Traction

It’s a competitive world out there, in every field. Perhaps nowhere more so than in the marketplace for books. There are now many thousands of new titles being published every year. How is the poor new author, particularly the self-published author, to get attention for their book? How do you gain traction, in other words?

At the start, it can feel like you are standing on a patch of icy ground. You try to walk forward, but your feet slip on the ice and you barely make any progress at all (that is, if you are lucky enough not to fall over). Only slowly do you start to move forward, and then your momentum helps you keep going and pick up a little more speed. Hopefully then you start to find some solid ground, your feet gain some traction and can then keep going a little faster and a little faster. Well, that’s how it feels to me, anyway! Trying hard to gain traction.

No doubt there’s an element of luck in it, but as they say, “Luck favours the well-prepared”. So how does one become “well-prepared”?

First of all, surely, is to make sure that your work is as good as you can make it. All of the advertising and promotion in the world isn’t going to get you far if your book stinks.

Next, I think it’s about having made friends, friends in all sorts of different places, well before you release your book into the wild. This might be on social media — the bigger your network on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram or even Google+, the better. You’ll find that most of your friends are willing to help you boost your work. It’s important not to abuse such friendships and run out of favours, so don’t keep hitting them with requests. But you can encourage your friends to read your book, and if they like it put up reviews in places like Goodreads and Amazon. A few good reviews will do wonders. If they don’t like your work, of course, you should encourage them to tell you, and tell you why.

Here is a good place to thank my many friends who have encouraged me and helped me in this way. Thanks, folks!

Then I think it becomes a matter of patience. It takes time for people to read your book, time for them to write reviews, time for them to tell their friends, and then for their friends to tell their friends.

You just need to be there throughout making sure that your work is not forgotten, or drowned in the flood of other people’s new work. Keep it bobbing up to the surface. Find ways, like a blog post, or an excuse to tweet news about your work. Keep it fresh. Nothing is worse that the writer who keeps posting nothing other than, essentially, “Here’s my book. Please buy it.”

Well, these are my thoughts, anyway. Whether it will all work out for me is yet to be determined, but I am hopeful.