How do people market online?

[Jeivar]

I'm an Icelandic fantasy novelist, and I've been publishing one book a year since 2011. This February I finally broke into the English-language market putting one of my novels up on Amazon as an ebook. For a while it sold about one copy a day, but has lain still for over a week.

I know a big part of being noticed and marketing today is in online activity, but posting video game and tabletop related posts on this forum has represented about half of my online presence. I have a little used Facebook page but I've never used Twitter or any of the other major social sites. And I'm just not sure how this is all done. HOW to raise interest in my writing and get involved without being a jackass who posts "Hey, I wrote a book, check it out!" anywhere I can.

I would appreciate some advice, as I'm trying to make a career out of this.

[Socratov]

well, I'd say start at Reddit. Reddit behaves a bit like rule 34, but then for forums. There is a subreddit for just about anything you can think of. One or more of them are bound to be populated by writers lookign for criticism, or for people looking to exchange amazon reviews.

[Grinner]

I'm not really a writer, just an observer of things, so take my advice with a grain of salt.

As far as I can tell, developing a following is like setting fire to a house. To follow the comparison, if you strike a match and toss it on the floor, you're not guaranteed to need the fire department. The match may burn out before anything else catches. The trick, I think, is to find the right thing to toss the match on.

I think perhaps you've already grasped this, though, and you are actually asking where the match should be tossed. I have no idea. The best tool you could have would be an agent, since successful agents have the necessary contacts to get a big publisher to seriously consider your book. Publishers, while it was feared that self-publishing would put them out of business, still have several resources important to commercial success, to make books stand out: money, networks, and staff. In fact, I don't know of one author who has achieved any significant degree of commercial success without a publisher.

I'm going to assume you have chosen to not pursue that route however, making this a much trickier task. The closest analogue to your position I can think of is that of Jeff Vogel, an indie game designer since 1995. I will reference him later.

Now, your issue here is publicity. When I began writing this post, I was thinking that being a pillar of the community would be the way to go. You would establish yourself as being such a great guy in just the right community that people cannot simply ignore the link to your book. In doing so, you would garner a bit of a following. With sustained effort and many novels later, that humble spark might blossom into blazing housefire.

This seems to be the primary option to me, but I can't say I recommend it. Doing that much PR is a lot of work. In fact, it's a full-time job. One without pay. For you, at least. That's going to suck up all of your writing time. You need that writing time to complete all of those sequels, prequels, side stories, and the tabletop RPG you'll need. See, people love expanded universes. There's a particular breed of fan that just can't help but buy entire series. I expect them to be single, have no children, and have substantial income. They say that 80% of a company's sales come from 20% of its customers; these people are that 20%. Unfortunately, you're fighting with the likes of George RR Martin for their attention and limited reading time. And he has an agent. That said, you need some kind of PR.

With that in mind, you have to have something worth buying. I hate to say it, but unless there's something about your book that catches attention, people simply aren't going to pay attention. It doesn't necessarily need to be something unique, though that helps tremendously. In regard to the craft of writing, anything beyond this point is beyond my expertise. I wanna say there should be an element of bottled lightning, of captured inspiration, but I can't validate that suspicion.

So...Where does that leave you? Is your book worth buying? Or was it largely a personal piece? What about it would appeal to me, the initially judgemental customer, when there's numerous other books out there. Is it witty and clever? Does it sing like good poetry? Or is it just...forgettable? I must leave that to you to determine.

Moving on, the earlier-mentioned Jeff Vogel has some advice you may find useful. I'm not sure how similar the game market is to the fiction market, so bear in mind that not all of it may be perfectly applicable. In this blog-post, he mentions how you want to represent yourself as an inventor, but I have to wonder how well the writer matches the inventor.

Without further ado:

• How You're Going To Price Your Computer Game - The takeaway from this is that your first few months are critical to sales. That's where the money is made. Beyond that, they just trickle into nothing. Price accordingly.
• Surviving In the Post-Indie Bubble Wasteland!!! - Be helpful. Don't alienate your customers. Goodwill is money. People love indies.
• Marketing, Dumb Luck, and the Popping of the Indie Bubble - Get lucky. No one cares about you. Figure out your own marketing process. Competition is a lot harder these days. (Actually, I think the "bubble" in writing popped a long time ago...)
• You Gotta Pay Your Dues If You Want To Sing the Blues - I've heard it said that it takes ten years to make an overnight success. That's what this article is about.
• Three Reasons Creators Should Never Read Their Forums - People are asses. For the sake of your wallet, do not talk to asses.

You might have noticed that Jeff has given several bits of contradictory advice throughout his articles: people like indies, but no one cares about indies; maintain a constant online presence, but talk to no one for fear of alienating them or another customer. This serves as a useful metaphor for life. Fundamentally, you're on your own, and if you ask a question, be prepared to sort through twenty-five different answers.

After dredging up these articles, I thought about pulling some other links from my bookmarks, but I can't seem to find them...Anyway, there's this one, which talks about balancing customer demands and your own reasons for writing (besides making money).

Godspeed and good luck.

[Madcrafter]

I know a big part of being noticed and marketing today is in online activity, but posting video game and tabletop related posts on this forum has represented about half of my online presence. I have a little used Facebook page but I've never used Twitter or any of the other major social sites. And I'm just not sure how this is all done. HOW to raise interest in my writing and get involved without being a jackass who posts "Hey, I wrote a book, check it out!" anywhere I can.

You should do these things. You know your target market. Find them online, and go to their forums and communities. Engage. As much as you may not like to tell people you wrote some books, as it stands, there is no other way they will ever find them unless you personally have sent them there. It could be as simple as adding a "Hey I'm an author, check out my books here" to your signature, maybe mentioning it directly if it is particularly relevant. You don't have to (and probably shouldn't) be pushy, but people actually have to know your books exist to want to buy them.

The poster above that mentions reddit has a good idea I think. A quick google gave me r/Fantasy, which has 74.5k readers. Being engaged in the community there could sell tons of copies (they have some guidelines for self-promotion and even run a writer of the day thing that you could sign up for), as well as possibly being in general good for your own appreciation of the genre.

[blacklight101]

well, I'd say start at Reddit. Reddit behaves a bit like rule 34, but then for forums. There is a subreddit for just about anything you can think of. One or more of them are bound to be populated by writers lookign for criticism, or for people looking to exchange amazon reviews.

I have a friend that uses reddit and has an etsy page. It seems to work quite well for her.

[Socratov]

That said, we could just ask our resident forumite who has actually become published with a series of urban fantasy novels.