Sales and marketing

So The Ending Dark has been available on amazon.com for about two weeks now. It's pretty exciting, particularly when last week I noticed I had actually sold a book! It was a pretty awesome feeling. So now my goal is to write more and sell more.

How will I do that...that's a very good question. Here are some things I am going to try (I will try to provide updates on how this goes):

-twitter: I joined twitter (@jenwalkerwrites). I have found some authors to follow and have about 20 people following me. I like it because it has allowed me to make some connections and also through the people I follow I have gained a whole lot of advice on writing, publishing, and marketing.

-interview: I have done a few author interviews that will be published on other blogs. My hope is that they will drive interest to my book and perhaps this blog.

-reviews: this is perhaps the most important thing I am trying to do and the most nerve wracking. From what I had read on other blog sites reviews (good reviews) are important to selling more books. So the more good reviews I get the better my book will sell. The nerve wracking part is that I don't know what people will think - honesty is important but I really hope people like the book.

I will let you know if I come up with some other marketing ideas...plus it would be good to get other's thoughts, so leave a comment if you have any ideas.

Book publication

It's finally official! Last week I published my first book The Ending Dark on amazon. You can find my author page at www.amazon.com/author/jenwalker. It's very exciting, but as I am quickly finding out now comes a whole lot more work promoting the book. In a lot of ways I have a feeling at promoting the book is going to be more work than actually writing it.

You have to find ways to get your name out into the world but not push your book all the time. I think one of the keys to doing that is to think like the audience. I know it annoys me when people only want to talk about their product/book. So I have to remember that when I do the same thing others will also find it annoying.

One thing I do wish is that I had started earlier with some if the ideas I am trying to implement. Part of the reason it's so overwhelming now is that I should have been doing a lot of these promotion things weeks/months ago. So my goals right now are to keep up with twitter (@jenwalkerwrites), write more frequent blog posts, comment on discussion boards, and somehow find the time to write another book. Wish me luck!