Okay, so my first eBook, Any Tomorrow: The Calling, is available from the major eBook distributors, including http://www.amazon.com/, http://www.barnesandnoble.com/, http://www.diesel-ebooks.com/, and http://www.smashwords.com/.
I’ve successfully self-published through Smashwords and Amazon, creating every aspect of the publication, including the cover art.
I even blog about the self-publishing experience at http://anytomorrow.wordpress.com/
My dilemma is this: I want to use social media to stir up interest in my eBook and blog, but with so many choices which ones do I focus on? FaceBook? Gather? LinkedIn? Twitter?
And once I’ve established a presence on multiple social media, how do I manage them without becoming overwhelmed?
eBook self-publication is a fairly simple process, but the marketing is daunting. Creative minds tend to be very good at producing art, but historically have been very poor at the essential follow though, marketing. There are exceptions of course, but I’d suspect that once the creative process is complete, what creatives want more than anything else is to create.
Creation and marketing come into conflict and it’s tough to for a writer to pick one over the other to focus on. That conflict is a drawback for self-publishers as self-publishers lack the support infrastructure usually afforded a traditionally published author (namely an agent or publisher to do all the legwork).
On the other hand, the self-published eBook author has an advantage over the traditionally published author. In the eWorld of social media a few well-placed posts could reach thousands of potential readers within moments. This might far outweigh the benefit of sitting at a table in the local Barnes and Noble behind a stack of books.
So this brings us full circle to my original dilemma, what social media should I focus on and how can I monitor them?
If you have any suggestions, I’d sure appreciate hearing from you.
© Copyright 2011 by Kevin Fraleigh.
First off, congratulations! I personally don’t have much insight to offer, since I’m not yet at the point of jumping into such a marketing venture myself. However, I recently read this post by Doug Lance at eFiction magazine, and thought you might want to look at some of the suggestions – particularly the apps he mentions for managing multiple social networking venues at once. Good luck!
http://authors.efictionmag.com/tools-i-use-to-manage-and-grow-efiction-platform/
Thanks for the encouragement and the link to eFiction. The apps mentioned should be very helpful. I really appreciate you taking the time to leave a comment. Thanks.
Kevin,
You’ve epublished your book. But if you manage the publishing process on your site by using a shopping cart like EJunkie.com, would that not allow you to be more in charge of the process?
So the real question then becomes how to integrate the shopping cart system with epublishing.
If you manage your book directly on your site, then can you offer the book though Amazon, Apple or B&N without going to an online epublishing company?
Can you deal with those distributors by connecting your site to those places? What would you do to format your files so that you could work with them without having to go to places like Outskirts?
Thanks for your thoughts,
Tom
Those are all great ideas and definitely things to consider. I don’t use an epublishing company, however I do use Amazon and Smashwords as distributors. Right now they are a matter of convenience for me since the amount of time I have to allot to anything beyond work, writing, and family is very limited. Once I get a little more established I’ll consider doing more with my blog, such as using a shopping cart app to manage sales. I really appreciate your input though and hopefully my readers will also benefit from it. Thanks!