So I’ve gotten a ton of messages about how I got The Punch Escrow to "Quill" in 10 days. Hopefully this is useful to some of you. I think it basically boils down to: Treat it like a job. It’s your job to get your book sold. If you believe in what you’ve got, if you think you know the audience you wrote it for will love it, then invest your time, energy, and money in your project.
1. Get lucky. Luck is something you need to succeed. Luck is something you can actually control. If you don’t believe me,
do the research. Having a
lucky attitude makes a huge difference.
2. Move quickly! I learned this through a couple decades in marketing. When it comes to contests, creating a distance between you and anyone behind you pays back huge dividends. Once you’ve established yourself as the frontrunner, you gain the benefit of being perceived as the favored incumbent. It pays to burn through all of your promotional energy early. If you manage to grasp first place, trust me, you will find a second wind. If you don’t, then you’ll have a pretty good perspective of your likelihood of winning and you can make the call on how much energy to reinvest based on that analysis.
3. I steadfastly followed the advice given by previous
Inkshares contests winners. I hustled really really hard and harassed everyone I knew through multiple channels: Texts,
twitter,
FB, WhatsApp, Snapchat, even
LinkedIn. I would say personal contacts accounted for over 50% of the pre-ordered books. I injected a sense of urgency by explaining the contest, the timeline, and the ask: "I’m in a contest to publish my first book. If sci fi is your thing, you’re going to love it. Especially if you like hard sci fi, like The Martian. I need to get 250 pre-orders to get it published. Please
click here to pre-order it."
5. Get to know your fellow authors. Inkshares is an AMAZING community of readers and authors. I have yet to have a negative interaction with anyone here. I’ve joined three Syndicates and have interacted with countless authors. Everyone here has something valuable to pass on to you. It’s worth listening.
6. Promote and Invest! Remember when I said treat your book like your job? Well, you should
also treat is like an investment. There’s a flywheel effect when people see you investing in your own work. It makes them feel like you really believe in it. I’ve been creating a ton of world-building content,
videos, as well as taking advantage of
every interview opportunity,
promoted tweets,
Facebook boosts, and such. If publishing this book is your dream, invest in making your dream come true.
So, these are the six steps I followed. Hopefully it’s useful to you. If you have more specific questions about those or the book itself, I’m at your service.
