March, all stops are out for March. March 27th for me actually but the whole month has been taken over by the Indies writers. It used to be New Zealand Book Month but the organisers suddenly changed it to August, leaving quite a few writers' groups and libraries with plans already underway for March. I'm launching my novel, 'Tizzie', promoting my Writer's Choice colleagues' newest novels and selling our already published books at a launch in the library. It will be fun as I'm being supported by the friends of the library to help with food and service and we will enjoy a party atmosphere. I hope! Roll on March 27th.
It seems to me that sales only come if you put in the work, not on social media, but with people. I hate getting tweets about buying someone's books. I'd rather chat. I hate my LinkedIn messages to buy a book. I hate blog tours and bloggers where it's all about 'My Wonderful Book'! I've been talking about Writer's Choice a lot and people are interested in the group and why we are doing what we do as Indie publishers. It's easier to do that than push my novels. This way people don't feel pressured and I also have my colleagues' books with mine and am delighted to chat about them too as a reader, so it's gains all round. I've sold quite a few for them.
And the KiwiReads group grows. We are behind the NZ Indie Writers' Month and are pushing our books into public notice in a good way. So far the website is our main weapon. Tui Allen is working hard to get a perfect site for readers to finds New Zealand books.
We are still stuck on the quality bit. How do you choose without becoming like the agents and traditional publishers? It seem unsolvable.
Too many writers, too many readers and not enough ways to link the two in a sympathetic way. Or is it that there are enough readers for all the writers but we have yet to learn how to connect to the readers who will like our particular books?
I'm working on it!
