two big lessons from this: 1, if you send out 50 copies and requests to post a review, probably 15 would post reviews the day of uploading, another 10 would post within a few weeks, and the rest wouldn’t get around to reading it. That’s just human nature.

• With Amazon KDP, people can only post reviews if they spend $5 or more on the site at that moment. So, handing out free copies for review on Amazon doesn’t do much good. They would need to buy it anyway.

• Reviews need to sought out everywhere – Goodreads.com, Twitter, FB…

NUMBERS

• All of your family and friends will congratulate you for a few days after you upload and announce. You will get an amazing high from this and feel great about yourself. Half of those friends will buy a copy. Your numbers will spike and you’ll know this book is going to go into the top ten. But the numbers will drop and you will need to work your ass off to get it out there. And by ‘work your ass off’, that means posting blog updates, tweeting, updating every day and constantly reminding people you have a book on Amazon. Now, the important thing to remember is, getting your family and friends to buy a copy only serves one purpose; that purpose is to build up a readership so that reviews get out and there are enough purchases on Amazon for it to start appearing on those lists of ‘other books this customer bought’.

• You must not lose hope when everyone you know has purchased a copy and it seems like it’s fading. This is when the real work starts. It’s all about getting it out there. The truth is, with self-publishing on Amazon, your novel will never die. It will always be there. And you’ll have to remind yourself what the purpose for writing it was in the first place…

KEEP WRITING

• This is the hardest thing for me. I am currently very burned out with the idea of getting it seen. Working on the next novel seems exhausting and out of reach. But I have to. After all, I’m a writer, correct? I’ve proven that by publishing a novel, right? So…again, the easy part is over.

And as I press on, I keep finding new people to remind, hey, I wrote a book, you should read it and review it.

Next up for marketing – twitter promotions and print ads in comic books.