Indie Book Club discussion

Anyone have thoughts on how to market your books without being a pain in the culo? There so many examples of what not to do (the follow/unfollow game on twitter, blaring out your sales pitch in every online forum, etc.) but what strategies attract people's attention rather than their ire?

Ha, I wish I knew this.

I think when you've got an offer on it's legitimate to tweet about it often, or that sort of thing, as it's time limited.

Likewise when a book's only just out. Personally, I think a fairly short, straightforward pitch is the way to go. Everyone has tons of low cost or no cost books to try, so just give a basic rundown and if it's their cup of tea, maybe they'll check it out.

Well, that's my view, for what it's worth.

Goodread Giveaways are great for exposure. I've had great success wit book ad sites like Freebooksy, Bargainbooksy, Readcheaply, ereader news today, etc. Bookbub is the ultimate, but is harder to get into, and I guess SF/F don't sell well on there.

For SF/F books you can use http://www.fantascize.com which has a 300K+ active Facebook following. Some authors have had luck with targeted Facebook ads. I ran one ad but wasn't worth the money. I might try again though.

Things I've tried, but didn't work at all for me: banner ads on sites and twitter ad campaigns where book sites tweet about book deals.

Good luck!

Fantacize charges, so isn't suitable for everyone but I guess at least it targets fantasy readers.

I wish I knew.
Blogging, networking, talking about other things than BUY MY BOOK. Although what a correct level of promotion is tends to be hard to know. One person might get annoyed by even one mention, others might not.

I have NEVER looked at book links on twitter - although I retweet and I've never had book links followed. Facebook, I buy via promo on facebook all the time, but mostly from authors who have at least put the effort in to network.

Never done a goodreads giveaway. Heard very mixed reviews about them.

I did a Goodreads giveaway, got two nice reviews, a lot of people listing my book as "To Read", but it was impossible to tell if this led to sales.

For what it's worth, I have sometimes downloaded free books that were advertised on Twitter. That said, I do usually filter such things from my mind when scanning ye olde twitterfeed.

Try reading 'Your First 1,000 Copies'Tim Grahl. It's helped me a lot. For some reason I couldn't get the title to come up, so I linked the author. There are also some good podcasts like https://www.anymeeting.com/WebConfere... . GREAT stuff.