Hello again – day three update on ‘getting your book out there’. We got up to the idea of self-promoting by video. So if you’re not bothered about getting your face out there and being a brand and being as was recognise, whether for good or bad, then get a camera out and get vlogging. If you’re British and aged anywhere between 16 and 26 it seems you need to get some stupid haircut, a vest, some lame tattoo and a baseball cap then you are guaranteed some sort of audience, so that’s another option, just get yourself out there I suppose and get your mug known, if you’re comfortable with that. Trust me someone will find you attractive and want to see more of you.

Thirdly, and finally the most difficult position to achieve is seeing that it’s just gone viral, just for being good! I know, weird and extremely rare but it does still happen. I’m talking pulling a Harry Potter here and selling along those lines where, just by sheer coincidence, your book arrives at the right moment to the right crowd and people just love it and share it around. Now that’s the golden goose which every writer, guaranteed, is after I mean if that happened to me, as I have I said before, I would strip off naked and run around where I live as I would be so happy – but the reality is that is it impossible to set that up for yourself – it just has to happen. The first two options earlier this week are in your control, to some extent, and a lot of people have gone down those paths but you have to be a bit narcissistic and vain to pull off either one via self-promotion – and if you are successful down that route you are very public and a lot of negativity will also come your way would be a tough thing to manage, case of ‘be careful what a you wish for’. Whereas the last and I suppose the best option is that you have to be incredibly lucky (and fairly talented of course) so it may happen organically, “fingers crossed” but as we have no control over that I need to stick with the theme of sharing my experiences and offering some advice to you guys.

So, back to reality, the only way to get a marketing scheme going viral is to work hard, enjoy it and do what you can to get good content. Marketing is about manipulating people to do what you want and promotion can lead people to look at your stuff but then you just have to hope people enjoy it and will take a moment out of their day to post it on facebook or Twitter or email all their contacts with your book and recommend it – to get some momentum going on it.  I admit that I do these little series to try and help boost my book sales and boost my overall exposure but the reason I put a lot of time into it is because I enjoy doing them. I could do this on a vlog and it will take me a quarter of the time, and I’ll be honest, in this visual world I probably would get more hits, but I don’t do that because I enjoy this way of communicating. I do it here because this is what I want to do, I want to be a writer not a vlogger and I want to do that as my main job. This is the only stage in my life where I can, for a while, decide entirely how I want to live, as I have no obligations to others, and if can’t put my efforts into the things I want to do and in the way I want to do them then what’s the point?  I feel that  people who work incredibly hard do so because it is rewarding, satisfying and they love doing what they do – isn’t that a great way to live? So, I hope you guys enjoy what I write and will help me reach my goal by picking up my books, enjoying the content and recommending to others- that would grow interest organically and that would be cool.

Now you have worked out how to promote your book, within the constraints re budget and what you feel comfortable doing – you need to think about where to place it.  Everyone thinks Amazon these days but there are other routes and I have just started working with Lulu.com so I will share with you how that is going tomorrow.  And to all those facing A level results tomorrow – Good Luck.

Don’t forget – if you want to help me with my book launch then do pick up a copy on any of these and share with your friends and colleagues Kindle http://goo.gl/8sRWMA   Lulu.com http://goo.gl/vkU0FQ     Kobo https://goo.gl/lSye4X