I’m a habitual lurker over on Reddit. Sometimes I’ll post, but unless I know for a fact I can add to the growing conversations on the site I keep to myself. The only time I step outside of these practices are to promote the works of others.
Reddit is heralded as the frontpage of the internet, and with the many different subreddits on the site you can tailor your experience to suit your needs. Due to the huge influx of individuals they have on a daily basis many people created subreddits devoted entirely to promotions, where people can post about their work or that of their loved ones, favorite authors, musicians, etc. Suffice it to say, it is a wonderful place to freely advertise yourself.
When I decided to post my novel, The Weaver Chronicles: Graft, here on Inkshares I knew I’d have to promote myself to get the book funded. It was up to me to bring in those potential buyers if I wanted to be successful. It’s really a required element to the process.
The first place I went to was reddit.com/r/kickstarter, which has over 33,000 people subscribed to it. Original intended to allow people to promote either their kickstarter campaigns, or those that they felt were interesting and deserved a wider audience, it steadily grew to include Indiegogo and other crowdfunding sites. Personally, I’ve posted a number of campaigns there, and have seen a decent influx of sales for the many projects I have supported after having done so. More importantly they have received a huge increase in traffic, which I desperately want for Graft. I want people to see, to tell their friends about it, because I have faith in it.
After doing a quick search I discovered that no one has ever posted an Inkshares project to that subreddit. This put me into a very interesting situation, as there was no precedent set I couldn’t be impetuous and just post my own, at least not without the possibility of getting banned and losing that resource for future projects. I did the only logical thing, I messaged the moderators, and I’m still waiting for a response (I’ll probably message the Mod again this week to see if I can get an update). I’m sure you all can understand how this would us all, and I hope we get a favorable response.
The next subreddit I proceeded to check was reddit.com/r/inkshares. Honestly, this should have been the first place I looked, but I wasn’t really certain Inkshares would have it’s own subreddit based on the lack of mentions of Reddit these forums. I was surprised to find one, and that are 2 posts there, and a whopping 8 subscribers.
Reddit is a fantastic resource, especially for authors, and developing an Inkshares subreddit could drastically increase the amount of traffic to our respective projects. This would help not only in regards to follows, but also by word of mouth. If people love your work, they’ll promote it for you, and it’s remarkably easy to do on Reddit where in many cases all they need to do is copy and paste a url. There is an additional benefit, we will be able to create the type of community we want for ourselves, rather than being forced to endure what already exists.
Some places on Reddit lack a certain bedside manner, people can be confrontational and downright rude, but we have the ability to ensure that does not happen. Honestly, it’s going to take effort, and I know that Reddit is daunting for many people, but it’ll be worth it in the long run.
Now, when posting in the r/inkshares subreddit you can also crosspost to other ones. This means that after posting to r/inkshares your post could simultaneously show up in r/crowdfunding (2,900 subscribers), r/wroteabook (3,000 subscribers if your project is funded or nearly there) and r/fantasy (over 97,000 subscribers here, but I wouldn’t necessarily self-promote there unless you use the specific thread for it or your book is on sale, it’s just an example) without much effort. Now, it becomes incredibly easy to do the same thing for our friends and fellow Inkshare authors, without the stigma that many subreddits have towards self-promotion.
I could probably go on forever about this, but I implore you to sign up for Reddit. Start checking out the other subreddits, make sure to become a part of the community before promoting yourself (stick to the rules of the subreddit, but the same thing applies for Goodreads if you haven’t already used that site), but subscribe to ours. We want people to go there, and in order for that to happen we need to cultivate a presence. People are lazy, and they can receive an astounding amount of information on Reddit very easily, we should be using it to our advantage.
If people want I can list off some subreddits where you can get started, most of which will be genre specific. If you have any questions I’ll do my best to try and answer them. It’s possible, also, for me to start helping you promote your work there, but I need you to start participating there as well.
