It All Started with a Squee! Promoting Yourself

SQUEE!  That was the sound I made when I had finally uploaded my first book and hit that button, confirming I was published.  This is where most people expect the money to start rolling in and celebrity status is in the bag.

Come on, now, you know better...  This was the exact moment I took the link to my book and toddled straight off to FaceBook to spread the joy.  It wasn't enough.  Where is that Twitter account I had collecting dust...  Oh, and LinkedIn... wow, I haven't updated that since my 'Kita-Craftery', an attempt to make a few bucks at crocheting.  Check, now what about Goodreads?  I know I at least signed up for that...

This is where it started.  Plain and simple, I started throwing up my book links, giving my close friends and family a quick heads-up on where to go.  I also got my FaceBook page back into usefulness as well as a Patreon page I never used with any seriousness.  It makes me glad that I was just the sort of person to sign up for everything because personalizing it was pretty simple past the tedious business of signing up.  I simply decided once a week, I'd hit up all of my accounts and remind people.

Only I knew better than to think even THAT would change anything.  See, if you read my intro post, then you would know about the crab tank theory.  Most people you already know aren't lining up to support you.  This doesn't mean you sigh in frustration and quit.  Build a network anyway-- give people a million ways to find you, a million ways to express your sincerity.  Start delegating certain action to certain accounts.  You may want to reserve certain pages for detailed updates-- events, sales, links and so on.  Others, like Twitter, are going to be ones you hit for release dates, short and informative.  Keep a blog or two-- I like to keep Goodreads blog open for business, but I also use this blog (Blogger, you fill my many, many blogging holes).  Blogs are a good way to vent and gush for your superfans and not clog your social media.

My next course of action was to frequent groups in my preferred genre.  Notice I added 'preferred.'  This is because, no matter how conventional you are, there will always be someone lining up to tell you you are wrong.  I went as broad as possible to start and just stuck to fantasy.  Fantasy Faction, Fantasy Book Club, kept it simple.  I learned very quickly how very divided people are even within a genre.  Taste is one thing, but there are some people who are so protective of what they believe the rules of a genre are that they will attempt to classify you.  And believe me, sex is a really touchy subject here.  There are people who would insist that the minute you combine elements of romance or sex, it is relegated into the trash pile of erotic fantasy.  Mind you, I have no ill-will towards the genre, but let me explain this to you.  Erotic fantasy is about sexual creativity.  You cannot lump epic fantasy, with extensive world building and character development into a genre almost entirely about sexual exploration.  You can make it a secondary genre, but if a book takes the time to map out worlds for you, that it simply above and beyond erotic fantasy.  So what is it?  Lo and behold, we have the ADULT rating.  There is no real purpose for that rating in global society except to warn about sexual themes, falling into consensual or not.  Violence itself, depending on the severity, often still misses the mark on mature ratings UNLESS IT INVOLVES SEX.  Even foul language often falls into pre-adult, again, depending on the level of sexual knowledge involved.  Most epic fantasy happens to fall into the young adult category naturally.  But let's not discount that grimdark still qualifies as epic fantasy.

I won't beat a dead horse here.  You can skip back to my Goodreads blog for my rants on how fans incorrectly classify adult themes. BLOG LINK I only hoped to relate a little of how quickly you can catch onto what your audience is and start to narrow it down.

Another thing that groups lent me?  A heads up on where to find more promotional tools!  I signed up as an author for Virtual FantasyCon to start.  Between October 15-21, I will be available via my event page to let people ask me questions and turn them on to my plans as an author.  From that event, I met author Cynthia A. Morgan who runs the Booknvolume blog.  She offered to do an Author Spotlight to help increase fantasy author visibility and I am scheduled to have an interview posted there.  I find this sequence of events to be serendipitous and unexpected, but having a very strong point.  Even if the bickering and chatter of groups can put you off on the whole, this is by far one of the most valuable places for promotion and events I have come across yet.

And I'm not done!  There are visual tools to use as well, although I am putting that off for now.  My dark circled, bloodshot eyes are not picture friendly, but my priority right now is the timely release of my first trilogy, which may have my attention until the end of the year.  With that done and after some serious rest, I plan to use YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat (of which I only have an account on YouTube at the moment) to supplement my brand and platform.

I expect to have a lot of good advice to share with my readers on this process.  I want to champion the little ones in this field, encourage people that hard work and skill CAN spell success.  Yes, you need a lot of luck too.  If hard work were all that was necessary, third world countries would have the rest of us beat.  Work smart, not hard?  Sorry, that's still not enough.  My IQ certainly doesn't hurt, but it's also no guarantee.  You can't just be successful by mimicking successful people.  Even they are never entirely sure how all the cards lined up.  One thing this process has definitely taught me is to be a tireless but clever promoter.  Limit your sales reminders to the SMALLEST part of your promotion.  I know that sounds counterintuitive, but I've had more luck when I stopped selling a product and started getting people excited for an idea.

One thing I didn't do was make my first ebook free right out of the gate.  I wanted to see if it would grab any sales despite my newbie status.  And it did, but less than a handful.  However, I plan on keeping it a sale item until the release of my second book when I will reduce it to free for the month of October.  I've heard a lot of people express that it is more valuable as a way to sell the next book in a series if you develop a genuinely interested audience.  Now, I may be a bit non-traditional in my tactics, but that does sound like a completely reasonable assessment.  It makes sense to have enough faith in your work to lead people into a series.  While it is my only book, it doesn't seem like a good choice to make it free right away, but knowing I planned to release the second two months from then, it seemed smarter to wait to offer that promotion as an incentive.

On a last note, I hope to keep dividing up posts between rants, advice and other categories.  I'll attempt to use labels to help anyone find these topics quicker in the future.  If I get lax, send me a shoutout and I'll remedy it.

I'll leave you with my current social media links.  I'll label this post 'social media' so if I add more accounts, you can find them all here later.

Facebook: Krista Lynn Gossett
Website: Official Krista Gossett Author Site
GoodReads: Krista Gossett
LinkedIn: Krista Gossett
Patreon: Krista Gossett
Twitter: CrimsonMoonGirl
Google Plus: Krista Gossett