Part 5: The Dreaded Marketing, Chapter 2

Before I get into the rest of the marketing stuff, I want to touch on market.

When I say, “Get your book to market,” what I mean is to just have it for sale. There are dozens of ways to do this – some great, some not so much – but the important factors when considering which path to market is best for you is where and how your books are going to be found by the public.

To ISBN or Not to ISBN (Yes, Duh, ISBN.)

The introduction of Amazon and the ubiquitous presence of the e-book reader has made KDP the go-to first-stop for anyone who’s starting the indie publishing journey, but there’s a secret trap in there: When you are going through the process of uploading your book – filling out the title, choosing the keywords, selecting the category, and so forth – there’s an option to use Amazon’s free ISBN or to use one of your own.

If you use Amazon’s, then Amazon becomes your “publisher”.

And that means that no one outside of Amazon is going to carry your book. It will only be listed in Amazon’s marketplace, and it will only show up if it performs well enough for them to boost you so that you show up in search results – but you have to make that performance happen because are they are not going to help you. This may come as a shock, but Amazon does not care about your success at all. They make their money through sheer, unadulterated volume. The more titles they have, the better they do, even if some of those titles never sell. Your book is an insignificant cog in an unfeeling machine.

Okay, let’s back up and define some terms. ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number. Every single version of your book has a unique ISBN. Your first edition and second edition will have different ISBNs, your paperback versus hardback of the same edition will have different ISBNs, and any ISBN will never be used to identify any other books than the one it’s assigned to. Your e-book will have a unique ISBN, as will the audiobook. I should also mention that a new edition happens whenever there are more changes than just minor typos, like adding or deleting a chapter or changing a fundamental part of the story, or updating the cover, and you’ll get a new ISBN (but maybe not a new edition) when you get reprinted by a different publisher.

Amazon will tell you when you upload your e-book that you don’t need a separate ISBN for the electronic version because they assign their own, the ASIN (Amazon Standard Identification Number), but, again, this only works in the Amazon marketplace. Your book cannot be distributed anywhere else unless Amazon sends it there – and they don’t.

Okay, so how to do you get around that?

There are two ways. The first is to buy your own ISBNs through Bowker, but I warn you, they’re not cheap. This is the only legitimate source of ISBNs in the United States, and their numbers are completely platform agnostic: you can use them for any media, any format, and any market. The second way is to get with an indie publishing house that’s already purchased a batch of ISBNs and let them register your book. They become your publisher, and ideally, they’ll also have methods to distribute your book to people outside of your immediate family and friends.

There are other e-book publishing services besides KDP. BookBaby is a popular one, and there’s Draft2Digital and IngramSpark. All have alternate distribution lines beyond Amazon, but these are publishing services, not indie publishing houses, and they will count as your publisher if you use their free ISBNs. It’s not a great look carrying known self-publishing branding, and since many stores still refuse to carry self-published titles, establishing a publishing brand or using an indie house is the way to improve your curb appeal.

Back to Hawking Your Stuff

Back in the very first part of this series, I pointed out that you as an indie author have to do all the things that a traditional publisher would do. Marketing, advertising, and distribution are the biggest parts of that (after making sure your book doesn’t suck). We’ve talked about picking your categories and keywords, establishing good SEO, doing social media, and leveraging reviews. What else is there?

I’m so glad you asked.

(You’re so glad you asked, you just don’t know it yet.)

Any time that you’re not spending actively writing should be dedicated in part to marketing, and the key to doing that successfully is consistency. You’ve heard of the Newsletter and how important it is to build up the Email List of your most dedicated fans, but that only works if you release a newsletter on a regular basis.

How do you make a newsletter, though? There are a few ways. You can install a plugin on your WordPress site, appropriately called Newsletter, and from there you can send out formatted emails from the plugin’s dashboard to everyone who’s subscribed to that newsletter. (That’s the one that we use here at NTWC.) This is different from the “subscribe” that comes from the Jetpack plugin, though, and if you try more than one newsletter app, each one maintains a different and separate list, so keep that in mind. You might have to set up a dedicated email through your web host and use some special settings, but it’s not super-complicated.

Or, you can use a different type of mass email and go with a service like Substack. It’s a platform that lets you send out content to your subscribers as often as you like, and it also offers both free and paid subscription options to your readers. If you already have a following, then Patreon also has a lot of features for fostering contact with your community.

DING DING DING! The Magic Word of the Day is Community!

Back when I was talking about social media, I mentioned that instead of thinking of discussions around your book as “selling”, instead think of them as conversations with real live humans who want to know more about your story.

There are dozens of methods to foster this, and it’s entirely up to you which ones you choose, but what you decide to use must be done regularly, have limited reciprocity (that means that you talk to them more than they can talk to you), and direct people to a consistent point of contact for your material. Weekly blogging like this one is great because you can write tons of things ahead of time and schedule them out, but also interject more timely thoughts in between as the need arises. Putting your content out on a curated site like Substack and (to a lesser degree) Patreon allows for the possibility that someone outside of your immediate circle might find you and follow you.

