The Promotions game

Writing a book is hard enough. But there's something harder - marketing and promoting it.

Before I got into the whole epublishing game, I had no idea how much work promoting my book would be.

With my two other traditionally published books, there was a publicist who mailed out free copies to reviewers, pointed out lists etc. Not that that was enough, but at least it was enough to feel that there is someone else who also has an vested interest in selling your book.

This time, for 'Threshold' my ebook of short stories (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007C3QHBE) the onus is completely on me.

So I'm learning and bumbling my way through online resources, offering my ebook free for a limited time, writing blog posts, begging for reviews from complete strangers, twittering like a demented bird, facebooking like there's no tomorrow.

Let's see how this actually translates into sales. It's early days yet, but I'm hopeful. My stories are good ones, offering a glimpse of other lives, other viewpoints....

Down the ebook road

I finally did it! After much hesitation, backtracking and agonizing, I decided to give it a shot. I'm talking about epublishing - what did you think?

After having 2 books published traditionally, it was hard to convince myself that epublishing a book was any less 'legitimate'. There are so many misconceptions about the whole business that separating grain from chaff took a lot of time. I did my research and found some amazing stats:

• ebooks now comprise more than half of Amazon's sales,
• big name writers have lent legitimacy to the enterprise (think Stephen King, Jodi Picoult etc),
• traditional publishers are in dire straits as the economy dips,
• Canadian libraries saw a 50% increase in their ebook title downloads last year.

This trend is clearly here to stay. I'm not getting left behind. I have a good story I want to share with my reader, I will.

I won't have to wait for 8 months to a year undertaking these steps till I turn into a nervous wreck: write up a proposal, chew my nails and pray that the acquisitions editor did not have a row with her partner, then write the book, get rejected, go through the whole process again...

Check out my ebook of short stories, 'Threshold' at: http://www.amazon.com/Threshold-ebook/dp/B007C3QHBE/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1330016710&sr=1-1