Relentless Self-Promotion

It is an axiom among ebook/indie writers that self-promotion is absolutely necessary for the success of any book.  Get on Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks.  Keep a blog, maintain a website, send out newsletters.  Hold promotions and contests, and make sure everyone always knows what you’re doing, all to get your book noticed.  Does it work?  To an extent, sure.  There are authors who’ve had a great deal of success because of their promotional efforts.  There are also authors who haven’t.  There are some who haven’t done a thing, and yet their books sell.  This is all well and good, but to date I haven’t done much of it.  The reason?  I hate it.

There are few things that bother me more than a hard sell, and that’s what relentless self-promotion is.  I’ve come to the reluctant conclusion, though, that I have to promote my books, at least, some of the time.  So, occasionally, I’ll write an entry about this book or that.  I’ll try to make it entertaining, so you’ll get something more out of it than a sales pitch.  In that spirit, I must say that I currently have 5 ebooks available for sale.  Two are Regency novellas:  “Gifts of the Heart” and “The Crystal Heart.”  Two are full-length Regency romances:  The Rake’s Reward and An Unsuitable Wife.  One is a historical romance, In a Pirate’s Arms.  I will also soon be releasing a sixth book, another Regency, titled A Summer Folly.  The release date is June 21, to coincide with the beginning of summer.  All my books are available at Amazon, for the Kindle; Barnes and Noble, for the Nook; and at Smashwords.com for a variety of formats.  Just search on Mary Kingsley, and the titles will come up.

There.  That’s the end of the promotional part of this entry.  Not too painful, was it?

Indie writers don’t want to admit that traditional books have any advantages over ebooks, but they do, and it’s important.  It’s the ability to browse.  Go into any bookstore and browse through the books.  Maybe you’re looking for something special; maybe not.  But something catches your eye:  a title, a cover, an author’s name, and you find yourself reaching for a book on the shelf.  You read the back cover copy and the inside cover copy, and you decide that, it might be not what you were looking for, but it’s exactly what you want.  Serendipity.

You don’t get that with ebooks.  Amazon tries to replicate the experience by showcasing books similar to those you’ve already bought, but that puts only a few titles in front of you.  In a bookstore, there are thousands.  Yes, Amazon has a far greater inventory, but their books aren’t available for you to touch and hold and browse.  There’s something to be said for the old way of doing things.

So, where does this leave the ebook author?  Forced to push her books onto an unsuspecting public, because she knows they’re not going to show up at airport kiosks or supermarket shelves anytime soon.  When I began this blog, my intention was not just to sound off, but to entertain, which is why I’ve written about such disparate topics as sleep, make-up (ah, Sephora), and daylight savings time.  My intention with writing books still is to entertain, but if you, the reader, don’t know what’s out there, how can you know what to buy?  Hm.  Maybe self-promotion isn’t so bad, after all.