One Honest Indie

“Reject the tyranny of picked. Pick yourself.” ― Seth Godin, Poke the Box

  • Home
  • About Me
    • Privacy Policy
    • GDPR Privacy Policy
  • What is Dystonia?
  • My Novels and Short Fiction
    • The Sam McRae Mystery Series
      • Identity Crisis
      • Least Wanted
      • Riptide
      • Deep Six
      • Law Can Be Murder
    • The Erica Jensen Mysteries
    • My Other Novels
      • Invisible Me
      • The Planck Factor
    • Short Stories
  • For Writers
    • Indie Publishing
    • Blogging
    • Screenwriting
    • Writing Advice
    • Marketing
  • Podcasting
  • Hang Onto Your Work-Life
    • Frugal Living
    • Health and Wellness
    • Recipes
    • Organizing
    • Photography
    • Travel
  • Online Courses
    • Learning for Life
  • Book Reviews
  • Food for Thought
    • Bits and Bobs
  • Videography
    • My Videos
  • Contact Me

Marketing Your Writing Outside the Box

02/02/2021 by Debbi

Tweet
Share
Pin
Image by Kevin King(Chandana Perera) from Pixabay

Hi, everyone! 🙂

One of the things I want to talk about is building a reader fan base. And I think the best way to do that is find a way online to create a community of fans, and doing that takes more than simply adjusting a few keywords or finding categories on Amazon. It takes a lot more than that. And that’s the danger of relying on Amazon alone or simply keywords and things like that alone. You don’t know who you’re getting or what you’re getting.

I’ll just give you an example. I mean, back when I was selling lots of ebooks, back in 2011, before the market became so flooded I was doing a book signing and the CRM [community relations manager, aka, event manager] at the bookstore suggested a book fair or something for me to attend. And I said, “Well, actually that’s quite far away, and I don’t know if it’s going to be worth the expense, because I can sell better online.” And she said, “Well, don’t you want to build a fan base?” And I thought to myself, “Oh gee, who do you think is buying all those books from Amazon?”

Well, there may have been people buying my 99-cent books, but they were not rabid fans by any means. I mean, they were picking up 99-cent books. I mean, here it was and I had good reviews. So people picked up on that and that was enough back then, but it’s not enough anymore. And I won’t go into the reasons for that, because that’s a separate but related topic, which I can get into at some point. But my point is get out there and establish a platform of some sort. And I think what I have in the Crime Cafe, my podcast, is something of a platform. And there’s actually value in so much of what I have in that platform. I mean, in terms of not only information for readers, but for writers. What you can learn from other writers. There is a lot in there. Believe me.

Well, there may have been people buying my 99-cent books, but they were not rabid fans by any means. I mean, they were picking up 99-cent books. I mean, here it was and I had good reviews. So people picked up on that and that was enough back then, but it’s not enough anymore.

And finally, the bottom line is you have to do something that will work for you and connect with people in some way, and doing it in a meaningful way means more than just taking a high-priced course in how to run an Amazon ad or a Facebook ad or a BookBub ad or any of that. And the other thing I will also add is that when it comes to publishing, when you’re getting advice from people in the industry, they have a tendency to look at it this way [with blinders], because this is all they know. I mean, this is what they’ve done all their lives, and this is the way they look at it. So they will have a point of view that will be very skewed toward what they’re used to. You have to be able to think outside of that, you have to be able to go outside of the box, literally.

[T]he bottom line is you have to do something that will work for you and connect with people in some way, and doing it in a meaningful way means more than just taking a high-priced course in how to run an Amazon ad or a Facebook ad or a BookBub ad or any of that. And the other thing I will also add is that when it comes to publishing, when you’re getting advice from people in the industry, they have a tendency to look at it this way [with blinders], because this is all they know.

