My goal is to be very open in my selfpub marketing approaches here, including what works and what doesn’t.
My immediate strategy is to gather my tribe in an email list. (Join here). I’m launching two short story titles, one the sequel of the other, one permafree and one paid, ideally landing both on respective top 100 lists. I’m experimenting with the CTA at the back of each book to see what works. If you join the list, you’ll get early access to these, as well as opportunities to get free review copies in exchange for honest reviews.
Here’s an example of what didn’t work. I was at FOGcon recently, actively blogging the sessions. I was getting lots of engagement–people were favoriting and retweeting and responding. At a break in the sessions, I made this tweet:
#announcement if you like my tweet coverage of #FOGcon, we’re probably in the same tribe. More from me here: eepurl.com/bdI-sD #geeks
That’s a pretty good offer. If you like X, you’ll also like X++ for free. It provides value, and avoids the slimy feeling of pushy-car-salesman marketing. And it got exactly zero traction.
Am I being too nice?
The book that will eventually be free is up now: Ritchie Boss: Private Investigator Manager, but it doesn’t yet show as free on Amazon, though as a Creative Commons licensed story, you can already find it free on the web, including on my site, as on Apple, Nook, and Kobo.
This story is set six decades in the future, where computers run everything–except management. So the protagonist is a Private Investigator Manager working with a small army of sentient computer programs. It’s a neat premise, and the story itself I feel good about because of it’s publication history (which you can read about in the Forward of the book).
So with readers’ best interest in mind, I’m asking folks not to purchase it yet–save your $0.99 and get it when it’s free–but to please post reviews, which are immensely helpful to readers and authors alike.
And then sign up. Did I mention that joining the list gets you access to an additional story as well as real-world tips on avoiding techrage?