All right, I admit it. I was preoccupied with The War Horn's release. I was rather absorbed in revision and formatting too, jumping through Amazon's hoops to get The War Horn on the market.
And I say it freely (but with some pain): I really don't know what I'm doing when it comes to marketing. (Although I did manage to create the above banner. It's not half as bad as I thought it would be, but I'm no digital artist, so I kept it simple.)
I've heard it said that half the success of bestselling books comes because they're well-marketed. Oops! Because until The War Horn's initial sales rush started slacking off—about three days after the release date—I hadn't really put much thought to it.
However, I do have an inkling of what I need to do. To spread the word, there are several things I can do:
1) Get The War Horn going on sites like Goodreads and Shelfari.
Check. Here's The War Horn's Goodreads page, by the way, and here's The War Horn's Shelfari page. Feel free to take a look!
2) Get reviews and have readers spread the word.
This part doesn't depend on me. While I know that you all have busy lives—after all, I'm a "reader" of other blogs too—if you read The War Horn and truly liked it, I'd appreciate if you'd spread the word on Goodreads, Shelfari, and especially Amazon.com. That would be an enormous help.
And even if you don't have the time to plaster reviews, if you read The War Horn, shoot me an email and tell me what you thought.
Other than this rather meager plan, though, I have no marketing strategy. (It really embarrasses me to say so, but it's true.)
So I decided to ask you. Do any of you have any advice on the matter? Have you picked up anything from other authors that might help in spreading the word and getting The War Horn "out there"? Any particularly good resources? (I'd ask for book titles on the matter, but my choices in books are mostly limited to what I either buy or what I'd get through Kindle Lending Library.)
Thanks, all. You're awesome. :)
