Newsletters, Mailing Lists and Author Self Promotion

I have been giving a lot of thought recently to how I can look to expand my reach. To be quite frank, I am not living up to my potential. I do not say this in an attempt to sound pretentious or anything of such high-headed ilk, but on a much lower level. I have received only one negative review across all of my books, and that was a woman who bought it in error, but felt it worthwhile to leave a one star review saying just that.

Everybody who has read my fiction has been glowing about it, especially Diaries of the Damned and Books of Blood. The problem is, not enough people are reading them.

I am confident enough in the quality of my writing to know it is not the stories that is holding me back, but myself. My limited abilities, and limited attempts to sell my work are causing my career to stall. Sure, churning out the words is good, but you need to be selling them also, especially if you want to make it a career.

I do not expect to see my name sitting atop the NYT Best Sellers list, or anywhere near the lower names on the same list, but I would like my sales to reach a point where I could at least buy a week’s worth of gas with the proceeds.

I am in this for the long haul, and please don’t take this for a stamping my feet style tantrum. I see my friends around me making great strides, and feel as if I am falling behind. They are all talented writers, and I begrudge them nothing. I am delighted for all of them, it is just that I would like to see my own work making similar strides.

Knowing that this is all on me, does help, in some way. The problem is mine, I am the cause and therefore also the solution.

With this in mind, I am toying with the idea of starting a newsletter. A weekly, or maybe bi-weekly thing. I will incorporate parts of my updates from the week, along with snippets of the writing I have done, ideas that have been blowing through my brain. A little bit of everything, and of course, run some giveaways, and small competitions to hopefully get people talking about my books.

How this will be more effective than the blog, I don’t know. I’ve never understood mailing lists or newsletters, but it is worth a try, surely.

I have always been bad at networking, certainly when it comes to pimping myself. I am confident in my work, as I have said above, but I am always cautions of coming across as a pompous asshat.

The first thing for me would be to actually build up a list of people, to encourage people to sign up. I think the simplest way would be a free book, one of the Diaries of the Damned Chapter books. That would serve a good purpose of giving people something for signing up and also, it could get them interested in the story and hopefully lead to some sales of the full novel.

I tried this once before a couple of years ago, and got three names signed up. One actually went on to become a very close friend. I am now wiser, however, and have a better catalogue of work to my name, not to mention a real plan for where I am going and what I am writing.

I first need to figure out the best way to manage the sign up. I guess a simple Google Docs file. It is easy to create, easy to manage and easy for people to use when signing up. I can also easily manage the numbers, and identify winners for the various competitions and things I will run.

What do you think?

Would you be interested in signing up?

Thanks for reading.

 

Do you fancy giving one of my books a try? Come on over to my author page on Amazon and take your pick. I have novels such as Highway to Hell and Blood of the Tainted, through my chapter book zombie series, Diaries of the Damned.

The majority of my books are enrolled in the Kindle Unlimited program, so if you are an Amazon Prime member, you can read them for free!