Sadly, I am sitting at my computer this morning debating how to promote my new book, THE GENERAL STORE. As a dedicated indie author my options seem to include: giving away ten thousand copies via Amazon KDP, advertising, or Twitter. The KDP thing bothers the hell out of me. I don’t like a business model where you giveaway ten thousand copies of something to sell a hundred, especially if no groupies or world tour is involved. It is also wrecking the value of all ebooks.
I recently had a wealthy person ask me when my next free-giveaway is happening. Here is my new answer. NEVER! Cough the three bucks, cheap ass!
My experience in advertising is not much better. To date, I spend $100 to sell $10 worth of books. I am not the best business person in the world, but my gut tells me this is a very bad return. Personally, I’m not sure I’ve ever clicked on a banner ad out of fear of landing on a Russian web site where my computer would be promptly filled with every trojan, virus, and spybot known to man, including the dreaded blackmail link, “I thought you might want to check out the picture of you with a donkey that’s going around the internet…”
This leaves me with Twitter. TD (to date) TM (to me) Twitter is about ASA (Authors Spamming Authors) who are TBW2R (too busy writing to read.) Frankly, I don’t like the idea of using Twitter to spam THE GENERAL STORE, so I plan to send out a few tweets to announce the book. I then plan to say a daily prayer to the Internet God of ebook virality asking for a “What’s Hot” link. “Our Father (Jeff Bezos) who art at Amazon hallowed be thy name…”
Wright Forbucks 
Nicely done. Maybe this blog posting and the retweets will get you some sales. One can only hope. As for Twitter, you probably have more than just writers as followers, so you’ll be letting readers know about your book as well. Good luck!
Thanks for the note Brian. I’m having lots of fun writing, so sales are secondary to me.
TY again.
So basically you’ve got nothing….
Not so, I still have my stunning good looks.
Nice post. I love the humor. 🙂 It’s definitely a challenge to market and sell ebooks. Receiving a high number of reviews helps. Also, I have two novels and 10 short stories and novellas in rotation right now (via Amazon and Smashwords), and I’ve found they help to sell each other.
Thanks James. I’m going to follow your advice and write a couple short stories. TY
I tried KDP for a kick. A few hundred free downloads later I’m content. The paid downloads have been far fewer, of course. I think it’s important to remember that as compared to a publication, which doesn’t allow multiple submissions and can make you wait for a month or more and probably doesn’t pay even if they bite, people are actually reading your stuff.
I hear you Shane. I agree with your comment.
TY!