Finally Home was officially released last Thursday (Thanksgiving day) morning as both a print and ebook. It is available on smashwords, kindle and nook as well as on amazon.com and createspace in print. As of 12/01/2011 the following stats are what I've seen: Smashwords' views = 24, sales = 0; Nook views = ?, sales = 2; ranking = 247,000 (not exact but I don't remember what the number was); kindle views = ?, sales = 0; no ranking on amazon as I've not had any sales and no sales from any source showing on my createspace account. This is disheartening to say the least since I've been posting for quite a while now that Finally Home would be released soon and I've spent the last two months (maybe a few more than that) talking about this book.
So I'm thinking I need to follow suit with Sybil Nelson (aka Leslie Dubois, author of YA novels with a dark edge to them), Author of the Priscilla the Great series, in her posting from either 11/30 or 12/01 and that is "take the McDonald's approach" to marketing. Sybil states in her posting (you can view the full article here), and I'm paraphrasing here, that everywhere you go you can see McDonald's ads, billboards or even McDonald's themselves. So why not as an author take the same approach? Obviously McDonald's is a billion or trillion dollar company and can afford to place ads everywhere (and those 30-second spots aren't cheap nor are the billboard placements) to make sure their name is out there, so some of the marketing approach for authors wouldn't be cost-effective or even feesible since we are in general poor and need other jobs to supplement our writing, but why not do some marketing that gets your name out there.
It isn't enough to just blog every once in a while or update a website every once in a while but we as authors have to stay in the limelight so to speak; we need to place "ads" everywhere to get known.
Within the next 2 weeks or so, I will be re-releasing three more stories that have been previously published and have placed in various contests, winning small monetary awards and other prizes. I've decided that after the first of the year, once I can get back on track with my state series (for more on the JGDS series, please visit the JGDS blog or the JGDS website) that I'm going to do a major marketing campaign.
I've done a few Skype visits with classes other than Mr. Hughes' to help with some writing aspects (one in Indiana for the Lunchtime Writers' Club and one in Washington state during NaNoWriMo) but that isn't enough. Hopefully, my marketing campaign will help some other writers as well.
I need to start seeing my books taking a turn because my job is getting frustrating and I would love to start traveling to all the states within the next couple of years or so (before I get too old to really enjoy the travels). I had set a goal to have my state stories supporting me by 2013 but that doesn't look like it is going to happen. I may have to move that goal to 2015 and by then I should have at least half of the states published along with my five other stories, oops - six (forgot about a children's story I will probably ebook publish too).
I'd like to know what some other authors out there are doing marketing wise. I also would like to see half the followings of some of my fellow authors (I still only have less than 100 folks following this blog with only a handful, less than a dozen, actually subscribing to receive the blog notices in their emails. I have half the number of followers on my JGDS site as I do on this site, which means I'm not reaching the audiences like I need to, so any suggestions from my fellow friends and authors on how to reach more people would be greatly appreciated.
I follow over 1000 blogs but don't read all of them on a daily basis and I comment on blogs that I've signed up for the email postings a good bit of time; I leave my links in my signatures on most places (some of them won't accept the comment with hyperlinks so I have to just hope that folks are stopping by my websites on those blogs) and yet I hardly see any traffic on my blogs or websites. I wonder how many of those 1000 blogs I follow actually take time to read their comments and respond back to the commenters or even check out the blogs or websites of the persons who leave comments on their blogs. I wonder how many folks who comment on blogs take the time to actually look at other commenters' blogs and websites. The answer is probably less than a dozen or so.
Vici Howard is running her 1-year marketing plan here. Of course, you can always follow Sybil's postings here. If you know of any other authors who have a marketing campaign going on and would like to share, please leave a comment with the link to that person's blog or website.
I definitely would love to hear from you all and hope you will spread the word to your friends. Let them know about some upcoming authors who are trying to get their name out there. E :)
