When
I started doing independent publishing, I wrote nonfiction books and single,
one-off novels. While I’m proud of these
works, and the non-fictions in particular have been met with rave reviews, I’ve
learned that these are precisely the sorts of books that are the hardest sells
for independent authors and publishers.
What works, in short, are series for niche markets.
You
see, major publishers can sell one-off books more effectively because they have
a larger marketing budget, and they’re well established in the industry. They have connections and inroads into
distribution channels that give them a virtual monopoly in certain venues. This is especially prevalent in pre-sales
where they are able to get reviewed by major publications that have large
subscriber bases and loyal viewers, readers, and followers. These connections would take individual
publishers and authors years to build, if they can build them at all. Additionally, traditional publishers have
large teams of people dedicated only to publishing without the distraction of
writing.
Independent
authors are trying to get the attention of news reporters, bloggers, show
hosts, etc. while continuing to write another book and often while doing a day
job as well. And when they finally break
through those barriers and get some coverage, all that effort is rewarded once,
and then it’s back to the drawing board for the next story. Sometimes people who bought one of your books
will remember you for the next one. And
Amazon has been great about telling people who buy one book that there’s
another book by the same author. But
this all has limited success, especially when your books are not of the same
subject.
However,
social media gives the author complete control over their promotions. No longer are you dependent upon news sources
to see some value in your product. You
can post about your newest creations online.
The problem with this is two-fold.
First, people don’t like to be sold to while you are on social
media. So you can’t just go on and start
saying you have a book to sell. You have
to become a part of the community; like and comment on things other people are
posting. After a while, you can bring up
your own book, and if you did it right, you’ll get some sales. But then that’s it. You’ve done what you can for that book. And now you belong to a group you only joined
because you wanted to do that one thing.
In
my case, I did have three non-fiction books that were all true crime related,
so I was able to be a part of the true crime community and talk about each book
as it came out. But this was limited
because I couldn’t post too much about each book without giving their content
away. And, to be honest, I’ve never had
that big of an interest in the whole world of true crime. I just happened to have three stories I’m
fascinated by that happen to be defined as true crime. My posts probably reflected the fact that I
just wasn’t that interested in the general subject matter.
Also,
the only conventions I could take these books to were general book
conventions. There are no true crime
conventions, (at least I hope there aren’t,) so I was limited to what I could
do online to try to generate interest in these books.
Fiction
series for a niche market, however, that’s a different story; one I will get to
in my upcoming post next week…
