So it’s December and my debut novel The Whitefire Crossing has been out for about 6 months now. Long enough to make me an expert ready to dole out sage advice on the ins and outs of debut authorhood, right? ….Right? HAHAHAHA. Sheesh, if a writing career is like climbing Everest, I haven’t even made it yet through the Khumbu Icefall to Camp I.
But that said, I know how eager I’ve been to read other authors’ experiences, especially their travels through the foggy no-man’s-land of marketing and promotion. Especially posts like David Louis Edelman’s How I Promoted My Book. Specific accounts that discuss what they did to promote, how they felt it worked, and what they’d do differently next time.
In my case, I’ll also discuss the time factor. Because marketing doesn’t have to cost you money, but it does cost you time. Serious time. I’d heard people say as much, and I thought I’d factored that in when I decided what I’d do and what I wouldn’t…but, yeah. Turns out I underestimated the time I’d need to write guest posts, interviews, etc by a good order of magnitude. Honestly, my biggest suggestion to a future debut author is this: if you have a day job and/or other demands on your time besides writing, then don’t plan to do any writing other than marketing/promo stuff for the 3 months surrounding your book’s release. (The month before, the month of, and the month after.) You’ll be much happier and saner if you don’t have to stress over the trade-off between writing your next book and promotional efforts for the current one. (Yes, yes, I know, what a pipe dream. But hey, some people can probably plan well enough to pull that off.)
Okay, on to the list. Note that here I’m just talking things I did myself, not things Night Shade did for me. (more…)
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