Just thought I’d post a little update on what I’ve been doing to promote the book. The last week and a half or so has been all about Goodreads.
In case you’re not familiar with it, Goodreads (GR) is like Facebook for readers. You can make friends, share your thoughts on books with them, participate in book giveaways, communicate with authors, etc. You can also look up books and see how community members have rated it (from 1 to 5 stars) and how many people are planning to read it, are currently reading it, or consider it one of their favorite books.
It gets a ton of traffic, so I started an ad campaign there. Initially, I am linking my ads back to my Amazon page, because that’s where my reviews are posted. GR suggests I link my ad back to my own book’s posting on GR in order to facilitate people marking it as “to-read” and being able to see what the community says about it. Initially I didn’t want to do that, but starting sometime in the next week or so I’m going to give it a shot. It is cool to see the list of people marking it as “to-read” grow (and, of course, to see people actually reading it). Here’s one really cool thing that happened yesterday.
“Barbara” bought Alex earlier this week and marked it “currently reading”. Just out of curiosity, I went out and checked her profile. She’s given out 127 ratings, and her average rating was 3.28. Out of those 127, only four were ever given a 5-star rating.
*gulp* That’s a tough critic. I was nervous about what Barbara would think, but I was eager too. So I waited, and yesterday, she gave Alex her fifth five-star rating (ever) and added Alex to her favorite book list.
!
That was absolutely thrilling.
Since I started advertising on GR, I’ve also seen my sales bump up – from an average of one a day to two or three a day now. I’ve tried advertising on a couple other sites, but they’ve resulted in few sales and no buzz. I think my GR campaign is going to be a keeper, and I think I’ll expand it too – probably by doing an “online book club” through their site. I’ll keep Facebook, my website, and the blog here updated with the plan as it develops.
The bridge is no less frightening than it was, but I think I’m learning to at least balance on it.
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