Since release of The New Author at the end of March 2012 I've been beavering away on new projects. I've set about rewriting a series of two action adventure novels called
The Crucible and
Allen's Mosquito, whilst also pressing ahead with the sequel to
Peril (working title
Yellow Ribbon). Who says men can't multi-task?
My release schedule looks like this:
The Crucible Part 1 will be released this month, part 2 in autumn 2012 and hopefully
Yellow Ribbon in winter 2012.
All this writing, rewriting, editing and proofing is good stuff but what about the marketing? Don't indie authors need to market the bejaysus out of their books, to raise themselves above the noise of obscurity? That can be a very time consuming activity.
Networking via social media is a great way to spread the word about books but it can drain time and energy like a dementor trying to suck Harry Potter's soul. Throw in a day job, family, a tendency to compulsive behaviour and you have the recipe for meltdown. Nevertheless, I'm determined to do it all. And when Ruby is determined then he does it (or he falls over in a faint).
Several months ago a brief chat on Twitter with someone drew my attention to a crucial
point: producing good content is the key. Not just novels but also
for blog posts and tweets. If a blog post is interesting and helpful to your target audience then its utility doesn't evaporate just because it's disappeared off your front page. With a few exceptions (e.g. seasonal or event themed posts) you can re-use that blog post. In fact, unless your social media network size is static, any new people in your network are unlikely to have seen those great posts you put so much work into.
A few months back I gave some figures about development of my social media network. Here's the latest:
- 96 blog posts, 30,500 views since March 2011 (yeah, some people visit multiple times, some stay for seconds, some for an hour)
- Twitter followers - 3,400
- Facebook friends - 822
- Goodreads friends - 1,374 and numerous groups
- LinkedIn connections - 184 (networked to 3,333,823)
- Triberr - 3 tribes, 52 tribemates, 160,596 reach
and some other stuff. Fairly standard fare for a self-published author after a year and a bit.
Oh, and I've sold some books. Not a huge number and I don't count them religiously any more, but earnings are heading in the direction of funding a voluntary one-day-a-week drop in the day job (which started two weeks ago). Having three titles available out there on all channels as ebook and paperback has definitely helped.
This social media platform is self-sustaining and it grows organically at this stage, as long as I feed it with content. And there's the rub; back to how to feed the network with good content and also keep up all those writerly project tasks, while holding down a day job (now four days a week) and playing families? Without have some kind of a breakdown. The answer lies in squirrel tendencies.
