Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
- William Ellery Channing

Imagine an overpriced product with no obvious value to the consumer and a brand name with zero reputation in the market. Add to this situation a mere hundred-thousand-plus competitors of whom most damage the product’s reputation with their amateurish marketing campaigns. And by the way, your annual marketing budget cannot exceed a few hundred Dollars.

What a formidable challenge, you might think. I can imagine a great number of experts in the market rubbing their hands in excitement, eager to get their hands on that project. After all, if you master this Mission Impossible you will have gained an impressive arsenal of marketing weaponry enabling you to sell any product ranging from Coca-Cola to Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Imaging (NMRI) devices.

Here are the simple parameters for the project: You write your first novel (Don’t worry; that takes only a few years), and then you self-publish it.

Been there, done that, and I’m having a ball! Honestly, I wrote my first novel without the expectation of becoming the next Dan Brown, John Grisham, or Stephen King. My mere intention was to get a look and feel of the current writing and publishing industry. Selling a few hundred-thousand copies of the book would have been the icing on the cake, but that didn’t happen. Nevertheless, I still have a great time doing what I do when I don’t have to attend my 40+-hours-per-week job, and in my mind that is sufficient payment.

As a background information, I run my own publishing business on the side. Since 2005 I have written and published four technical books on dry topics such as Controller Area Network, Servo Motor Sizing, etc. My books are distributed through Ingram, the largest distributor in the United States, with listings on all major Online bookstores including Amazon.Com and Barnes & Noble. Non-fiction literature is easy to sell, and profit margins are reasonably higher than for fictional works. The steady income through book sales is sufficient to keep the business going.

Back in 2008 I decided to write and publish my first novel. At the same time, thrown between self-publishing and finding a traditional publisher, I engaged into some serious research of the fiction publishing industry, and the result was nothing short of bizarre. I have summarized my findings in another document titled Writology, the Silent Religion, subtitled And How Corporate America Makes It A Billion Dollar Business.

Without repeating all the details, let me just say, the document’s chapters are numbered by the seizures I had during my research. Yes, I did number my seizures. When, according to established industry standards, you are diagnosed as an aspiring, but most likely untalented writer, you either have seizures, or, due to absence of effective medication, you fall back into religion. I, personally, chose seizures, because my God told me not to have other gods besides him. The other god would have been myself (see Seizure #366).

Needless to say, my initial instinct told me that self-publishing was the better choice of two evils, and that feeling was confirmed through my research. All in all, my business sense is not compatible with the ineffectiveness of literary agents and traditional publishers and their profound lack of business sense. I freely admit that their track record outshines mine by several dimensions, but I do contribute that primarily to the difference in marketing budgets.

Another self-inflicted obstacle came with the choice of product. As a business man you’d like to create a strong product because, obviously, it sells better. In terms of a novel there is the choice of topic and, not to underestimate, the title. A strong title, I learned, is essential for good sales numbers, and it can, to a certain extend, compensate for poor quality of the product.

In regards to sales success it would have made sense to go with the current mainstream taste. One idea was a novel titled Dead of Night, the story of Isabella Mayer who moved to Conway, Massachusetts where she is the only regular person interacting with vampires and werewolves. Another promising project would have been The Monty Python Code, describing the adventures of Professor Hubert Ringtone, America’s top specialist on religous sects, who becomes an unwilling conspirator in a plot to reveal the deepest secrets of the Thetan Society, which could prove devastating for the movement’s message of abstinence, or might even destroy its very foundation. You get the picture…

Maybe the great number of seizures had some impact on my neural system, but I chose another topic, completely off the mainstream taste. The title of my first novel is The Bleeding Hills, and it is (inspired by a passion of my Irish-American green-eyed red-haired wife) about the Irish Troubles, past and present. Writing the novel was an exciting adventure. I am a history buff, and the topic required extensive research. Benjamin Disraeli once said, “The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write a book about it,” and I can vouch for that statement.

