Promo and Collaboration

Yesterday, I talked about seeking publicity, and today I’m going to continue in a similar vein. Seeking publicity boils down to promotion or promo for short. Many writers and other artists consider promo to be the bane of their lives, but this is pointless, since it doesn’t get anyone anywhere. I have learned to regard promo as just another challenge – part of the package that means being a writer.

I have made a study of methods of promo both on and off line, but such a tome is never complete or it ceases to be shortly after it has been written, because there are always new, innovative ways of promotion. However, if you would like a kick-start, this is the place to go: ’52 Methods of Promo’. It includes fifty-two on and off line methods, one for every week of the year with a short test or task at the end of each chapter.

Anyway, that’s enough promo for that book for now 🙂

Have you tried Paper.li? I did as a pro for several months, but there is no way of judging its success rate at selling books. I find that a shame, because I suspect that it could be a useful tool, but as it stands, it seems to be more like vanity publishing. In the pro version you can place your own ads and use tracking URL’s, but you still don’t know. Another thing you don’t know is whether the images and articles in your paper are randomly syndicated throughout their free editions. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, this is the newspaper I ‘control’:

Modern Indie Books – feel free to post ads or comments in the Facebook box.

I like Hootsuite, and so recently went pro there (to Paper.li’s cost). However, I can’t see what extra I’m getting for my $9.99 p/m. There has to be something that I’m missing, but all I can see, because they are annoying the Hell out of me reminding me about it, is that I can enable collaborators. However, I don’t have any, so if that’s the only difference, I will soon be going back to being a freebie. Other than the constant nagging about using the colleagues feature, Hootsuite is great.

If I do pull the money feed on Hootsuite, I will invest it in LinkedIn Pro. I don’t know what that will buy me yet, although I have read the details several times this year, so that suggests that nothing jumped out and grabbed me.

Collaboration and finding work rings a bell, but I am not interested in either of those. Still, it won’t hurt to try it for a few months (with the free month). It might be useful for finding/talking to agents. I hope so anyway, otherwise I won’t stay there long either.

One last piece on promo. As I have said, I don’t mind doing it, but it does get harder with every new book you write, which is why I turned my attention to sequels last year. I now have thirty-two novels and ninety-nine non-fiction in four series. This helps because it means that I only have six books to promote (I promote only the first book in a series, not each one). However, the highest number of books for which one person can provide effective promo, in my opinion, is three, so I am still struggling at double capacity.

So, I need a collaborator, as Hootsuite keeps telling me. To this end, I have recently started making serious efforts to find an agent for the first time since I started writing.

I wonder which lucky person will get me 🙂

All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Promo and Collaboration