Part 3: Things to Consider When Self Publishing

The whole marketing part of organising a book is possibly one of the biggest and most time-consuming elements of the self-publishing process. As I’ve said before I am still learning, but there is a lot of effort involved and it can be quite daunting. The aim is to get all your hard work out there and that means you simply cannot stop once your work is published. Oh no - my creative friend - you have to keep going and when you hit an obstacle you have to find another way to get new readers.

(Oh and by the way here, in case you’re interested are the other parts of this riveting series - https://vocal.media/journal/things-to-consider-when-self-publishing https://vocal.media/journal/things-to-consider-when-self-publishing-part-2)

Marketing, particularly on the internet, is constantly evolving. Social media has made it difficult to get ‘organic’ or natural followers or reads and shares without paying, but there are definite ways that you can build up your work and possibly make a passive income as a side hustle (I am working on this currently, so I’ll let you know how that goes). This isn’t just applicable to self-publishing either - some of these suggestions work with many other creative endeavours such as blogging and selling your art - you just have to make sure you factor in this work alongside the creative and publishing part.

Here are a few tips that I would have liked to have known for my projects, that you involve both online and more traditional marketing.

Create a Facebook and Instagram page for your work.

Do this even before you have anything published. Invite all your friends and encourage others to do this too. You can use this to showcase a bit of your work, create teasers like excerpts and animations, share about yourself, the stages that you are at with work, get votes for things like artworks or readings and do polls on Instagram. Do anything you can to generate a bit of excitement about your work.

Posts with images and short amounts of texts tend to do well. Keep things short and with every post you share make its purpose clear like - ‘click the link’ etc. If you’re funny people will share them, but also harass a few friends into getting the momentum going. Ideally, if you have a website, blog or an online shop you want to get people to visit them so include clear links to these in your posts. Post regularly, even if the posts are just amusing tenuously linked memes to get people to visit your page.

For the first book that I published (you can buy it here -https://tinyurl.com/327zre48) I used Facebook to share my Indiegogo funding campaign to minimise the risk involved in paying for a few hundred copies of the book and paying a professional graphic designer. I made over my target the first time. If money is a concern the first time you should definitely consider doing this as the funds I raised were then used to purchase books that were essentially bought already by those who donated.

Join groups on Facebook, Reddit etc

Join writing groups that you can share your work on or that will in turn potentially share your work. Not only that, but you will potentially network with people in your area and gain new perspectives on writing and how to advertise your work.

Get an idea of what SEO is and use it to inform your decisions.

If you want to create a basic blog, or website, to go alongside your work - which is definitely a good idea - you should at least look at a few videos on SEO (search engine optimization) on YouTube. This will give you an idea of how to drive people towards your work and site, using specific words and phrases. Even working with Amazon you need to have a good idea of the best tags to use with your work. If you can use something unique (in my case it was the word ‘fahck’ you can improve how easy you are to find and how close to the top you appear in search engines.

Every aspect of business on the internet, whether it’s a blog, website, Facebook or even Instagram has a page where you can also see analytics which can help you see the results of your posts. These give you a better idea of what has driven traffic on to your website and what people have interacted the most with. This information is very important when you’re trying to get attention for your work. For example, on Facebook, you will see with each post how many people have been ‘reached’ by a post. This means it has shown up in their newsfeed, but not that they have interacted with it. ‘Engagements’, are different and mean that they person may have interacted with it on the page by liking or commenting. If you included a link you will be given separate stats for that also. Timing is everything with posting and Facebook is mega saturated with crap these days so gaining a little insight into the whole thing can be useful.

Send free copies

Perhaps consider sending a few free copies of your work to people that you admire. Perhaps they are ‘tastemakers’ (Jesus I hate that) or perhaps they are just sound. At worst nothing will happen, at best you may get a mention somewhere.

Hold a launch or event

COVID may have temporarily ruined this but a big event for a launch gives you something to advertise. It also generates excitement and gives you an opportunity to sell physical books. It doesn’t have to be expensive either as I got sponsorship for a small local brewery so there were free beers. If you ran a fundit campaign as well it is easy to give everyone who already purchased your book it in one go instead of trying of post out millions of individual books.

Go to reading and events

Take part in festivals (I guess there are online ones at the moment but hopefully things open up properly soon) and readings. Bring copies of your books to sell. Network. Let people know you’ll be doing a reading and invite them. Get friends to record videos and take pictures to share on your social media and website. See? It all feeds into itself.

Reviews

A massive factor in your continuing online popularity and book sales is getting reviews. Harass anyone you know that bought your book to leave reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. The more reviews you have the more you will turn up as a suggestion for new readers.

Do markets

Again when COVID decides to bugger off, sell your work at markets, advertise that you are doing it and use your work afterwards for photo opportunities.

Collaborate with other creative people

Work with people you respect and get them to share your work too, or at least the work you both did together. Go onto Podcasts, blog posts and discuss both your work. Cross-pollinate (oh Caroline, you wanker) and open your audiences up while having fun with people you enjoy working with.

There you go. This was a long slog. I wanted to write way more but I didn’t. Some of the parts to this are probably obvious but as it is a learning experience for everyone I thought it would be useful to blurt it all out together.

I hope you found this useful! If you did or liked any of my other stuff please visit www.carolineeganwritingresearch.com or leave a much- appreciated tip below.