Spreading the word

Objectively I knew that after releasing the book there would be considerable effort needed to promote the book, after all I am a new author whose work is known only to a few people. I think at the back of my mind though there was the naive hope that releasing the book would instantly enjoy some success. That of course was a silly hope, in almost any endeavour success needs to be worked and earned.

So how do I go about letting the world know I have something wonderful for them to look at?

The first step is with people I already know. I got in touch with friends, colleagues and contacts and individually let them know that I released a book and encouraged them to check it out. This inevitably leads to people saying they don't have a Kindle, I then point out that Kindle viewers are available for free download on many different platforms. Of course some people don't like reading on screens or just prefer reading printed books, so I now have a task to look at putting a print edition together. I shall start doing so over the next few weeks.

Friends can also provide ideas of their own to help spread the word, one good friend Dave (everyone should have a mate Dave) has some guerilla marketing thoughts that we're looking into.

With everyone I also asked if they can promote the book in any way, either through personal recommendation or by their social networks. Again some people will, others won't but some support is much better than none. It also highlights the fact that I don't really have a social network presence of my own. I've always shied away from the likes of Twitter and Facebook, primarily because I've never had anything to share. Well now I have, so there is another avenue I need to explore.

The next step was the communities I was already involved with. For me that is primarily two communities, online the Eurogamer forums and offline Littleport Life. I've been a regular at Eurogamer for a while and there is also a small writing discussion group, all of whom have been very supportive of my writing and just as much so now it is released. My friends at Littleport Life (we are all volunteers who put together a community magazine every 3 months) are also helping so in the next edition I'm getting space to promote the book and in the next edition I'll be writing an article about how and why I wrote the book.

As well as communities I'm already involved in, there are a number of communities who specialise in the arena I have entered. One such community is the Kindle Users forum (http://www.kuforum.co.uk/). I've joined the community and received a warm welcome. I'm trying to keep my promotion to a minimum and just taking part in discussion. I've also had a number of other communities like Good Reads recommended to me.

And the results of these different strategies? So far slim, but I have sold a few books and even had my first few sales in the US. It's something I can build on.