Self-publishing is tough. As much freedom as it brings, it also comes with many difficulties. It is a nonstop battle of creating ads and posts to get attention, the never-ending fight for reviews and the constant struggle to come up with new and clever ideas to get yourself and your books noticed. As much as I love writing, marketing and book promotion drains the heck out of me.
I have researched my heart out regarding ways to advertise and promote and have found some fantastic websites that help me get the job done, but the competition out there is fierce because let's face it, I am not the only Indie author out there who wants to get noticed. Instagram has been a huge help and I managed to create myself a solid platform and image. I have now over 8,8k followers, and it feels good. What did I do to get there? I transferred my meme posting from Facebook to Instagram and people seem to love it. I also try to be as active as possible and interact with other Instagrammers and especially bookstagrammers. Sure, every so often you come across some not so pleasant human beings, but for the most part, the community is remarkable. If you look past the scammers, fake accounts, unfollowers and sugar daddies who try to get to you, the majority of those on Instagram are freaking awesome.
So, yes, people love my posts and I get mentioned and noticed for it, but how do you make it about your books at the same time? I do my best in creating fun and cool memes and ads for my books, and I can see the slow process, but there is still plenty of room to grow. I am always looking for ways to encourage others to follow me and hopefully wanting to read and buy my books. Amazon lets you do promotions every so often, but only for a short amount of time. Recently, I did a free e-book promo for my new release "Grandfather's Will" and the response was pretty cool. Now I am waiting for reviews to roll in (hopefully). Although I give away free books to promote and find my audience as well as in exchange for reviews, I can't just give away books. Sometimes it feels as if people, especially those who know you, expect a free book. Please remember that a lot of work went into my novels, not to mention that I have to pay for paperback copies. I get them cheaper, of course, but I still have to pay.
I think because I want this so bad, I am not giving up and continue my diligent and stubborn pursuit of the dream. Even if in the end it doesn't quite reach my hopes and expectations, I can say I tried my best and could see success and that means I continue to explore my creativity and let author authors inspire me.
If you aren't on Instagram, you are missing out. The way authors, reviewers and bloggers take pictures of their books or the books they've read, is pretty incredible. Some of those photographs blow me away. Although I am no match to their talent and creativity, I do attempt photo shoots too. Want to see what I have come up with so far? Here we go:
It is no secret that I am a massive Harry Potter fan. I mean everyone who has been to my house figured that out pretty quickly. When I thought about taking pictures not only of my books, but books I own and have read, obviously Harry Potter came to mind. I decided to play around with it a bit and just have fun as well as using some decorations I have. Here you see the results. (And yes, I made an attempt to create the look of butter beer. We still had a plastic mug from our visit to Harry Potter land at Universal Studios in Florida for our 10ths wedding anniversary, so I thought why not.)
Then I wanted to try something else. I had the idea of creating a mini story with pictures while promoting one of my books. I choose "German Deliciousness" (my little cook booklet) for that and here are the results:
And then there was this time, when I did another photo story shoot with my favorite obsession. HARRY POTTER!
