This blog would seen for all intents and purposes, to have died. Which clearly would be no great lost for the world of arts and letters. Many people are doing it. There is no shortage of commentary on the marketing of self-published books out there. Still I thought I would make some effort to bring the account up to date.
Author readings can be a plus. I've done two. At the first I had twelve people and sold eight books. One of the people who bought a book wrote a beautiful five star review of the book, "Cutting Through the Knot (Second Edition)," on my Amazon page. At the second reading a local reporter showed up and interviewed me for a story on a local web site. This story was tweeted by five people and recommended by fifteen, which certainly improved my web profile. I have three more scheduled, including one at the New York University Bookstore. I hope to promote that one.
Blogs: In addition to this rambling thing which has been on hiatus, I've started another blog which looks at one of the themes of the novel, the therapeutic value of laughing at yourself. I'm going to continue posting from that blog in the hope of driving traffic to my Amazon page.
Kindles: This appears to be where many books are being sold these days. Kindles are cheaper. They are also easier to get a hold of, and more and more people are buying those readers. The Internet is clearly the appropriate forum to troll for these kind of sales. My sales rank as a Kindle book has gone up and down. Amazon does a brilliant job with that sales ranking. When your ranking improves you can't help but feel good.
Amazon discussion boards: I started a discussion on the Amazon humor board entitled "Can Mental Illness be Funny." To date there have been thirty two posts. One person asked me about my book, so the listing of posts includes a description of the novel. Theoretically, people are reading this on a regular basis.
That's all I can think of right now. There are an awful lot of books out there, and at times I tend to think that the mysteries, romances, and detective books have more immediate appeal. But my resolve is firm. I do believe their is an audience for my book and with the marvels of the Internet it may yet be possible to find it.
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