Promo material - is this worthwhile or not? What should you get? How do you distribute it (especially when you don't live in a city)? What do you put on it? Oh, my goodness, the list goes on! And then there's who prints it? Vista print have "free" offers, but when you investigate, free still costs you money (to upload your design, to have colour, heavier paper, gloss or matt, postage - super fast to slow). Wow - who knew!?
Amazon - you need an author page there and you should be active... but to be active you have to buy there, and I spread my buying around. So tagging and liking is about my limit, but still, it's something.
Good Reads - oh, I liked this one. Join up and you can rate (and review) the books you've read. Oh, many hours were spent last night running through pages and pages of books. If you do it quickly you glance at covers until you recognise one, but the trick is that you may have seen a different edition (and in Australia we usually have different covers) and so you probably need to do this much more systematically than I did. And then I did a couple of reviews - will have to get more serious about those. And then I found book trivia - oh joy oh joy. I spent an extra hour playing this and astounding myself at what I knew. I liked this site very much - it's completely addictive!
Facebook groups and extending your network of friends. I'm doing a course on this and extending your circle is something I need to do but it will take time and you need to be quite extroverted. You have to go out and "chat" to people or actively invite them to be your friend. I'm going to have to be brave!
Blog tours - these seem to be a good way to spreading the message but they do take up your time, especially if you're diligent about the comments. But then I heard it's often best not to comment when you visit, unless someone asks you a specific question, because you can make the conversation among the locals stilted. More learning!
Is your mind swimming yet? Mine is!
Amazon - you need an author page there and you should be active... but to be active you have to buy there, and I spread my buying around. So tagging and liking is about my limit, but still, it's something.
Good Reads - oh, I liked this one. Join up and you can rate (and review) the books you've read. Oh, many hours were spent last night running through pages and pages of books. If you do it quickly you glance at covers until you recognise one, but the trick is that you may have seen a different edition (and in Australia we usually have different covers) and so you probably need to do this much more systematically than I did. And then I did a couple of reviews - will have to get more serious about those. And then I found book trivia - oh joy oh joy. I spent an extra hour playing this and astounding myself at what I knew. I liked this site very much - it's completely addictive!
Facebook groups and extending your network of friends. I'm doing a course on this and extending your circle is something I need to do but it will take time and you need to be quite extroverted. You have to go out and "chat" to people or actively invite them to be your friend. I'm going to have to be brave!
Blog tours - these seem to be a good way to spreading the message but they do take up your time, especially if you're diligent about the comments. But then I heard it's often best not to comment when you visit, unless someone asks you a specific question, because you can make the conversation among the locals stilted. More learning!
Is your mind swimming yet? Mine is!
