Indie Life: The Most Important Ways To Promote an Indie Book

This post is for the Indie Life blog hop, please visit their site!

Now, I'd like to make it clear that the 'ways' given in this blog post do NOT originate with me. I've only ever self-published one book--- a poetry book--- and I have never promoted it much and so haven't sold many copies.

This advice comes from a REAL writer, one who has been published traditionally and who has self-published. And what he says, essentially, is that these are the seven most important ways to promote your indie book:

1. Write a great book.
2. Write a great book.
3. Write a great book.
4. Write a great book.
5. Write a great book.
6. Write a great book.
7. Everything else--- web presence, reviews, publicity, book signings....

And sadly, numbers 1-6 are EXACTLY where the average indie writer falls down. This is how you can find out how badly go to Amazon.com and make like you are shopping for a new Kindle book. When you spot a book you suspect is an indie book, one that is big enough news to have 20 or more reviews, check out the bad reviews--- 2s and 3s, 1s, if any--- and see what they have to say.

Aside from complaints about spelling and grammar, I've seen complaints about boring story lines and flat characters, major plot holes, never-resolved issues, and, in one case, an author who confusingly calls important characters different names in different parts of the book.

The next way to find out where indie authors go wrong is to read the sample chapters provided. Often you will see that the very bad review you read about it was actually somewhat flattering as the book has flaws that weren't mentioned. Or you might find that it's not BAD, exactly. Just dull. Grading-school-papers-from-C-students dull.

The way NOT to end up one of those indie writers who makes readers resolve to NEVER read another indie book again, even if it's free, is to WRITE A GREAT BOOK. What is the first step to that? Write. Write lots. Write stuff you will never publish. Always have another writing project in the pipeline. You may need to write 10 bad novels before you write a good one, and 5 good novels before you write a great one. Do that writing.

To improve the quality of that writing, I'd suggest reading every how-to-write book you can discover that is written by someone who really knows about the writing business. Stephen King, Jerry B. Jenkins, Lawrence Block, Orson Scott Card, James Scott Bell, and Holly Lisle are among the writers who have written at least one book on writing. Donald Maass is a literary agent who has written a book on the subject. 

As a indie writer, you may lose a lot of readers because those readers believe indie fiction = badly written fiction. The number one way to fix that problem is not to self-promote like hell, but to deliver an excellent product that will GRAB the reader and not let go. Books like that don't need you to self-promote like hell. They cause readers to talk about your book to others voluntarily, and people will buy/download copies not because they've been urged to, but because they WANT to.

Have you ever cut into your writing time to promote a finished/published book in some way? Do you think that was a good decision or a bad one? How many indie books have you read that were as high-quality as books by a major publishing house author? Does finding a book like that make you more enthusiastic about being an indie author?




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