As independent authors we, in many ways, have the odds stacked against us. Yes, there are more publishing and distribution options but the market is absolutely flooded with indie-authors, and our readers' attention spans are growing ever shorter with every passing day. This is one way to look at it but this mindset won't set you on the path of anything resembling success.
"The riskiest thing we can do is just maintain the status quo.” - Bob Iger
Another point of view is independent authors have the freedom to make our own decisions and experiment however we like in an age where we've never had more marketing options. As with most challenges we face in life it's just a matter of finding the code necessary to crack the problem. The difference between authors who build a loyal following (and the sales that go along with them) and those who don't sometimes boils down to resilience and outside-of-the-box thinking in all aspects of their careers.
“If you don’t design your own life plan, chances are you’ll fall into someone else’s plan. And guess what they have planned for you? Not much.” - Jim Rohn
As creatives, we have a mighty and unique superpower, our imaginations. To tip the odds in our favor we need only need focus the intensity of that superpower and apply it in the direction of marketing. It's vital to set yourself apart from the competition, try unconventional and bold new marketing ideas.
Most authors I've met absolutely hate marketing but it's important to shift your mindset, to dabble, and have learn to really have fun with it (just as you do with your chosen craft). The key factor is once a method proves ineffective we must either fine-tune it or try a completely different approach.
I wanted to share one such idea that I'm testing now, a cigar box bookstore.
A few weeks ago I placed my first micro-bookstore in a local Twin Cities small business. I’ve known “Mustache” Jim now for almost fifteen years. He’s a bit of a local legend as well as a fantastic photographer and skilled barber.
Copies of my last three published books will be for sale via Venmo through the New Year with “pay as you wish pricing”. Customers will be able to scan the QR code on the box, pay as much as they wish for the book, and simply walk away with it. I’ve never attempted this before so it’ll be an interesting experiment. If successful, I plan on expanding these into several local small businesses for the Holidays and beyond.
If you're a creative yourself and have had success with unique marketing ideas, I'd love to hear about what has worked for you!
Wish me luck. : )
I wish all of you, and your families, a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Thanks for reading! All for now. Remember…trust your instincts, invest in you, live boldly, and take chances.
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Poetry should move us, it should change us, it should glitch our brains, shift our moods to another frequency. Poetry should evoke feelings of melancholy, whimsy, it should remind us what it feels like to be in love, or cause us to think about something in a completely different way. I view poetry, and all art really, as a temporary and fragile bridge between our world and a more pure and refined one. This is a world we could bring into creation if enough of us believed in it. This book is ephemera, destined to end up forgotten, lingering on some dusty shelf or tucked away in a dark attic. Yet the words, they will live on in memory. I hope these words become a part of you, bubble up into your memory when you least expect them to and make you feel a little more alive.
Pick up a copy of Ephemera today on Amazon.
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That's a great idea. I can't wait to see how it works out for you! I hope it does well. With people's attention span being shorter. What do you think about leveraging social media to do some kind of serialized book? I don't know if people would really pick up on it, but it might be something to think about. You'd have to start small, but then as people start showing up, you might get sponsors and stuff like that. Is anyone already doing something like that? You kind of did it by having us edit your one book here on Hive, but I'm thinking smaller bits. I don't know, it was just a crazy idea I got.
Thank you! I tried that serialized fiction approach with my novel in 2016 on Steemit and it worked extremely well. It sparked quite a few sales of the physical book and created interest in the other titles.
I know it's taboo, but what if you tried it off the blockchain? Do you think it would be too hard to break through in Web 2.0? I don't think I was following you back then.
Good idea. I may start experimenting with X and/or Medium. Facebook has all but killed organic post outreach for small business on their platform. It's cost prohibitive to reach even the audience who's "liked" your business page. FB used to be the best platform to use.
Gotcha!
Best of luck, my friend! I honestly hope it works well for you. It's a really cool idea.
I like the quote about the status quo, it's very true in this context. We're always saying why should I pay for a movie/book/whatever experience beforehand? Seems to me, if the experience is good and worth the money, I'll be glad to reward the artist afterward, right? So this is a great way to test that. Really love it, and wishing you the best <3
I appreciate it! It's become a bit of a hobby to come up with these off-the-wall marketing ideas. Once you get started it's hard to turn off your brain in that regard. That is a fantastic idea to pay after the experience. I don't know how that would work in this case, maybe capture the reader's email address or phone number then send a QR code at a later date?
This is a really great idea. It's a laudable experiment so I'm pumped as well to see how it works for you. "Mustache" Jim, from his name alone, sounds like an interesting character. I hope you expand beyond this, Eric. Wishing you a beautiful Thanksgiving.🤗
Thank you, it's been a little over a week now and no sales have come through yet. I keep checking Venmo. Lol. Jim definitely IS a character, there are few people in the world like him. I appreciate your comment! Enjoy what's left of the weekend.
Excellent experiment aka marketing test! When I sold the first edition of my podcasting book which became an Amazon best seller, I partnered with a store that sold equipment for musicians. They sold a variety of instruments such as pianos, accordions, violines etc. but also microphones, pop-filters and Co. I placed the books on the acoustic side of the store and sold around 70 hard copies in about 2 weeks.
I'm totally looking forward to your results and more importantly key takeaways from this test. So crucial to try different paths and let your creativity & imagination take you places your mind could have never come up with. Oh, and that quote by Jim Rohn. What a phenomenal teacher!
Thanks! These little marketing tests can be fun if you gamify them to a certain extent. That is an excellent idea! I love partnering with different creatives/businesses. It can be great if there's the right synergy.
