what is the best way to get yourself known?
First of all, I think we need to discuss the worst way. The worst way is to turn up at forums, recommend a new book (typically self-published) and conveniently forget to mention that you are the author. That happens a lot here, and it seems that all think it an original plot, yet its so hackneyed that its easily spotted and the offending post is removed. Many 'authors' seem to think in false syllogisms: 1) hey, there's a book forum; 2) I have a book to sell; and 3) people on the book forum will buy my book. Not true.
A rung up from those trolls are the ones who turn up, say they are the author, make a few posts, and then leave satisfied they've seeded that site....no doubt onto the next. A very common breed, that.
These two examples are 99.9% of what happens,
where people think plugging themselves will do them some sort of favour and that they have the right to think they can use someone else's webspace (which boils down to money) to gain free publicity.
Rare is the person with a book to plug who takes the time to integrate with the community. The person who gets to know its members and forgets about themselves and their agenda for a time and instead posts about the books they read. It is a community, after all, not a billboard.
I'm trying constantly to promote myself and my work and I'll be doing the emotionally draining but obligatory book signings again soon and wonder how far can I possibly get?
I'll skip my usual diatribe over self-publishing
angry
because what's done is done (
what a waste of money though! - let's hope the credit crunch sees fewer resort to this). Book signings, as an unknown, are a waste of time. Some friends buy it, some interested parties buy it, but you are dependent on these people to create your buzz, and few of them are likely to head off to Amazon to write a review, or whatever. (Also, be aware of shill reviews on Amazon: usually spotted by unknown authors getting nothing but five star reviews by people who have never felt the need to review a book before or since. Even the best of writers get the occasional one star.)
Get yourself a blog. And I don't mean
The Thought Pool which has been up on your site for a week now with not a single thought posted to it. A decent
wordpress blog is probably best, in part because of its folksonomic feature that brings you in contact with other bloggers. Write about your writing, write about yourself, write about your journalism, write about the books you read, write about anything you are expert on: don't make the mistake that people may be interested in your books; you've got to make them interested in
you, and you do that by providing regular and varied content that will have people coming back, maybe dropping you a comment or two, and eventually biting the bullet and giving your book a spin. It may be a struggle to get there, but it's better than waving the book in the faces of disinterested people.
Blogs really are the places to get coverage these days. From sending a copy of your book to a blogger you'll typically get a review of it which their readership will latch on to. You can offer yourselves for 'author tours' where you do the rounds on a variety of blogs answering questions and the like. All of it is a way of creating awareness. Take some time to read some of the thousands of book blogs out there, pick one or two that you think your book might best fit with, and where the blogger seems to know what they are talking about. No point asking a spy story fanatic to review your fantasy novel, etc.
I have a favourite link I like to bring out when it comes to self-promotion, and this is it:
top ten self-promotion mistakes. It''s a good read.
Now, your site:
- This should be informative. With that in mind, I don't see the point in your splash screen: who really wants to sit through about fifteen seconds of nothing? Get them to the home page already.
- No idea what purpose the calendar serves as its not interactive.
- Put up some decent sized extracts of your books. Why would someone want to buy them if they can't get a taste for your writing?
- You have some scrolling text that says "...what relevance does this have to what I'm trying to get across?", which is a good question: what relevance does it have for what your site is trying to get across?
- What are you trying to get across? That you have a book or two to sell? Or that you are available for freelance journalism?
Also, as an aside, do you attend any of the readers/writers groups around Glasgow? In the case of writers' groups, networking is worthwhile. Weegie Wednesday, once a month, may interest you, if you don't know of it already:
Weegie Wednesday began two years ago on the initiative of Laura Marney, Liz Small and Eleanor Logan to provide an opportunity for writers, poets, publishers, booksellers, librarians, creative writing students or anyone else with an interest to get together socially once a month to talk about books and publishing.
