Flogging the Limelight

How do you publicize an eBook?

You can’t schedule a book signing at Barnes and Noble or amazon.com, for that matter. I suppose you could schedule a launch party or a reading at the local library, but then you can’t set up a table for sales at the back of the room. Once the patrons are out the door, you’ve probably lost them.

I’ve tried writing articles for local papers, but so far, I’ve been ignored. My 3000 word article for my alumni magazine got reduced to one sentence.

Many eBook authors lurk at LinkedIn. They populate the Mystery Writers of America and the Crime Fiction Group, trying to start discussions like “New bestselling novel, Death of Paper, by John Smith. Of course, “bestselling” means his mother and one of his sisters bought a copy.

The problem with this approach is that all the members of the site are bent on the same mission, flogging their eBook that no one knows about. It’s worse than preaching to the choir. It’s more like trying to sell tombstones to residents of a cemetery. Most of the potential customers already have one, and the ones that don’t aren’t listening.

Authors’ advice blogs like this one suggest opening a Facebook page and Tweeting. That begs the larger question, how do you raise a following there? I’m not Taylor Swift, for God’s sake. My two daughters follow my blog and Facebook wall, but I’m not sure anyone else does. If I get a following and I’m not too blatant about flogging my books, maybe someone who reads my blog might be tempted to look up my titles on amazon.com.

It could happen.

The other bit of advice I’ve heard is commenting. I’m supposed to find other blogs that my potential readers might visit and write something. That’s probably good advice, but it takes a serious commitment. The grass still needs cutting. The more people who see my name and a link to this blog or my book pages, the more likely they are to buy. 

I can hope.

Another avenue to the same end is writing book reviews for amazon.com and other public forums. That tightens the circle between famous authors and me. The problem is, by the time I get a copy of a book worth reviewing, I’m like, the 2047^th person to review it and it’s already on remainders.

Maybe I should read the first chapter at Barnes and Noble and make something up about the rest of the book. I think that’s what editors do with my books. They read the first sentence and decide I’m not worth looking any farther.

It’s a tough world out there.