Know what you know, and know what you don’t. Need help? Ask for it.
The hell with Superman. I need some backup.
Not long after I finished “The Mayonnaise Murders” I was busy searching high and low over the internet for any sci fi/fantasy group, book club, old folks home, you name it, where I could email my handy dandy self-designed press release (of which I am extremely proud, thank you) encouraging anyone and everyone to purchase this fantastic little book of mine because, well, it’s mine and I happen to think it’s fantastic. Because it’s mine, and I wrote it. And, like, I spent a whole lot of time writing it and…so…
Buy it.
Moving right along, as I began to do a little more research about how to sell your stuff as an independent author, I came across a lot of (very good) advice about how to make sure you had a website/blogsite, had a twitter account, had a Facebook page, etc. All of which I have. But the one piece of advice that for some strange reason I kept putting off (perhaps because I just didn’t want to spend the funds) was the advice that suggested maybe I wasn’t quite equipped to do every single thing myself. Maybe there does come a time when even us indie’s need to call in the troops to fill in the gaps where maybe we don’t quite know what we’re doing.
Take marketing and promotion for example. Not exactly my strongest areas of expertise, although I’ve had some experience in both. But if you really want to get your book out there to be discovered by the right audience most likely to appreciate what you have to offer then marketing and promotion is kinda important. So rather than try to keep bashing my head against the wall trying to convince myself that I’ll figure out how to market this baby yet you just wait, I now have to ask myself why I didn’t heed the more enlightened side of my brain a little earlier as it was screaming inside my head to reach out for some help. But you know what they say about men and asking for directions…
Anyway, today I’m happy to say I went ahead and got smart (er). And although it’s only been about a week since I called in the cavalry, I already feel the weight coming off my shoulders as I return my focus back to what I do a whole lot better, namely continuing to write and dream up more stories as I write more blog posts, more tweets, and more Facebook posts to feed the ever insatiable beast. Keep in mind it’s not that I have abandoned self promotion because that would be literary suicide. Nobody will promote me harder than me. But now I’m not just out there floundering all alone trying to see what works. Now I have have the assistance of some folks who already know, and that is dearly appreciated.
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