So it’s been a few weeks since my last post about how I’m marketing my science fiction book, Battleframe. I’m using this experience as a case study for marketing without spending any money. Many of the lessons learned are directly applicable to any online business. So what’s been happening?
I had a bit of a road bump with Amazon where they had a bug in their system that effectively delisted my book and this resulted in zero sales for about five days. This wasn’t too good but after a brief email exchange they returned Battleframe back to the shelves for sale….thank goodness!
I’m now linked into a number of author communities and taking part in the various discussions. This is time consuming but quite a lot of fun. Whatever industry you are in I would highly recommend getting involved with people who are already working in it….you never know what could result.
So in the process of getting to know other authors I discovered that although they were great at writing many of them lacked marketing skills. Each of them was trying to sell their books in isolation and develop their own readership….this is REALLY hard work! So while I had some time off with the flu I put my brain into gear around how to solve this problem for my fellow authors.
The result is that I have now built SFFAuthors.com (science fiction and fantasy authors). The website allows authors to have their own social profile share what they are up to either via the built in blogging platform or pull in their own RSS feed. The activity stream then displays the latest articles from SFF authors. I’ve now integrated Twitter so that authors and readers can pull in their twitter feeds and post directly to Twitter from the website. There’s heaps in site and I plan on expanding it further.
So what’s my business goal? I’m a firm believer in, “What goes around comes around” and so the platform has been designed so that authors can effectively share with each other’s readers. This means that readers of Battleframe may buy another author’s book because that author posted some really interesting blogs/comments. The goal is that readers can really get to know authors and authors that don’t have very much technical expertise can now interact with their readers…all good. I’ve let a few people know about the website and the response has been really positive. I’m now encouraging science fiction and fantasy authors and readers to join the community.
So what lesson have I learned? Sometimes when you enter an industry for the first time you can end up viewing it in a very different manner from the incumbents. By applying your own perspective you may suddenly find yourself providing a service that you could never have imagined when you first embarked on your journey. For example, I had no idea that I would be setting up SFFAuthors.com when I started writing my book…..but here I am.
So what’s happened to my sales? It’s a rare day that I don’t sell a number of books….so something must be going right. The biggest issue that I had to overcome was getting reviews on Amazon (real ones, not fake bought ones) as reviews have a huge influence on whether a person will by a book or not. As of writing this blog I now have five reviews (4 five star and 1 three star) and some pretty respectable feedback.
To take my book to the next level I plan on giving away some ebooks and inviting some other authors to do likewise. I will very likely make it part of a campaign where only members of SFFAuthors.com can win a free book…..so hint, hint…..sign-up and win :-)
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Michael Gilmour has been in business for over 32 years and has both a BSC in Electronics and Computer Science and an MBA. He was the former vice-chairman of the Internet Industry Association in Australia and is in demand as a speaker at Internet conferences the world over. He has also recently published his first science fiction book, Battleframe.
Michael is passionate about working with online entrepreneurs to help them navigate their new ventures around the many pitfalls that all businesses face. Due to demands on his time, Michael may be contacted by clicking here for limited consulting assignments.