{"id":3922,"date":"2012-03-04T11:11:50","date_gmt":"2012-03-04T17:11:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/?p=3922"},"modified":"2012-03-04T15:40:52","modified_gmt":"2012-03-04T21:40:52","slug":"promoting-your-writing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2012\/03\/04\/promoting-your-writing\/","title":{"rendered":"Promoting Your Writing"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"It’s not too hard to put out an e-book. Sure, it takes work to write a novel, but as far as turning that into an e-book — even I<\/em> figured it out pretty fast.<\/p>\n

The tough thing is promoting what you’re doing.<\/p>\n

There, I can do much better.<\/p>\n

A Couple Cases<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Shawn Kupfer<\/strong><\/p>\n

Shawn Kupfer is beginning to promote the sequel<\/a> to his novel, 47 Echo<\/a><\/em>. Shawn’s approach is interesting: letting fans take part.<\/p>\n

It’s a smart move, allowing fans to have fun and to use more brains than just the one in Shawn’s head. (I can assure you that Shawn’s a bright guy, but more bright minds coming up with independent ideas is neat, and I look forward to seeing what people come up with.) Sure, he’s also giving away a Kindle and some other goodies, but it’s that inclusion of his readers that will be fun to watch.<\/p>\n

Chuck Wendig<\/strong><\/p>\n

Chuck Wendig is a busy guy. I’ve followed his blog for awhile, and it’s been a blast watching things blown up (in a good way) for him. Chuck likes trying different things. One of the things he recently tried was a Kickstarter project<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It was funded in a matter of hours, and he continues to get backers every day.<\/p>\n

Chuck is also promoting the upcoming release of his novel, Blackbirds<\/a><\/em>\"\" (affiliate link), whose main character, Miriam Black, knows when people will die. Chuck started a Tumbr blog called This Is How You Die<\/a> that allows readers to submit ways they can see their own deaths happening. (Some are humorous — others much more serious. I submitted this one<\/a> and this one<\/a>.) He’s received hundreds of submissions while generating interest in his book.<\/p>\n

If You Build It, They Will [Probably Not] Come<\/strong><\/h2>\n

It’s a nice thought that all one has to do to find success with their writing is create a blog, write a book, and then sit back and watch success unfold before their eyes.<\/p>\n

But it doesn’t work that way — if it did, I wouldn’t be spending this afternoon writing mortgage procedures and rushing to write as much as I can before going to bed at a decent time so I can be up for the day job tomorrow.<\/p>\n

When I released Hell Comes with Wood Paneled Doors<\/em><\/a>, I did just that — I released it. No fanfare or build up…I created the e-book and offered it with little more than saying on The Juggling Writer<\/em>, “Hey, I have an e-book out there,” and doing the same on Facebook and Twitter.<\/p>\n

I didn’t give the release the attention it deserved.<\/p>\n

I never believed that all it took was releasing the e-book — no If you build it, they will come<\/em>. It’s done better than I thought it would, but I didn’t have high expectations since I didn’t really promote its release.<\/p>\n

The Formula<\/strong><\/h2>\n

There’s no formula for success with writing and releasing your own e-books. The closest thing to a formula I’ve seen is this: write a genre series and keep it coming. Once you have half a dozen stories out there, you increase your odds of people reading more than one thing you’ve written.<\/p>\n

Oh yeah, and make a lot of noise about what you’re doing without annoying those following you online.<\/p>\n

Where that leaves the person writing and self publishing literary or mainstream e-books<\/a>, I don’t know. (I’m considering the e-book route with the last novel I wrote, and it definitely falls into the realm of mainstream fiction.) There are definitely days I consider setting aside the harder writing I do for the fun and speed of a genre series.<\/p>\n

How about you? What are some different ways you’ve promoted your writing, or creative ways you’ve seen others promote what they’re doing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It’s not too hard to put out an e-book. Sure, it takes work to write a novel, but as far as turning that into an e-book — even I figured it out pretty fast. The tough thing is promoting what you’re doing. There, I can do much better. A Couple Cases Shawn Kupfer Shawn Kupfer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[32,59],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3922"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3922\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}