The colossal effort continues to surprise me. I'm not complaining, mind you, this IS a lifelong dream. Yet.

Writing a novel is hard.
Making it as good as you can make it, also not easy.
Transforming a .doc file to a pretty object to hold in the hand— exquisitely tough. 
Helping the book get to readers: off the charts difficult.

It's a mountain range of data to climb to understand even a little about how to market and promote a book these days.  Amazon reviews! NetGalley reviews! TikTok! Amazon ads! Blogs! Goodreads reviews! Vlogs! Contests! Pinterest! Reddit! Bookbub promotions! Newsletters! In-person events! Print publications! Instagram! Kobo promotions!

All to the good in my ongoing quest to blaze new neurological pathways, but also, just—Wow. It's a lot.

Wouldn't it be cool if I could describe a coherent, clever strategy I used? Alas, my marketing efforts have been a bit of mad scramble, learning on the fly at the last possible moment.

I started from what I knew: Press releases and e-mails went to my local news outlets and business contacts: an old-school strategy that was frankly useless.

Book reviews used to be the way the word was spread: you'd hear about a book in The New York Times, or your local newspaper, magazines, or on television. Alas, without the backing of a traditional publishing company, none of these traditional media outlets gives non-traditionally published books the time of day.  

​I mean, honestly, even my alumni magazine disses self-published works. ​

Luckily, as the landscape has changed (how many of us subscribes to a local newspaper?!), on-line reviews from peers have become increasingly valuable. Which is why I have and continue to ask (politely but incessantly!) for readers to leave a review, even if they didn't love the book. Reviews on Amazon, StoryGraph, iTunes, Goodreads, are at the core of my advertising. 

On the advice of some YouTube experts, I contacted on-line book bloggers and interviewers and made headway with a couple of mentions/interviews. Results (ie, sales and other actual metrics) were inconclusive, though each mention contributes to the book's online bona fides. Which is ultimately worth SOMEthing.

I visited many local bookstores with books in hand, which was gratifying when it works. And rather deflating when it didn't. I really want to support my independent bookstores, yet some were mystifyingly aloof and unfriendly.  Poor things: they don't know what they're missing.

To focus on the joy: I love my local Barnes&Noble, I adore The Little Bookstore of Clayton, I am smitten by The Gilded Page in Tarpon Springs, I treasure Book+Bottle in St. Petersburg.  Angels and saints walk among us, many sporting tats and selling books. I am grateful, and they get my business when I am buying.

A foray onto TikTok connected me to some really fascinating peers and helped me overcome what little self-consciousness I had been carrying. I do in fact look and sound like that these days. Woosh! 

More importantly for the book marketing efforts, TikTok has made me a more cautious consumer of online opinion.  There are hundreds of earnest book lovers talking about books they love and hate; there are hundreds more who look as if they have passionate opinions but who are side-hustling as advertising shills. It's a performative world out there.

Other things I've learned from YouTube and the generosity of other writers: a person can leverage content.  This sounds jargonish, but in plain language, this means recycling.

For instance, a blog I wrote ten or 13 years ago (omg!) can be polished and posted on Substack. Bookish content I filmed for TikTok last year can be reposted on Pinterest and YouTube.  

Over and over and over. ​

When I worked in adult learning, one of the designers had a poster that consisted of 99 thumbnail photos of a person saying "Sit," to the dog standing at her feet, along with a final tiny picture of the dog sitting, and the person saying, "Good dog."

Granted, that message was a bit toxic and reductive, but also, it was not wrong.  

​So I'll be over here continuing to natter on and on about She Taught Me Everything and the second (ooh! I know what the name's gonna be!) novel.  

Perhaps, I can imagine certain old friends pointing out, I'll natter on and on because I do, yeah yeah, but also because like that 100th tiny photo, Good dog! 

​Oh how I ache to work in a reference to the soccer fans' chant about Roy Kent! 

Consumer ratings are here, are there, are every-something-where for some really good reasons.

It's hard to trust the internet.
I know, reeeeeealy?

Most of us wonder is it advertising, is it paid placement, or is it plain old fakery?  One way around the uncertainty is to get word-of-mouth recommendations, yet in this marvelous part of the 21st C, that takes time. 

So we turn to the social part of media: we check who recommends any given item—and we look at customer feedback before plunking down our cash or time.

How often has the phrase "worked great for about a week" convinced us to select some other Amazon gadget?
 
Speaking of the 'Zon, shall we walk through how to do customer feedback on the world's largest retailer for a book?

Start by finding the book listing on Amazon. Scroll down the page to "write a customer review."
​
​Pick a number of stars. Skip over the headline part for now.

The feedback can feel hard. Stuck for words? Think about the Who, What, How, Why, of the story:
 
Who did you like or dislike in the characters?  (For Moby-Dick, "I liked Ahab, he was poetic and strange.")

What kind of story was it–sad, humorous, romantic, spicy––and did you enjoy that? ("The story was one long whale chase on the high seas. There was a lot of belly-aching, which I could do without, tbh.")

How did the book unfold, how was it told, how did it make you feel? ("Moby-Dick has beautiful descriptions of a lost way of life, which I really appreciated. The obsessive captain was so emotional I was kind of tired just reading it.")

and Why or not you recommend. ("This book is a classic, and it's hard to read, but in the end I felt like I really accomplished something.")

If you didn't finish the book, say why. ("My own white whale showed up.")

The only do-not? Don't mention or imply a connection to the author. Amazon doesn't want someone's mom stuffing the ballot box...

Finally, send a flare up for readers who might like the product. ("This is good for fans of seafaring adventures or anyone working on their vocab.")

Then go back to pick a headline ("Vocab on the high seas")

Press the "submit" button and voilá! you have provided insight for readers, writers, and publishers. You rule.

Pro tip: you don't need to buy the book from Amazon to share your opinion about it. Yep. You can go in and share your opinion regardless. 

Same with other retailers like KOBO and Barnes & Noble... those links can be seen here, btw.
www.amysmithlinton.com/get-a-book.html

Even if you didn't enjoy it at all, don't be shy. It's helpful for other readers to know that someone else has given the book a try and has had an honest reaction.  

Cheers!