Promotion in this business is really hard. Sometimes it pays off, sometimes it doesn’t and that’s hard because you may never know why. Some people do very little promotion and do fairly well, others promo their butts off and don’t sell that well.
For me, I think you’re more likely to get out what you put in. If you spend the time and money it takes to promote yourself and your work, you at least have a better shot of doing well. Books don’t usually sell themselves. Especially e-books because the publishing houses are so small. For e-books, I think it’s all about the legwork. Which means I need to promo more, but it astounds me that some people expect great sales with no work. Do they think the work ends when they sell their book? Ha! That’s an urban writing myth if I ever heard one.
Promo for e-books means getting active on blogs and loops, doing interviews, taking out ads, etc etc. The list goes on. There are a lot of things you can do as a writer to get your name out there, but again…ya gotta work.
Work, work, work. And hopefully that translates in to sales, sales, sales.