There are no sales yet but I'm hoping this changes as we get closer to the holidays. I'd like to place these in 2-3 more locations within the next couple of weeks.
All the best to you, Eric! I think it's an excellent idea. A creative way to expose the book. I've seen that idea here with "food ventures". The date is ideal to promote and sell, and come up with creative ways to advertise. Hopefully you can distribute them in more places and get more readers. I'm sure your book would make an excellent Christmas gift. Again: much success! Hugs
Thank you, Nancy! I'd like to find 2-3 more locations to test this out over the next few months. I'd like to try a variety of businesses too. I hope you're having a great weekend!
This depends mostly on the type of the advertisement. Often even the audience hate marketing. For example on YouTube. Many people skip or block YouTube advertisements. Most people do not like it, if an advertisement interrupts a video that they would like to watch.
Image source: Reddit.
Is that really work in practice? I mean what if many people decide to pay $0.25 USD or less? I heard that only a small percentage of the payment goes to the author.
I was referring to authors marketing their own work, not consumers being subjected to ads. But I totally agree with you on the YT ads, they're only getting worse and more frequent.
I think "pay as you wish" approach can work in the right environment but it has to be a good fit. Where you're placing the books for sale is imperative. The way Amazon works is they charge a flat fee and then the author sets the retail price. I get the difference between their "wholesale" and the "retail price (I set) as a royalty. It's a great system, really. I make around 5-8x more per book, on average, than if I was working with a traditional publisher.
Goodness. I suck at marketing myself. Workin' on it. :D
Marketing others is always easy if I like what they're doing. And sales are always super easy if I genuinely like the product. I wouldn't sell anything I didn't like anyway so...
Let us know how it goes.
But my first thought was (of course) - investors are always a bad thing for authentic creativity!
Of course... most of my all time favourite artists, poets and writers weren't "successful" until they were dead 😆
But...
And all of the great ones did this and changed the stuff we maybe needed to have a look at?
I've spent almost my entire life creating (design, textiles, web) for money, you know.
I refuse to do this moving forward. Well... I need to now but I will never ever again make this the driving motivation behind my overspills of thoughts (which i don't really believe are mine to begin with anyway but that's another story!)
Sending love and best wishes for the plan, E!
May you continue to thrive. You deserve it 💥
Hi Nicky! Marketing is the most difficult aspect of this business for a lot of us and marketing anything creative is especially tough during bad economic times. I'm working on publishing a collection of short stories right now and that will probably be my last book. Anything I write going forward will likely just be here on the blockchain. It just takes so much effort to market a physical or eBook and, as you've eluded to, it takes your focus off of creating. I'll still carry on with my personalized poetry business because I enjoy working with clients so much but, after this next one, I'll be done with books. Thanks for your comment and good wishes and I echo those back to you!
Captain, my Captain
I hear you in full 🫡
Honestly... in a digital age and with our "evolution" (and reading, consequently) where it is.. I'm also more focused on writing for Hive.
It just makes more sense, really.
And yep. Most artists don't know how to market themselves well. And most are awkward about it too. This is good info and worth sharing when you've gone through the process 👍🏼 It could save people a ton of time and effort.
Madly on the go here and have so much content in my brain I'm getting a bit desperate to create! 😆
This is good! 👆🏼
En route to Cape Town again today.
I'll see you in a bit, for sure and always. Have a great day 💥
Since the world is changing everyday adding some new stuff to the mix wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Happy Thanksgiving dear friend😃
Thank you very much!
It sounds like your attempt to sell your books through local business stores is a very good idea. I hope that it will be a success. Have a nice day, Eric.
Thank you, Eliana! Enjoy the week!
Of course you have done well you are working hard and we will see that your book will be very popular in the next few time you should do some publicity here so that people will know about it. He knows about it and then he tells all his friends, tells his relatives, that's how a person becomes famous in the whole world.
Thank you, @djbravo. You're right, "word of mouth" advertising is still incredibly effective.
Most welcome dear.
Wonder if there is a way to reward Mustache Jim for every purchase he might encourage...
I hope to see more of this, a new kind of networking for sales, small scale and personal. Great idea.
We could create a whole new world if many more of us could do this. Or would do it, we all can, we have been told that we can not.
Good luck!!!
Thank you! It's such a crapshoot but it can be fun if you use your creativity. It's sad how so many creatives don't realize the power they have at their fingertips these days. Back when I started there were very few options.
Perfectly said. We actually need to plan our life instead we find ourselves ending up in someone else's plan which might be dangerous
Thank you! Having an "employee" mentality almost never works out in our favor. We have to claim our power.
That's a fantastic idea! It makes sense to widen your advertising swath, the more eyes the better. Good luck on the advert campaign and a very Happy Thanksgiving to you and the family!
Thank you Tamara! Happy Thanksgiving!
This reminds me of the saying that "if you don't build a name for yourself, the society will definitely give you one" we actually need to plan our lives like you have said.
I love that quote. I've never heard that one!
They would plan nothing for you if you don't serve for their self-interest.
True.
Your acknowledgment of the saturated indie author market and short attention spans is astute. The focus on freedom and experimentation in marketing is refreshing. The idea of a cigar box bookstore is certainly unique, and the “pay what you want” concept adds a personal touch. We wish you success in this innovative approach, and joyful thanksgiving to you and your loved ones!😊
Thank you!
That's really great to hear that You are an author. Will You please suggested any books to read. I just wanna ask that Its easy for me to read any book in english or my native language so please tell me some books to read and how we can download this.
#hive #posh
Great. Right words we have to accept the situation and move on. Focus own ourselves and that's it life is beautiful
Sharing on Twitter.
i love this idea.