I am in the early stages of figuring out what the hell it is I’m doing! So, the dream was to publish a novel. Done. Now what? It doesn’t matter if you build it, they don’t know where to come. Not just spamming friends and family, but planning out the path and finding resources for the kind of exposure I’d need to build a fan base has been both daunting and scary. Daunting in finding the right resources; scary in taking the next logical step in making contact.
I’m beginning to compile a list of known Civil War book reviewers and forum sites and then will have to go ahead and do it. It is the doing it. Sending out the books for review and waiting for the outcomes. I know what I wrote and how the story developed, but I cannot be the judge of my own quality or desirability market wise. I can only hope that with some luck and the planning we can begin to meet some of our goals.
Surprisingly, this isn’t much different than landing a traditional deal save that marketing is totally up to me instead of mostly up to me. The explosion of eBooks and the Kindle Direct Publishing, Smashwords eBook delivery/publishing models it is possible to make equal money to the traditionally published authors if you study the system and exploit it. It brings some hope, but nothing is for free and nothing comes easy. It is a different world now for self publishing. We have professionally edited the novel and professionally created the cover. Now we just need to leverage the social networks to accomplish what any Guerrilla Marketer would do, use what is free wherever possible.
We shall see how this all goes.