SHOUT or whisper?

When an author has finally finished putting pen to paper, or in the case of most, bashing the hell out the keyboard, there comes a time when you stare at the masterpiece you’ve produced and think, now what?

You’ve spent all that time thinking about plots and character development, how to pace your book, whether the ending fits with all the other stuff you’ve been writing, and whether you’ve managed to tie up all the bits that have meandered off plot for the purpose of creativity, that maybe the most important part has been neglected.

Unfortunately I’m talking about marketing.

I’m finding there are many ways to market a book, and to be honest, I’m still trying to find the best way to market mine.

I look at all the different genres and think ‘where the hell in all this does mine sit?’ You see, Banker’s Draft falls into lots of different groups. It’s about a crime, murder sets it off, but it’s also a mystery and a fantasy: it’s also humour, a parody, a satire; there’s even a bit of romance....sort of! So I have to think where this sits out in the big wide world, and how to draw readers to it

.

Looking at all the blog posts, each and everyone has a different way of doing things. There are some who want to shove their book down your throat, you see them on twitter and facebook with reams of ‘buy my book’ tweets etc, they’re the SHOUTY ones, the ‘buy my book’ because it’s brilliant and I don’t care that you’ve got a book out because YOURS doesn’t matter, only MINE matters, type of person. Rarely, if ever, do they engage with another person. The polar opposite are the ones who put the book up on amazon and then sit and pray that someone somewhere will notice it amongst the trillions of other books out there.

 Most sit somewhere in-between.

Like me, you probably look and try to learn because the one thing I, or you, do not want to become is the SHOUTY person. I want to get readers to read my book because they want to, because they’re interested in it, because they may actually enjoy reading it.

Perhaps there is a magic formula somewhere, but I think it’s more to do with engaging with people, being interested in people, but above all being supportive to people.

Please don’t be like the SHOUTY people!