I hope you will check out this post from guest blogger, Dawson Vosburg about his book, Double Life (The Adventures of Josiah Jones), and about using the Amazon Kindle, either as a reader or as an author. I've mentioned his book once before: he is a very young, new author and has just sold 300 copies of his book, almost all due to Kindle sales (over 100 this month, alone). You'd never guess that he is still too young to drive. Be sure to check out his book, especially if you have younger readers at home -- one of these days, you'll be saying that you were one of his earliest fans.----------------------------------------------
Thanks for having me on the blog, Karen.
First I would like to introduce my book. The title is Double Life, and it's an exciting science-fiction young adult adventure that takes place in an imaginary secret government agency called the BLUE. It follows Josiah Jones on his mission to defeat the evil crime syndicate, the RED Agency. It's available in print and on the Kindle on Amazon.
Print: http://www.amazon.com/Double-Life-Dawson-Vosburg/dp/1435724283/
Kindle for 80 cents: http://www.amazon.com/Double-Adventures-Josiah-Jones-ebook/dp/B002BH4H3Q/
I think it's just absolutely wonderful to be an author. I think I have the best job in the world-I get to tell stories and people will HAND ME MONEY TO READ THEM. And that in itself is amazing...that people are willing to pay for something you crafted out of your imagination.
But the question for authors really is who will buy your book. Who will be the ones who will gladly hand over their hard-earned cash for your labor and toil for this book? That's the key to being a successful author-to find your audience and hook it.
How do you hook it? If you wrote your book for yourself (like you probably should, because that usually results in the best work) then you know who your audience is. It's you.
Think about it-where do you usually find out good reads? This should be your primary marketing tool or handle. If you find out about books from word-of-mouth, which you probably do, then you have to generate word of mouth. The problem most authors face is how to get the WOM started. Where do these big famous books get all the WOM that they do?
The answer is that the WOM was started with the author. They told people about it, those people read it and liked it, and they told more people. It spreads like a virus, thus it's called viral marketing.
So how to tell people? Here's a few options:
Twitter. This is why this site is popular for authors and publishers and marketers-because people follow you if you say you're an author. But really what it's for is to bring people to a more personal and less crowded place where they can hang out. That's called our second option, the blog.
The blog goes great with Twitter. Twitter can drive people to your blog, where they can feel more relaxed reading a conversational post. Post by post, you can draw them into your book and get them more and more interested in you and your book.
Realize that people won't usually buy your book at first pass. After several times, they will be familiar enough that when they see your book they will be genuinely interested. You must first draw them in, through your blog and your Twitter, before approaching for a sale.
And those are only generic things that work for almost every book-there are tons of options depending on your niche. Find your audience (you) and connect with your readers in thet way.
Good luck, happy reading, and happy writing!
Dawson
http://dawsonvosburg.blogspot.com
http://thepodjournal.wordpress.com
