Getting out there

Yesterday, I didn’t write much. For one, it just wasn’t flowing, and there is nothing worse (for my mood and the work) than trying to force it, and another, I was busy trying to find new ways to promote my work. Please keep in mind that this is all very new to me. I use social media, but I am by no means proficient in its applications. When self-publishing a book, you have to do all the things that you would typically pay a publisher to do. On Amazon, you can get 70% on the sale of each book. With a traditional publisher, it is more like 10%. All that money goes to marketing and promotion. I’m trying to go as long as I can without having to spend too much on this experiment. Eventually, if I want to keep going, I will have to move towards paying for marketing. As the Island of Stone has been out for less than a month, I haven’t seen any income from the book. As soon as that happens, I am putting it all back into marketing.

That means I need to get my ducks in order and soon! I’m building this website and getting some material on here. I’ve been publishing this blog daily since I unleashed the Island onto the world. Not many are following it yet, but I feel compelled to keep working on it. As I’ve mentioned before, it is suitable for posterity’s sake. One day I and others can look back and see my journey. I created a dedicated Facebook page recently and will start to explore some other avenues. I am not one for Twitter, but I may dip a toe in there too. I’ve sent out to my rather large work circle through Slack and saw a little bump there. On the backend, I am reaching out to hundreds of book promotion sites, blogs, genre sites, and other avenues for marketing. On Amazon, I am tweaking my content and the actual keywords that bring people searching for a tale to the book. This process is a bit of trial and error. Hopefully, the fruits of those labors will start to pay off soon.

Most importantly, I need you! If you’ve read the Island of Stone (if not, what are you waiting for) and found it to be even just a little entertaining (I hope it is better than that), I beg you, please take a minute or two and write an Amazon review. This will help me out immensely! Other than just pushing the book up Amazon’s algorithm, there are a lot of excellent ebook promotion sites out there that require you to have a certain number of Amazon reviews to be eligible. I would love to be able to tap into that market. If you don’t have anything positive to say, I want to here that too! I just ask it is not on Amazon. I value feedback from both sides of the fence. You can submit here (don’t worry, I can take it). Secondly, join my Launch Squad for future works! You can find out more about the Squad here, and you can participate by sending me a message here. The Slaying of the Bull, the first book in the Tocharian Gospels series, will be ready for review soon!

Cheers!