Celebrating Independent Authors
AL Kaplan is the readers’ choice in this week’s Indies Unlimited Flash Fiction Challenge.
The winning entry is rewarded with a special feature here today and a place in our collection of winners which will be published as an e-book at year end.
Without further ado, here’s the winning entry:
Jason Letts is a writer who has been publishing for over four years now. He also happens to be the man behind the book promotion site BookSends. Jason is joining us today to talk about BookSends. Let’s give Jason a hearty IU welcome.
How long has the BookSends been in operation?
We started BookSends in early 2013 when it became clear that Facebook was no longer a sustainable place for maintaining an audience that could be reached on a regular basis. A lot has changed since we started, including the proliferation of similar sites and services, all of which have struggled to develop an audience since many of the usual channels have become expensive or ineffective. So what’s kept us going is authors who’ve had good experiences advertising with us who keep coming back and back. Continue reading “Promo Site Spotlight: BookSends”
Guest Post
by Pedro Barrento
Ever since I’ve become a self-published author, I’ve heard people telling me that the secret to self-publishing success is “word of mouth”. If your book is good enough, and if you can somehow start that magical chain of recommendations, the whole thing will spread like a cascade of dominoes on a Guinness World Record attempt.
I accepted the advice in good faith, and started working hard to kick-start my first book by finding an initial set of sympathetic readers who would then tell their friends about my literary masterpiece. It all seemed rather intuitive and made perfect sense to me: one person likes the book, tells a couple of friends, they like the book, mention it to several other people and so on. You don’t need to be very proficient in math to see the geometric progression potential and to salivate at the promise of chart-topping sales. Continue reading “Word of Mouth – An Urban Myth?”