Because the bottom line is that no one is going to read your story – let alone buy it – if they don’t know your work or who you are. You have to give them a little bait so that you can hook them.

The classic way to do this is with magazine and article publishing. You get your short stories or excerpts into the major (or minor) publications, and as long as you have your website listed, you’re converting some of those magazine readers into book buyers. You run into the same gate-keep-y kind of problems as you do with trad publishers, though, especially with the really big publications who have slush piles years in the making. The indie solution is to release your own stories on your own terms – with blackjack and hookers.

There are dozens of sites that allow you to serialize your story (not Vella, they’re shutting down) including Wattpad, Inkitt, Royal Road, Tapas, Radish, Ream, and others. Note that that first link I gave (“dozens of sites”) is pretty old, but it roughly breaks them down by dominant genre, and some of the sites on that list don’t exist anymore. Do a bit of poking around to make sure that your story isn’t going to stick out like a smut peddler in the middle of a Purity convention (or vice versa). Microblogging sites and social media are another way to share your stories in little bits, and ideally to send people back to your website to 1) read more of your work and 2) order your books.

The good news is that this approach lets you have complete control over where your work goes. The bad news is that you have to crank out a lot of fresh previously unpublished material in addition to your main tales. The good news is that it can inspire you to get past your blocks and insecurities, plus you get input from the community about what works and what doesn’t. The bad news is that it’s very easy to fall down the “not good enough” rabbit hole or, worse, the “I’m a genius and these other people are shlubs” rabbit hole.

Navigate those sites carefully and realize that they’re doing roughly the same thing that magazine publishing credits gets you: exposed to a larger audience than your immediate circle of friends.

Hand-Shaking and Baby-Kissing

Thanks to the World Wide Web – and especially since the arrival of COVID – it’s completely possible to engage in an entire career without meeting a single other person directly in the same space. However, that does not mean that it’s possible to enjoy literary success without doing some meetings and events. Those events might be 100% online, but there is a deep connection that gets created between a writer and their audience when the audience has a chance to see that writer live and in the flesh. Taking questions from your community and answering them in real time is powerful, especially if you do it on a stream or in a chat.

I definitely encourage you to do in-person events as much as possible if you can. Come to conferences, speak at conferences if you have the opportunity, set up an author table, read out loud, and meet people. You’re not going to be everyone’s cuppa, but you’re going to be someone’s, and you have a much better chance of connecting with those potential super-fans out in the material world. If you manage to get into some local bookstores, do some book signings and readings. These types of occasions don’t always get a lot of foot-traffic, but they do create the opportunity for a lot of buzz.

On that topic, the most vital and sage advice that you can receive during your marketing journey is, don’t be a dick, not even for a second.

You are not inherently better than anyone else, even if you spun the most chilling, captivating, and awe-inspiring tale ever woven. As a human being, you are separate from your art, but the reception of your art will suffer if you refuse to be a good human being. Exercise some emotional intelligence when you’re around other people, respect their space, establish your boundaries, and know that your acceptance as a member of the community can be reversed and rejected in a flash if you fail to honor the social contract.

I can already feel every single autistic and ADHD person reading this tensing up, but rest assured that if you are honest about your boundaries and needs while also not being a dick, the world (especially of readers and writers) will be accepting of you. And if you’re attending a conference, talk to the organizers about any accommodations you might need; if you feel comfortable and safe, you’re going to have a much better time connecting with your readers.

Fostering Positive Vibes

Part of encouraging people to be a part of your community – and being a natural part of theirs – is making sure that they feel they’re getting some kind of value out of the relationship. Choose a few readers with whom you have a solid relationship to receive advance reader copies (ARCs) of your new titles to seed some positive reviews during the pre-order phase. Set up little contests and give-aways that get people to engage with your platforms (though make sure to be completely transparent about the rules of the contests). Build excitement around a cover reveal, talk up any reviews or author spotlights you get to do, and then get excited for other writers.

I mentioned multiple times at RWC ‘24 that writers are not competitors. We are not in races against each other. No one has only one author on their shelf, so it behooves you to befriend other writers in similar and adjacent genres, with similar and adjacent writing styles. You should always be able to say, “If you like my work, you’re going to also like [this writer’s]!” And they will return the favor, because no one wants to seem like a dick by not exchanging basic kindness.

There is also nowhere near the gulf there used to be between trad and indie published authors. That’s not to say that there isn’t still a difference between the two groups, but writers on both sides of the publishing method recognize how difficult the other person has it sometimes. As I pointed out back in the beginning, the trad published author has someone else to do all the nitty-gritty, dirty work for them, but they pay a significantly high price for that monetarily. Indie authors have to do all that work themselves and/or hire people to do the work for them, and that can be grueling and nerve-racking. No one is judging anyone for how we get to market; we’re just all glad to finally get here.