Its been too long since I last spoke to you and that is due to commitments concerning the re-launch of Dead Men Lie on June 4th. For all those who might be interested (and I hope to see a great many of you at the event) I am pleased to announce that all the differing elements begin to come together. The venue is booked, the books are printed, the posters and handouts ready. More importantly, and no doubt the ladies of Rye will swoon at the thought, but Colonel Maitland and Sir Percival will be attending along with Mistress Abigail. Look out Rye for these three to be among you drumming up support. I hope the many visitors that day will appreciate our hard work. If in the vicinity do please drop in it should be entertaining.More importantly the wine is chilling nicely.
Why are we doing this? That question has been asked more than once and the simple answer is that we made mistakes with the previous additions. Oh shame on me we erred, we rushed into production and I sent the wrong copy to the printers. We are all fallible but I have lost count of the times I have been told of my errors. Which is both annoying and complimentary. Annoying because I wonder how many readers contact Publishing houses to point out their glaring mistakes. Conversely its rather gratifying that readers feel able to contact us and feel they are adding to the production process. Anyway we took the bold decision to withdraw the book from sale. While out of production we sat down and tore it apart, checked every dot and comma, every sentence and every plot line. The version, we have now is as good as we can make it. We have added a few twists, removed a lot of excess baggage and tightened the dialogue up so that Dead Men Lie reads so much better.Once we had the product, we needed to ask ourselves more searching questions, questions all Indie authors I believe should ask themselves. What do we do about advertising and promotion. That is the wall we all hit and which few manage to break through so lets look at why.
Self publishers fall into two categories. Those who write and publish for the pleasure of seeing their work in print, unfairly in my opinion commonly refereed to as vanity printers. Most will agree that, with all the good intentions in the world, few expect to sell more than a few copies, most of which go to family and friends. I do not decry or demean their efforts in any way, but they do add to the perception readers have of anyone who self publishes. Such views are not applicable to everyone, with the uncertainty of the publishing world we see more talented and well known authors joining the ranks of the self publisher from the world of the main stream publishing. This can only be a good thing they bring a degree of credibility to those of us who continue against all odds to make a mark.
How then do we break through into the wonderful world that beckons to us from the mists of invisibility? More importantly how do we stand out from the thousands that try to advertise their work on mainstream social media sites and who are our targeted audience? Like everyone else I went to the well known social sites to advertise my book. I enthused and waxed lyrical about its merits, the web site was looked at but who was I actually speaking to?
Each morning I have grown more disillusioned, each morning my in boxes are filled, not with orders or comments from readers, but with endless postings about cakes or cats, games and ghoulies. Personally I have a passing interested in all four but when I get upwards of 250 such messages the only thing to do is quickly scan for anything interesting and then delete. Therefore I have to conclude that all my so called friends are doing exactly the same thing.
Lets be fair, we have all spent hours, days, weeks and months slaving to hone our work as such we want it read. Which is why we flock to the same sites, I won't mention names here but we all know who I allude to. We join this group and that, we display our work and await the responses. Few though read our postings after the initial few weeks so we attempt to increase our circles of friend. We go for the same people, authors, we all think they are the people to give us what we desire but authors haven't the time to actually read anything apart from the first initial brief examination. I stand as guilty as the rest, authors, no matter how genuine they at first appear, are motivated by one thing only self promotion and sales. Therefore I have to ask am I engaging in the right sort of people?
If as assumed many are leaving these sites in droves, we must develop other areas where we can advertise and sell our work. We must develop a different approach to find those willing to buy our books. But where and what can be done. We the self-publisher, by design, do not have access to the resources of the major publishing houses. We have to struggle for every sale. Therefore we have to be adaptable but we have to firstly make sure the product is as good as we can make it. Despite the professional publishers making horrendous mistakes, they are rarely criticised. Errors abound while some of the stories are far from enjoyable yet obtain cult status simply because they are published by proper companies. I am no literary giant, but I know what I like, some of the so called best sellers are too be fair less than appealing
Secondly I think we need to be more flexible in how we find readers. Where are they and how do we connect to them. Most do not reside online, the majority of readers are middle aged to elderly, I have discovered that a lot do not and will not use the internet if they can avoid it. Yes Amazon is the preferred choice to buy books and is a formidable tool but there has to be other choices available to those who would still like to buy a 'proper book'. There we the self-publisher run into another brick wall bookshops are reluctant if not down right blinkered in stocking our work and I can see their point. A self Published book is difficult to sell at a reasonable price, add too that equation the risks involved and a thousand and one other reasons and an Indie is unlikely to find a main stream book shop willing to take a chance.
Therefore we have to be bold and go into the world and peddle our books whenever and wherever we can. That isn't something many of us are willing or able to do. Family commitments and cost all eat into our valuable writing time or so we say. But why do we have this narrow view of our life? We chose to put our work out there to be read by not only reviewers, and other authors, but by the general public. So as the old saying goes in the mountain won't come to Mohammad than Mohammad must go to the mountain.
This year I am facing my public, I will do whatever is required to get my work into the readers hands. The reason being I believe in my book, my readers, apparently like what I have done and if others read it they will think the same way. Once again I implore other Indie authors not to dwell among those who flatter but do little, reach out and find your own audience. I will keep you informed as to how this year goes after what is the worst that can happen someone tells you to your face your work is rubbish. If they do smile, thank them, and move on. For another potential buyer approaches as they walk away.
I make one last appeal. If anyone would like an author to attend a school feat, a village fair, a summer or spring fair or even a dog show contact me and if I can fit it in I will.
Here are my links
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dead-Men-Lie-David-Procter-ebook/dp/B007SECH7A/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1395151701&sr=1-1&keywords=dead+men+lie
WEB SITE http://www.davidtprocterbooks.co.uk/?alt_id=NFHXF-M1A86-1V2&ts=1394173080995
Thanks for reading and if you feel the same way don't just sit and wring your hands join me in doing something about it. E-mail me at davidtprocter@mail.com to whinge to moan or to join with me in bringing good quality Indie books to the reading public.
Until another day Dave
No comments:
Post a Comment