I’ve spent my morning, really most of my day, worrying about my own personal projects instead of everyone else’s. This has been made possible by the letter E. E stands for such words as empty, as in empty cue. It can also stand for egomaniac, which I have been accused of being, and exercise, which I’d like to get to some day before my death.
Someone offered me a large sum of money to promote their material. I could use a large sum of money right now – dearly – but I still hesitated before accepting. More than a large sum of money I appreciate my own moral integrity, such as it is. Would I be letting that person down? This meant I needed to research on what I could do for him, to make sure he wasn’t investing unwisely.
My personal marketing strategy is a simple one. I talk like I’m a real person on my blog, I mention real life stuff everyone can relate to, and I’m just me. I’ll buy adverts once in a while when I have $5 to spare (no really, $5) and I give things away for free sometimes… mostly because I figure if i don’t then it will never ever get read. Turns out this strategy of mine, built largely out of shyness and partly out of lack of time, is the recommended model. Who’d have thunk it.
I have notes in front of me of the things I do that work and some things in front of me I found today that might work. I’m picking based on two things: being shy and whether or not the strategy requires I fake being friendly and use people as stepping stones. When I have it all formulated out, I hope to make a post here of what I’m doing for others to adopt and follow. Let’s all hope I find the time. And I’ve decided to accept this person’s offer, but on one condition: he writes like a real person once in a while and mentions things people can relate to. Otherwise, the campaign is doomed to fail.
Anyway, through my forays I rediscovered Scribd. I’d joined them a long time ago, when I was doing Akashik, and uploaded the first book. And promptly forgot them. Upon finding them again, I saw… I have readers there! I have followers! What the HELL! When did THAT happen???
Scribd also sells your books now. How nice is that?
So then my time, which was supposed to be spent working on 10 Confessions & A Kiss, got set aside so I could spend some time updating my Scribd. Ha ha ha, silly me.
The first thing I’ve done there besides take down one of the two books I had up is to upload another book, because it seems to me I should expand my base there. I chose to put up Black Wolf, Silver Fox, as that’s the first book I ever published and usually comes first. I’m linear that way.
I have my doubts about Scribd suddenly shooting me to the stars and giving me the royalties I need to stop doing stuff for everyone else, but … it’s still something that brought me some followers and I never knew it. Perhaps you also should check it out.