Strictly Internet Marketing for Fiction

Marketing non-fiction focuses on showing that the book solves a problem and does it faster, better, cheaper. Marketing fiction depends on making the author someone others admire, respect and think of as larger than life: someone they want to meet. The following familiar quote is untrue:

“If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap, than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.” ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

Examples:

• · Mac vs. PC
• · Beta Max vs. VHS

Edison was correct when he said:

“The best-promoted technology will often beat the best technology.” ~ Thomas Alva Edison

"Success is a finished book, a stack of pages each of which is filled with words. If you reach that point, you have won a victory over yourself no less impressive than sailing single-handed around the world." ~Tom Clancy

If you agree with Clancy that success is just a finished book and you have written a book, you don’t need to be reading this. While writing a book is every bit as impressive as he says, by his analogy making it to a best seller list would be akin to building your own rocket ship, flying to the moon and back all by yourself. It’s not quite that hard. But as fiction writers will tell you, marketing fiction is tough because marketing fiction is all about the author becoming someone that others want to meet—a lot of others.

That’s why I was excited about Guerrilla Networking: A Proven Battle Plan to Attract the Very People You Want to Meet. It’s actually more about becoming the person others want to meet. The measure used to determine success in this book is when you no longer need a business card for people to know who you are. Monroe Mann and Jay Levinson outline specific techniques and strategies to accomplish that. I’ll be explaining some of those techniques in the context of how I’m using them to promote myself and therefore my fiction, primarily The Seventh Mountain: Chronicles of a Magi. You’ll be able to monitor my success or failure based on the Amazon sales rank, which is around 1.5 million today.

I’ll also be using techniques from POD People: Beating the Print-on-Demand Stigma by Jeremy Robinson. Jeremy is a successful author that started as an indie whom I admire; he is kind of a hero in my mind. It has been said that there about 200 fiction authors in the entire world that make a living selling fiction and Jeremy has just about crossed into that rank.

The third book I’ll be using is Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors, Book Publicity through Social Networking by Steve Weber. Steve’s book is geared more toward non-fiction, but many of his techniques compliment Guerrilla Networking: A Proven Battle Plan to Attract the Very People You Want to Meet and POD People: Beating the Print-on-Demand Stigma.

# posted by Gene Curtis @ 6:12 PM