To Market to Market -- All to Sell a Fine Book

I commented on a recent blog about always running out of social media time to actively participate at Goodreads. 

Then, on LinkedIn I ran into a The Business of Books blog on How to Use Your Goodreads account to build your author platform.
 -- Nothing like rubbing my nose in my marketing failings. The blog had me thinking I should make a bigger effort to include the site in my routine. 
-- Which I find amusing since I've been cutting back on my Twitter time.
-- Does anyone have any great suggestions? I'll retweet them if you do and give me your Twitter link.

Of course, to get a review to sell your book you need to get someone to buy your book, hopefully in great numbers. Found this blog by Brian Feinblum at BookMarketingBuzzBlog on what triggers book sales. He makes some good points that almost reduced me to despair. I'm almost immune to sales pitches, ie: I don't have any easy triggers ... other than maybe a host of favorite authors.

Feinblum's blog also sneaks in one very crucial ingredient to the marketing blend -- the importance of a log line. If you can't state your book/story's purpose in one or two succinct, intriguing sentences, you're going to have problems with selling your book. This applies to both agents and readers. -- Now you see where the despair might come in ... if I really cared ... though selling a bunch of "books" would be nice on several levels.

Then, there's the bain of my existence ... marketing.  Ugh. Aaargh. Cuss words. Now that my temper tantrum's over, I found a very interesting link to a list of the "Ten Money Saving Resources for Every Author" posted by Self-publishing Resources, I think. I immediately jumped to the link on publicizing your website. Found my not collecting email addresses was a greater sin than I thought. -- Whatever, there's some good points here even if you don't use the services listed. Like a timeline of when you should use the various techniques.

The above commented upon, I need to make a pitch for LinkedIn. I find I'm spending a lot more time there ... reading primary postings. There's some wonderful information lurking in their forums if you don't get caught up in the chattiness of it all ... which I don't because I'm not necessarily wanting a gajillion likes-followers-connections-etc.

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Then, there's my writing ... where I all too often hang my head in shame as people talking about their 1000+ word goals. I feel good when I get 250 new words added in a day ... though I really try for 500 words a day. ... Sometimes, I even make it.

Did suffer one set back.

My Hag Stone Magic MG story was going well ... until my  critique group savaged me. [Not really, but we're a tough group with long red pencils. Definitely not for the faint hearted.] Anyway my story line was mostly telling and had all sorts of verb problems. Good points all ... but it was a rough draft in the attempt to get a novel off the ground.

Even I could see the back story was overwhelming the story flow without them telling me. Solution: Write a prequel type book. Am doing that now and the world building is much easier and not so overwhelming for the reader, I hope. Result: I have seven chapters written of the middle book in a trilogy.