
Because we all know that books don’t sell themselves. They just don’t. That’s a given. You can’t write a book, sit back, and wait for it to be noticed—regardless if you self-published, used a small press, or went the traditional route. To sit back and do nothing will equal certain failure. The adage, “If you build it, they will come” only holds true in movies about dead baseball players. This approach does not work in real life. I promise.

There are KABILLIONS (this is a made up statistic, but you get the gist) of books published and placed in the market each and every year. KABILLIONS. If you don’t believe me, hop on twitter for a few days. I used to think I was special because I wrote books and heard voices. Not so much anymore. EVERYONE in the world has written a book (or at least it feels that way). Sorry. This is sad but true, too.
We have all been told that the success of any book will be up to its author. We ALL get that. We’ve heard it numerous times. And this is very, very true.
But how do we go about becoming noticed? That is the million dollar question. There are many websites devoted to this very thing, but few have real, clear-cut ideas.
A couple of things I’ve seen:
1) Set up a blog CHECK
2) Get a Facebook fan page CHECK
3) Set up a twitter account CHECK
4) Join Goodreads CHECK
5) Etc…ect…
Here’s the problem with the above ideas (and not just these ones, but others as well): EVERYONE IS DOING THE SAME THING and we're all following other writers? How does that work exactly?
Everyone is implementing the same advice on how to promote your book and so now when you go to most of these sites (especially twitter) all you see is “Buy my book!” “Check out my review!” “Look at my book trailer!” “Follow my blog tour!”
This has become nothing but white noise for me. There is so much of it that I tend to ignore all of it. This isn’t just me either. Many feel this very same way.
But this is what we are told to do. I have scoured hundreds of posts on promoting and marketing books and it’s nearly all the same advice. I have yet to find anything new to grasp onto as a golden nugget of genius. And that’s what I’m looking for—I want to do something different. I don’t want to become white noise that people skim over. That would totally suck.
My book comes out in February and except for doing the same old-same old, I’ve got nothing. I guess I’ll be tweeting too. I’ll be ticking off the masses with my incessant tweets and posts about my book. Because even though these promotional tactics don’t work all that well, what other choice do I have? Say nothing? Do nothing?
I can’t.
Yes my book is about zombies and yes it is a little bizarre, but I like that corny book and I think others might enjoy it too. That’s my hope. So shutting-up isn’t an option.
I just wish there was a better way to do it. I'm still looking.
What do you think? Does this whole marketing stuff drive you crazy, too? What other choice do we have?