I heard an amazing statistic at the London Book Fair last week: 30,000 books are published every week. That’s every week!

Writing a good book is hard. Publishing it (at least if you choose the indie route) is easy. Getting anyone to notice once it’s out there is proving to be more and more difficult with each day that passes. That goes for traditionally published books too. We all want discoverability. But what are we prepared to go through to achieve it?

With this blog I intend to chart my progress while I attempt to gain some visibility for my books, focusing on one book in particular – the one I am about to write.

THE STORY SO FAR

I’ve spent months researching the ‘best’ ways to market ebooks, running around like an over-excited puppy from one fabulous sure-fire technique to the next without actually implementing any of them. One thing I do know: there’s a hell of a lot of work involved whichever way you go and for possibly very little reward. Tactics and scammy practices come and go, real traction takes time, tireless enthusiasm and probably a little luck.

Given the graft involved, I have always chosen to subscribe to the opinion that there’s no point in marketing if you only have one book to sell. Much better to write the next one and don’t start all that marketing nonsense until you have three to sell. That way all the effort can work three times as hard. That’s the theory at least. And I have to admit it really appealed to me – I could put off the evil marketing deed for another day.

So while I’ve seen self publishers get one book up on Amazon, plug it to within a millimetre of its life and watch it rocket up the bestseller lists, I’ve been sitting back, marvelling at their achievements and doing precisely nothing to emulate their success. And so, as I’m nearing the completion of book three…

It all changes here.

It’s time to roll up my sleeves and get stuck in.

Week by week I will report back on which techniques I’ve tried, how they’re working (or not) and whether it’s possible to sustain them and still have the time (and energy) to write the next book.

Speaking of the next book… it’s time to start a new series and though I’ve had a number of ideas, I’m not sure which one will fly (or at least not sink without a trace). So this big self publishing experiment will follow the evolution of an idea through to a finished novel. I’ve not exposed my writing process to any kind of scrutiny before, so this will be quite a departure. And scary as hell.

I’ll list the resources I’ve used, websites, books, seminars, podcasts, whatever and you can decide which ones might suit you. Maybe you’d like to start a big self publishing experiment yourself.

Be warned: it might be a bumpy ride. Better hold on to something.