Way back when, I announced a contest
– anyone in Bellingham, WA or Los Angeles, CA who got their butts into
either Village Books or Skylight Books and found copies of my books and
took pictures of them and sent them to me, would get a free copy of UnCommon Faire: A Fiction Sideshow, a collection of short stories, most of which have been published in different publications over the last few years.
Well, that was a month ago, and no one’s sent in a pic so I’m
declaring an end to that contest. But my mom did actually tool through
Village Books in Bellingham to hunt down my books, so she won a copy of
UnCommon Faire, and the other spare copy went to a friend as a thank you
gift. And I think that’s the end of my trying to market books through
blogs and contests. It ends up costing a lot of time and energy and
money (copies of books and postage) and doesn’t seem to up the sales
any. But at least I can say I tried.
Which isn’t to say I am not going to be writing anymore, but I’ve
noticed that I when I try to put energy into writing, marketing my work,
working at the paper, and finding and doing work for my business, Putt
Putt Productions, something always gets dropped. Usually, it’s the
writing bit, which is the most important for the feeding and care of my
soul. And I can’t afford to drop working at the paper or finding and
doing work for my business because that is important for the feeding and
care of my body. So, for now, all the marketing efforts will need to be
shelved. I’ve saturated the small group of people this blog and FB and
the other social networks reach, and I can’t seem to reach further than
that.
Time to pull back, regroup, and stick to what I know, or at least
kinda know. I can’t afford to keep trying to get people to buy books I
can’t even seem to give away. I just don’t have the energy or anywhere
near the expendable income that takes to do it the way it needs to be
done.
I also don’t have the energy to be diplomatic and care what people
think of my opinions and thoughts, so I might end up making all my
profiles private so I can be free to sound off without worrying about
whether or not someone somewhere in the writing, editing, publishing
community might get offended. Or I might just end up sounding off and
The Powers That Be – be damned. I don’t know. I just know, I’m too tired
to care anymore about that and if what I say offends you, then quit
reading my blog or Facebook or following me on Twitter, and go find
someone else who doesn’t offend you. I’m not going to change from far
left liberal to your flavor of conservative anytime soon, so don’t even
start the argument. You’re wasting your time.
In the meantime, if anyone out there is ever interested in checking out my books and purchasing them you can check them out at:
Lulu: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/Raebob
Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Rachel-V.-Olivier/e/B007AUX6WM
Putt Putt Productions:
2 comments:
I think I'm at exactly the same point. I don't know how to get beyond where I am now with marketing and it certainly hasn't been worth the effort I've been putting into it. I may do a bit more in December and then after that just go back to the writing thing and stop worrying about marketing. I was hoping that I could generate interest in my backlist but it doesn't seem to be working.
That's it exactly.
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