Self-promotion: making it work

by Chuck Bowie

I’m a New Brunswick author who writes genre fiction. I write for a small ‘new model’ publishing house in Quebec. It’s ‘southward-facing’ in the sense that a big chunk of the target audience is American. Most of the authors write solely for the eBook audience. I’m published in print and as eBooks. I’ve written this article to share my promotional experiences of the past two months.

A year ago, initial sales of my eBook Three Wrongs (first in a suspense-thriller series) were, to be honest, slow. But I was heartened by some who echoed my publisher’s assurances that these things take time, and Book 2 helps sell Book 1. Underscoring the whole exercise is the dictum: do what works to sell what you have available.

To begin with, my publisher at MuseItUp Publishing offered her authors a set of marketing tutorials called October Marketing Month, which were very helpful. I acquired useful tools to support my marketing efforts and, throughout it, tried to maintain a social marketing strategy.

One promotional tool was to create diverse summaries: a two-line summary, 50-word summary, 100-word summary, and 200-word summary. Challenging but helpful for interviews. Another tool was to develop an Introduction Letter to Merchants. These tools, together with an overall marketing approach, permitted me to try things and, if they seemed to work, to keep doing them while dropping those that didn’t. (Because we have only so much time, energy and finances to push this along, right?)

At this point, I was fortunate to receive a print contract and ordered 100 copies right away. I hit the ground running, and here is what happened.

• I was invited to do a radio interview. Cost: one copy of the book. The network re-broadcast the interview two more times and placed it on its website as a podcast.
• I did a newspaper interview in my home town. Cost: free, as we did it by email.
• I set up three signing events, two of which piggybacked on pre-planned events.
• I visited the local university bookstore, which bought a couple of copies of my novel to sell in its store. They asked if I had eBooks as well, because students and professors were rapidly adopting that mode of reading.
• I approached a local bookstore manager, who took my books on consignment and invited me to participate in their Christmas Author Day event. Fifteen books sold, but equally importantly, folks asked about my second book (eBook), which they wanted to get right away. I was so pleased to hear that.
• I hit the libraries, and this was my approach: If they would buy one copy (and they did), I would donate one copy (and I did). Both librarians are looking into ordering my eBooks via Overdrive, so they can buy Three Wrongs and AMACAT as eBooks. And both libraries are scheduling readings/author nights for me for January–February 2015.

After all that, I approached Chapters to request an event, and here’s the thing. You need to have a strategy that prevents them from saying no. Here are three questions you need to deal with before you walk through the door.

• Are you self-published?

“No. I signed with a ‘new model’, established Canadian publishing house that pays royalties and provides editors and cover art.”

• Are you in our system?

“Of course. Let’s walk over to a station where you can easily find me. Oh, look – there I am!”

• Have you filled out our Author Event Form?

Search the Chapters website and download the Author Event Form. It shows you’ve done your homework. It asks such questions as do you have a publisher and how shy are you when it comes to chatting up customers? I put 11 out of 10 for that one, because that’s what they want to see! I also volunteered to promote Kobo, while I was promoting my eBooks, which the manager was very interested in. And the first thing I handed the manager was a copy of my publisher’s Introduction Letter to Merchants. It presented me as a professional, legitimate published author and contained all my contact information.

So. I sold those 100 print copies in a month, made lots of contacts, and got the word out that I have a series for sale as eBooks.

I wasn’t going to share this—I didn’t want to do shameless self-promotion to my writer-friends—but a certain someone suggested there might be a couple of ideas here that some of my fellow authors may wish to consider. Some of these practices require a print copy, but others do not. Harvest what may work for you (as I have done with others) and ignore the rest.

Chuck Bowie is the author of Three Wrongs and AMACAT, currently available from your local bookstore, Chapters or Amazon. His website is http://chuckbowie.ca/