Trying to Break Through the Noise

"Everyone has a book in them" or so the cliche goes. Not so long ago many of those books never saw the light of day because of publishers and editors were, rightly or wrongly, the gatekeepers. Undoubtedly some great books probably got lost and never saw the light of day as great authors lost the will to write more as the rejection pile got taller and taller. But when they were published the publisher got behind the author and pumped a lot of money into promoting that author and their books. This was and is great if you're lucky enough to be among the chosen. But for those who aren't lucky enough to have lots of marketing money behind them there is a challenge in how to get your books noticed.

Simply slapping your opus onto Amazon or Smashwords may get you a few sales and in time you may establish a reputation. But in this world of instant gratification do we really want to wait for sales, do we have the patience to slowly plod through the process of self promotion? I doubt it. I think we want to break even and start making a profit from our hard work. We may not expect to become over night successes but at least a little of financial recognition would be nice, even if it''s just enough to buy a nice meal.

I'm not convinced that Facebook or Twitter have any effect whatsoever on people buying your book. They're good for increasing awareness, but a direct increase sales is hard to achieve.Of course you can pay for ad's and for people to review your work and these have various degrees of success.

There is loads of information out there on how to promote your book and I don't want to duplicate the work, so maybe it's time for a bit of lateral thinking, ideas that aren't obvious but may just increase your sales or at least your profile.

1. Audio Books - With half decent sound recording equipment becoming relatively inexpensive you can now record audio segments of your books and upload them to audio file sharing websites such as soundcloud. Sometimes people would prefer to listen to snippets of books to get a feel for them rather than having to read sections to get a feel for the novel.
2. Apps - More expensive and cumbersome than creating audiobooks but since on Apple apps sell better than iBooks, the investment may be worth it and with apps you can always add bonus features and in-app purchases. There are lots of web based sites that will create your app for you, or if you're just a little more technically minded you can create your own from xcode templates.
3. Graphic Books/Comic strips - can you draw? can you at least use stick figures to bring a key paragraph to life? is it worth a try? Maybe it's worth a try. There are some quite good cartoons out there with artists who have humour rather than excellent drawing skills, so even if you're not a fine artist you can add another dimension to your work.

These may take a bit of work, but whilst you're doing the rest of your marketing is it time to invest your time in these ideas as well?