The Best Book Marketing Guide

On Modern Publishing

I’ve known for a long time that whether a writer self publishes his books or get published through a large and well-established company, the actual act of marketing falls largely to the author. In fact, these days, there’s little advantage to having your work published by one of the big companies. (When I first started writing as a teen, it was really the only option.) You may enjoy a bit wider distribution in the short term, but with self-publishing you retain control of your books and can focus on the long game of selling them over a much longer period of time.

(By the way, I tend to use “he” as a gender neutral pronoun, which is the standard American English way to type it. I am in no way saying that this doesn’t apply to women as well.)

Your First 1000 Copies

I mentioned Tim Grahl’s book, Your First 1000 Copies, in my previous blog post, Jonathan Fesmire and Bodacious Creed are One! because Tim gave me, personally, the excellent advice to consolidate my old Bodacious Creed site with this, my author site. Now, all the information for my books lives here, as does my blog and the sign-up forms for my one newsletter.

I finished his excellent marketing book two days ago, and this is a brief review of it.

First, I’ve read a handful of books on book marketing and browsed dozens of websites on the topic. Though I followed the instructions of many, this never seemed to increase the number of sales on my books or significantly increased my platform. I figured out how to share information to appropriate Facebook groups on my own, which helps to drive people to my blog.

There are some pretty good books and sites out there that you can get some good tips from. For instance, in one book, I learned the importance of creating compelling book covers that look great as thumbnails. When you browse on Amazon, you see thumbnails first, and those that catch your eye are more likely to get your clicks. That inspired me to republish my books Children of Rhatlan and Tamshi’s Imp with compelling yet simple covers. You can see those in the sidebar.

Yet all I learned from every other marketing source out there were little tips that were helpful, but not tremendously so.

Your First 1000 Copies gets right into the important stuff and lays out Tim’s Connection System, step by step. As I read it, I knew that Tim was finally telling me exactly what I needed to know to build my author platform so that, perhaps in the next few years, I’ll be able to make a real living as an author.

I won’t just give away the steps here. The book is inexpensive and absolutely worth the read. I will explain the essential idea behind the Connection System, though.

Selling your own books isn’t about advertising them. (I personally have shared the Amazon links to my books on dozens of Facebook promotion groups. While this did work to give away 665 copies of Children of Rhatlan and Tamshi’s Imp during a five day freebie promotion, and therefore spread the word about my books, as soon as the price went to retail, only a few sold.) Selling your own books is about making connections with readers and being relentlessly helpful. That means entertain them, teach them something about what interests them, and share things with them that you both like. Give them content they will enjoy. If someone asks you a question, answer it. (One caveat: If someone gives you a bad review or is clearly trolling, just don’t answer.)

In Your First 1000 Copies, Tim teaches how to build solid and lasting connections with fans, and that when they love your content, buying your books will be a natural by-product of that. He doesn’t exactly teach how to directly market books. He teaches you how to become a celebrity.

If you’re tired of reading books and websites that give you only a few useful pointers here and there and you want a solid marketing plan now, pick up this book!

Tim’s First Two Chapters

I didn’t buy Tim’s book right away. For most Amazon Kindle books, you can download the first 10% of the book to read for free. Your First 1000 Copies includes the first two chapters.

I downloaded and read those first. While Tim doesn’t get into his actual system until Chapter 3, he does go over his philosophy in the first two chapters. Those were enough to make me realize that he was doing something right, and convinced me to buy. So, if you’re skeptical, or your money is momentarily tight, I highly recommend downloading the sample portion. Start reading it today!

Mailing List

People who sign up for this blog’s mailing list get extras not in the blog! I mention that below, right over the sign-up form, but maybe you’re wondering what that means, so here are a few examples of what subscribers have enjoyed lately, and the related blog entry.

S teampunk Cosplay Spotlight: Steamy Leia – List members received some extra information

about Steamy Leia, including where else to find her online, plus a link to some cool steampunk/Star Wars art.

Disney’s Hatbox Ghost Returns – The Hatbox Ghost is but one of the amazing 999 happy haunts in Disney’s Haunted Mansion! The related email was about another prominent ghost, including a couple details about him that are tough to track down online, but not as tough to figure out if you’re a frequent Disneyland visitor, as I am.
Steamy Leia Interview – Not only did the email let readers know that this well-anticipated interview was live, in it, I told everyone about the next interviewee! As you all know now from following the blog, that was the wonderful Bonnie Elizabeth Scott, but mailing list readers knew nearly a week in advance.
Bodacious Creed Writing Weekend – I didn’t advertise this post everywhere, as there aren’t really a lot of Facebook groups for posts saying, “I’m working on my book this weekend!” It basically pointed out that I was eager to work on Bodacious Creed and that fans could follow my progress. The extras, though, went into several things: more about Bonnie, some metrics for my fan pages, and a preview of what to expect from my blog at work, including sci-fi and fantasy related posts.
Steampunk Cosplay Spotlight: Bonnie Elizabeth Scott – List members got the announcement that Bonnie’s excellent interview was finally up! They also got extras about the movie Tomorrowland! My son and I saw an extended preview for it at Disneyland, and mailing list members got to see photos I took from the exclusive Tomorrowland exhibition in Disney’s Tomorrowland (the actual land in Disneyland).

In short, you get extra, entertaining content when you join the list. If you want to get in on that, you can sign up right here!

P.S. To my mailing list members, I know I usually send you a message pretty quickly after the blog post goes up! The rest of my day is going to get busy quickly. While I'm going to post to a bunch of groups right now before that, I will have some cool Disney-relat ed extras for you when I send the mail tonight!

It is Disneyland's Diamond Celebration, after all!