As I mentioned previously, the vast success is still to come. The Irish Troubles are not a great seller, even though the story line of my novel bares striking resemblances with recent terrorist activities in Northern Ireland that occurred after the writing. Eight months after the release I am still excited about every copy I sell, but I can also look back on experiences made and lessons learned. I am looking forward to the release of my third novel (I haven’t skipped the second one; see remarks below) which, I am sure, will be a great success.

The following represents my conclusions on how to promote an unattractive product such as the first novel of an unknown writer. The list does not take into account the quality of the product.

• The most important rule of all: Don’t expect success. See the marketing of your novel as a challenge, even a sport!
• As a general rule, business success comes only with blood, sweat, tears, and time. Well, a ton of time when it comes to writing novels. Working 25 hours per day helps. You get there by skipping your lunch hour.
• The best marketing tool for your first novel is the release of your second. The more products you release the better is the chance of brand recognition. The investment for writing and publishing a novel are minor (if you do it the right way). All it really takes is time. Well, talent helps, too.
• The saying is that most authors and their publishers start making profit with the release of the fifth novel. I am running a small, thus more effective business, so I think I can get there with my third novel. In consequence, rather than losing money on my second novel American Male Prostitute, I have posted it as a free read on this website. American Male Prostitute is the story of an author who promotes his first novel with sex, lies, and deceit, which represents another business plan that came to mind, but I realized I am lacking the good looks.
• There are some traditional marketing tools that simply don’t work for promoting a novel. Forget about Google Ads; you spend easily thousands of Dollars, which are not covered by the annual marketing budget, and their success is questionable to put it diplomatically. Forget posters, flyers, and bookmarks; nobody wants them. Traveling through the neighborhood between Boston and San Francisco to promote your book at local bookstores and libraries (officially called event marketing) can be effective if you have the time. I myself have a regular job, and on top of that I am an introvert.
• The best marketing tool is still an author’s blog. To put it in a nut-shell, the most important attributes for a blog are content, content and … content. A blog needs to be updated frequently in order to create web traffic and to attract search engines. Use it to build a reputation. My personal blog FrogenYozurt.Com, for instance, receives growing attention (220,000 web site hits in May of 2010 with a current growth rate of roughly 50% per month), and I will use that attention to promote my third novel.
• Amazon.com is the best sales channel for every author (I personally do like B&N, but their business model is not quite as aggressive). For paperbacks, make sure your book supports the “Have A Look Inside” feature. The best sales channel within Amazon.com is the Kindle store. It frees you from the most pressing handicap, the printing price. To date I sell more eBook versions of my novel than paperbacks.
• For your first novels don’t plan to use more than 60,000 words which is the recommended minimum in the industry. In the self-publishing world you go with Print-On-Demand (POD), and the printing price of your book depends primarily on the number of pages. Play with book and font sizes, and try to stay under 300 pages, otherwise you will be unable to compete with the pricing of traditional publishers (They use high-volume offset printing).
• Make sure your blog posts are posted on websites like digg.com, reddit.com, Google Buzz, Yahoo Buzz, and others.
• Get a Facebook and a Twitter account and promote your blog posts.
• Do not sign up or participate in online writers’ forums. Writing about writing and being read by other writers won’t do anything for your success. Focus your energy on your own website.
• Don’t subscribe to writers’ magazines, especially not Writer’s Digest. Their content is usually about motivational efforts, and if you need motivation, maybe you shouldn’t be writing. Again, focus your energy on business measures that matter.
• Familiarize yourself with online press releases, but don’t hire a service to write them for you. After all, you are a writer. Press releases, paid or free, are the most effective tool to create traffic to your website.
• There are further, costly marketing actions such as multi-media (video trailers), paid interviews, and paid reviews that I haven’t tested at this time, but I have the feeling that their impact is minimal.
• E-Mail marketing, even though promoted by some marketing “experts”, does not work at all when it comes to novels. We all get enough spam mail as it is, and you don’t want to annoy potential customers.
• Another marketing tool is a subscription newsletter, but it only works when you have something to write about on a regular basis without boring your readers. I personally believe that my Facebook account is better than any newsletter. On top I have a Twitter account (which I don’t take seriously at all) and an RSS feature on my website. If someone wants to stay up-to-date with my blabbering there are enough methods to do so.