Publicity Is Not My Forte

I am trying to publicize my book, “The Chronicles of IDIOT”. Really. But, publicity is not my forte. I am trying to work the social media so it will work for me. Got the Facebook Fan page collecting “likes”. Trying to advertise on Twitter, but not too much as to be annoying. It has equated into exactly 6 sales.

Maybe the point is to be annoying. Squeaky wheel gets the sales. And publishing houses are much better at this sort-of thing. I remember once, I was at a bookstore in the UK and saw an author doing a signing. But no one was there for him to sign books. I felt really bad for him. Am not sure if it was just a failure of his publishing house to let people know he was coming or maybe he is trying things on his own. I really don't want to be that guy, so thank god, I can be and am him at home.

Not being the most outgoing person does not help as well. That is just my personality. I am trying to work on it, but it is like asking a dog to purr. It can happen, but not easily. Many writers are introverted, and so am I, but we need to change our personalities to sell our books.  Except for J.D. Salinger, but he is the exception, not the rule.

I am hoping that after we get things set up with CreateSpace, to publish a physical book, then things may pick up. We seem to be of the reading paper books generation, and so are many of our friends. I have to say that physical books do feel the best to me although I would get a Kindle or Nook, but can't afford them yet. A few of my friends have those readers or iPads. But, most of the generation who own the readers are not the very young, they are of the AARP set. And I would be as well, those people can have a hard time reading small print. So they get e-readers where they can set the font to whatever size they want. Yes, a magnifying glass can do the same thing, but this isn't the 1970's.

We just got our CreateSpace proof and it looks pretty good, with a few tweaks, it should be available in a week or two. We are also looking into Smashwords to take care of the rest of the e-readers as they format your book to work with the Nook, Sony e-reader, and will also sell on Apple. It is much more convenient than trying to format the book to each and every one of their formats. I will be screaming on FB and twitter, to let everyone know that it will be available on all these formats.

I am also coming to the realization that selling books is a slow moving process. Kind of like Geologic change, or Evolution, it will take time to show any possible success. Unless my name is Kim Kardashian, I am probably going to need to be quite patient and keep writing, and maybe someday I will make enough money at this to take my hubby out to a nice dinner.