Gee-wiz, this makes me laugh!
Happy Thanksgiving!
Let me start off by saying a full night of rest really does do the body good. I’m back at it, promoting my book to interested parties, and reaching out to new book bloggers. My primary goal is to garner 100 reviews for Master.
The number appears staggering, but then again I never expected to have 10,000+ views on WordPress, either. The key will be to consistently reach out and form new bonds with book reviewers (who are guardian angels for us writers). I like to think that they will be excited to review a good, unknown book.
There are many ways to sell books – you can contact readers directly, purchase advertising on sites like Facebook, and/or reach out to friends and family who love to support you. The two most effective ways, however, are through reviews and word of mouth.
What’s great about these methods is that they cost the writer nothing. Not only that, but they require no effort (no, you can’t force people to rave about your book). I can’t think of a clearer metaphor for the age old saying “get the ball rolling” than to have people hyping up your book through reviews and conversation.
Of course, in order to attain this coveted momentum, you’re going to have to put in the legwork. That’s what I’m doing now – reaching out to book bloggers and reviewers, and posting an annoying amount of links to Master in the hopes that more people will give it a look… it cost less than 2 cups of coffee, people!
A really cool feature on Twitter is that they include a button on every tweet to check its analytics:
Here you can see exactly how many people have scrolled past the tweet, clicked on the tweet, and liked or retweeted the tweet.
Every time a tweet is retweeted, you can plan on receiving twice the amount of views you normally would have received (often times more). The exposure is exponential with every retweet.
What’s this have to do with the rest of my post? Well, my thinking is simple. For every reader who purchases Master and discovers it’s actually a pretty damn good book, there is a good chance they will either:
- Tell a friend about it
- Write a review on Amazon
- Write a review on Goodreads
- Write a review on their blog
- Check out my other works.
- Do more than 1 of the above, or maybe even all 5 of them.
This is why book reviews are so important. It’s a form of social proof when a third-party with no agenda verifies you’ve put together an enjoyable work of fiction. Not only that, but some book blogs have an enormous following of avid readers, who are eager to discover the next great novel.
That’s all I got for today, Happy Thanksgiving to those of you in the states! And have a nice Thursday to everyone else!
- Thomas M. Watt
Thomas M. Watt 