And if you’re a writer and a thinker and you really look at the situation, you’ll realize that this is true and that you can do more than you can imagine without catering to Amazon. I’m not saying that you can’t pay attention to it and that you shouldn’t have your books there, because of course you have great distribution, but they won’t lift a finger for you marketing-wise. Why should they? That’s not where they make their money. They also don’t make their money from ads. They’re a web services company. That’s where they make their money. And so if you want to give your money to a monopolist, go right ahead, and there’s a legal pleading around somewhere. It’s so goofy, I’m not even going to go into it. But I mean, it really recognizes that Amazon has a monopoly on the ebook market in the U.S. I’ll just state it outright. There, I said it. But that doesn’t mean that you have to be exclusive to them. There are other ways of making a living off your writing than simply catering to algorithms and categories. Now, these ways won’t necessarily put you on the New York Times bestseller list. But then in my case, I just got lucky and I was there at the right time.

You should continue to write as well as you can and look for ways outside of the norm to monetize your content.

I feel like I’ve kind of gotten a little bit rambly here, but I hope I’ve made the point that you shouldn’t give up. You should continue to write as well as you can and look for ways outside of the norm to monetize your content. That’s my point. Okay. Now that I’ve said that, I think I’m done. So I’ll talk to you later. Thanks.

PS: Don’t go through life wearing blinders. 🙂

Image via Nina Amir.
Tweet
Share
Pin

Filed Under: Creative Entrepreneurship, For Writers, Indie Publishing, Marketing, Vlog Tagged With: Alternatives, Author Marketing, Book Marketing, Branding, Monetization, Monetizing, Online Marketing, Outreach, Platform

Meet Debbi

Welcome to my writers' corner of the Internet. I'm a novelist, who also writes short stories and screenplays. I hope to share the benefit of my experiences as an indie author with dystonia since 2009. I also post a lot of book reviews, because I love to read and learn new things. I hope to share that knowledge with you.

Click on the cover for a free copy!

Beginner’s Guide to Mystery Writing

  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Follow

Categories

  • Accountability
  • Accountability
  • Announcement
  • Bits and Bobs
  • Blogging
  • Book Reviews
  • Commentary
  • Creative Entrepreneurship
  • Curated Links
  • Film Review
  • Food for Thought
  • For Writers
  • Frugal Living
  • Fundraising
  • Hang Onto Your Work-Life
  • Health and Wellness
  • Indie Author Guide
  • Indie Publishing
  • Law for Writers
  • Learning for Life
  • Life Update
  • Marketing
  • Memoirs
  • My Story
  • My Videos
  • Online Courses
  • Online Marketing
  • Organizing
  • Photography
  • Podcasting
  • Poetry
  • Print Publishing
  • Producing
  • Random Thoughts
  • Recipes
  • Screenwriting
  • Serialized content
  • Social Media
  • Summaries
  • Tech Talk
  • Towel Day
  • Travel
  • Videography
  • Vlog
  • Writing Advice

Tags

Amwriting Authorpreneurs Blogging Book Publishing Book Review Book Reviews BookTube Branding Business Content Marketing Crime Fiction Dystonia Entrepreneurship Fiction Filmmaking Health History How-To Indie Authors Indie Publishing Marketing Memoirs Mindfulness Nonfiction Online Marketing Organizing Productivity Productivity Random Crap Random Thoughts Recommended Reading Self-Care Self-Publishing Self-Publishing Guide Seth Godin Social Media Travel Video Videos Vlog Wellness Work-Life Balance Writing Writing Tips YouTube

Grow Your Readership with BookSweeps

Support Indie Bookstores

indiebound

Recent Posts

  • Things I Find on the Internet
  • My Book Review of ‘Organized Enough’
  • Quiet on the Set!
  • You Can Write Anywhere
  • You Don’t Need a Computer to Write

Recommended Web Services

Build Your Website with Namecheap - Get Privacy Protection Free Forever

Web Hosting

Monthly Archives

Copyright © 2023 · Beautiful Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in