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  • R.B. Landeck

The Labyrinth of Book Promotions: Writing is only the beginning...

In the old days you sent in your manuscript to publishing houses specializing in your type of work (or simply sent it to every publisher you could find) and hoped for the best. The upside: if your book was accepted you would not only find yourself in the esteemed company of formally published authors, but the publisher would do most of the heavy lifting in terms of marketing. Fast forward to the world of e-publishing or, to be exact, indie e-publishing and you, the author, are the one with the headache of how to break into the market. I read somewhere that an indie-published book is released every 10 seconds. Crazy stuff.

Of course we all believe our work is worthy of proper publishing and of a readership proportionate to the effort that went into the product. But with that kind of competition, that's not very likely, unless by some miracle your book grows legs and stampedes through the charts. Those miracles do happen, but I dare say they have less to do with the quality and much more with how prolific you are as an author: social media, book sites, blog posts, marketing submissions, YouTube channels, newspapers, bookstores, radio stations...the list goes on. It's tiring trying to sell yourself! If you are like me, I am better at writing than I am at talking about myself. It's not something that comes natural and even at social events I am usually the guy that mostly listens. So once I release a book, the promotions aspect rises in front of me like Mount Everest: imposing and virtually insurmountable (at my fitness level anyway). Where am I going with this? Well, whenever you pick up one of my books or read my updates, rest assured that I not only deeply and sincerely appreciate it, but that you are shrinking that mountain for me, one bit at a time. Because at the end of the day it's all about you, the reader, and if I can see my promotion efforts are having some level of success, it gives me the confidence that just maybe I might be doing something right. And that, my friends, can never be a bad thing, especially when it get you more of what you want to read in the process.

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