Amidst the gathering storm, rebellions and alliances are sealed and broken, gods cast lots on warring nations, and ravens whisper prophecy into the ears of druids. The renegade blade rises from ash, to burn through the endless night as fire.
I do have to admit that when I sent a DM to some of the folks that followed me or are in my reader pipeline, I saw a huge jump in pre-orders and recommendations. It’s true that the close circles seem to pay off and I guess that on a site like this when you get more personal it seems to matter. Like instead of mass emails and messages, contacting a person directly makes them feel like you are invested in them, and then you can develop relationships and help them out too.
Twitter is a marketing black hole. If you write (and you do) and and tweet about writing using writing-related hashtags (and I’m assuming that you do), then most of your followers will be fellow writers, not readers. Basically, marketing on Twitter is selling to other authors who are only there to sell to you.
I’m in the same position that you are. So far, the vast majority of what I’ve sold (only 17 copies) has been from personal connections...friends, direct emails via the project panel, etc... .
I’ve added some fan art to my page to spiffy it up a bit and am working on a simple book promo video, but there’s still the issue of driving eyeball traffic to the page in the first place...
*cough*
http://shift.greatscifi.space (forwards to inkshares page)
My advice would be to get as much art as possible up on your book page. Even though Inkshares is a book kick starting site we are still very much visual creatures that respond positively to eye candy. That being said some thoughtful formatting of the text on your book page can make it pleasing to the eye and go a long way. Check out my books page. I get a lot of comments on its layout.
