I was chatting with someone at work (because the only other thing to do there would have been my job… *snicker*) and they asked me a good question: What sort of marketing are you going to do. To be honest, I thought me running up and down the streets shouting “IT’S FINSHED! IT’S FINISHED!” would have been sufficient. Thanks to my friend (and not taking a call for at least 15 minutes) I was able to draw up some sort of plan. This is something that I going to have to start considering since I am doing all of this by myself:

1. Friends: those poor, poor people. They’re never going to hear the end of it, but I am not going to be obnoxious about it. I am going to tell them that it’s out and if they liked it, to tell others. If they didn’t, it can stay just between us (as Marcus puts it).
   
2. Goodreads: Since I will be publishing the paperback through CreateSpace, I’ll have an ISBN number, so I can put the book on Goodreads – the key is visibility.
   
3. Project Wonderful: A way of getting banner ads on a lot of sites that people who would be interested in the book, and since they run it as an auction and dirt cheap to boot, I can get more people steered to the book, and since I am a part of the Amazon’s referrer service, I can stand to get a little extra if someone clicks on the ad to buy the book.
   

    

I can certainly see the utility of having a publishing house behind me on something like this – I’m not sure where I am going to find a lot of the time and money (beyond my own wallet) to do some of this and more. However, when it comes to having a publishing house, I’m trading off accessibility and marketing to get creative freedom and more money (15% if I’m lucky versus 70%… hmm… math wasn’t my strong suit but 70 even looks bigger than 15 here). So, I am willing to do it. I am also going to follow through with the new plan for my productivity for a year:

• 1 finished outline a month
  
• New rough draft every 3 months
  
• Finished novel at least once a year
  

   

Does it sound ambitious? Yep. Especially that outline every month deal, but I can do it. I’ll write 1,700 words a day (giving me 122,400 word manuscript, a really good length for a novel). While the first novel is getting edited down, I’ll just turn around and start the next manuscript. I’ll go the writing during the day. At night is when I’ll work on the outline. An outline a month might be a bit more of a challenge, but I will just have to buck up and do it. I just gotta do this and I am hoping to carry over the inertia from the novel into next year.

Wish me luck.

Thanks for reading, please feel free to leave a comment and I hope you had a great Christmas and a better New Year.

Sincerely,

Seething Apathy