Although this isn’t as funny as the late, great comedian, Henny Youngman’s, “Take my wife … please,” there’s still a good bit of humor attached to it, as well as a certain amount of irony.
All writers who publish hope for some return on the investment of time, energy and brainpower they expended in creating their great American novels or collections of poetic masterpieces (this being said, of course, with tongue securely planted in cheek, as evidenced by my own self-publishing experience).
First of all, you need to know my secret. I have an ongoing love affair with Smashwords.com. It is a professional eBook publisher that makes the uploading process fairly simple. There are, of course, guidelines to follow since the various eReader formats don’t process each document in the same way. On my first attempt (or was it second, third or fourth?), several pages seemed to have Chinese characters running amok across the pages. Chinese? Curious, especially when you consider there are those who read my book who might question whether or not I can write English, much less Chinese.
When I first uploaded my novel to Smashwords, I came to the page where I needed to enter a price for the book. I skimmed through the catalog to see what other, first-time writers were charging for similar submissions. I decided to follow their lead, which ultimately had the similar effect as a lamb being led to the slaughterhouse. I priced it at $4.99, thinking that sounded pretty reasonable and was in line with the cost of others. After all, it was cheaper than a paperback. WHAT I LEARNED #1: Nobody wants to spend money on an unknown. No money. No way. Period. The book had a fair amount of sample downloads, but paid downloads were restricted to the two people whose books I reviewed. WHAT I LEARNED #2: Don’t expect quid pro quo; two book reviews don’t guarantee two reviews of your own book. Out of two, I got one. In fact, I reviewed three additional books and (1) was told, “I don’t have time to read other people’s books,” (2) received no direct reply, but my review was acknowledged on a Facebook page, and (3) got no response whatsoever. I don’t take that personally, however. WHAT I LEARNED #3: You're not the center of the universe and you're not being ignored. People are just busy. Get over it.
Smashwords offers their writers (and readers) free marketing ideas in Mark Coker’s Smashwords Book Marketing Guide (another shameless display of my Smashwords love affair. Say it with me: Smashwords, Smashwords, Smashwords). I followed many of the excellent suggestions to promote my book. After lingering at the same number of sample downloads for what seemed like an eternity, I decided to take advantage of one of the ideas I had yet to utilize. I began submitting the novel to websites and blogs that promote free eBooks. You need to know there are many of these sites out there. But be also forewarned that some don’t want their readers to have to sign in for anything, so even if you offer a free coupon code at Smashwords, they may still turn your book down because registration is required before checkout. WHAT I LEARNED #4: “I said no registration required” translates into “I said no registration required.” There are ways around this. I created a separate page on my personal website that linked directly to a PDF document file of my book. The downside is that the format is limited to PDF which, quite frankly, doesn’t transfer well onto eReaders. The other alternative, which shouldn’t have taken me so long to figure out, was to drop the cost of my book to zero. The number of downloads has nearly doubled in the short time since making the book free.
Another marketing suggestion is to, quite simply, write and upload another book. Sounds easy enough, but if it takes me as long to write the next one as it did to write the first one, I’ll be older and grayer than I already am. In my own defense, I am in the process of writing two new novels, a second one in the Silver Screen Murder Mystery series, and a new one for a series I’m calling, “A Speakeasy Murder Mystery.” But they are far from completion and are just barely out of the outline phase. What I did have was a collection of poetry I published in print at Wordclay. So, over to Smashwords I went and, after a few hours of conforming the manuscript to the style requirements, I uploaded it there and, again, listed it for free. Even though my two books are in completely different genres, the links from one book to another have had a positive impact on visitor numbers. WHAT I LEARNED #5: Experienced professionals occasionally know what they’re talking about.
What do you get from all this? Why would you offer something for nothing? Exposure. Plain and simple, for an unknown writer, exposure is everything. I babble on quite frequently about how writing solely for profit is an unrealistic goal. John (or Jane) Everyman (or Everywoman) isn’t going to rake in the dough on their first attempt. Nor the second, nor quite possibly the tenth. If you have a story to tell, tell it. If you want it to be read, make it available. Readers need to know who you are and what you can do. And they won’t know if you don’t make it easy for them to learn.
Offering your book for free doesn’t mean you’ll get thousands of downloads. Perhaps an equally appropriate post title would have been, “I Can’t Give It Away.” But by following this road, you’ll begin to establish yourself and, possibly, create a loyal following. It’s fun to shoot for the moon, but this business of writing is like any other business. WHAT I LEARNED #6: You need to start at the bottom and work your way up.
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