That Bad Taste in Your Mouth: Marketing

Writers have to write.  And as we all know, it's a messy affair.  Actually putting words down on paper or on the screen.  Plotting.  Filling in the gaps.  Creating characters.  Killing characters.  From beginning to end.  The whole works, buddy.  The Full Monty!

Can make a sane person go stark freakin crazy trying to get it done.  And add in a mandatory deadline . . . and Holy Jesus Fracking Mary!  Are you kidding me?!

So . . . for an indie writer.  What about the marketing plan you've got to come up with?  I mean, come on.  You gotta have one.  There's a sea of ebooks being published on an hourly basis.  An entire freakin OCEAN of ebooks becoming available every freakin minute . . . how the hell do you rise above this gooey muck and get your ebook looked at?

Marketing.  Coming up with a plan to bitch-slap a potential reader right between the eyes with your glowing, better-than-sex!, ya gotta read this. . . I mean it . . . new ebook of yours.

What tools do you use to rise above the ebook cacophony which surrounds you?

Or do you?  Market, that is.

Came back from a writer's conference the other day.  Two days of listening to fellow writers say essentially the same things I've heard over and over and over and over.  Years of hearing the same shit.  Heard it so often I can recite it in my sleep.  But one writer, a young chic (why does it ALWAYS have to be a young chic who sells BILLIONS of ebooks at a time?!) did get me to thinking.  She actually said something that made sense; or at least, put a new spin on an old problem.

Go to the column on the right.  For a while
this is a free read.

How do you market your ebook?  Do you look at your creation as a book . . . or as a product?  A product;  hmmm . . .  After the writing an publishing, does it become something like a box of rubber bands to sell?  Or maybe a washing machine?  Or a used car?  A commodity . . . a THING . . . that any small business owner has to market if they want to sell their 'stuff' and become a success.

The writer as a small business owner.

Her central idea was to assign or give a potential reader who gave you a one star review with some kind of compensation package for their bad experience.  Just like any business owner will take back a defective gizmo and try to satisfy a customer with some other product of theirs.  But more than that, she emphasized the need a writer has to slap on their noggin the mental cap of becoming a small business owner of their own whenever the writing process came to an end.

Makes sense to me, Maynard.  Put me down as a convert.

So now comes the real test.  How much are you willing to shell out to various and sundry third parties who make the claim they shove your ebook through the thick muck and make it a No. 1 Best Seller!!

I dunno, pardner.  I really don't.  But I'm heading down that back road now and finding out.  Wish me luck.