More Marketing Efforts

I look at the various review groups on Goodreads regularly, and one thing I've seen is that authors who even have hundreds of reviews will occasionally post there, giving out free books for reviews.  What this means is that a successful author never stops marketing himself.

It's often said that one of the best ways to market your book is to write another book.  Believe me, I'm doing that.  How else to get the word out?

I did two things to market my book recently, one of which has had a more immediate effect than the other.

A couple weekends ago, I asked a very well-read political blog if my book could be included in their weekly book thread.  I included the standard offer: a free copy for an honest review.  Within 24 hours of the book thread going live, I had 11 people take me up on that offer.  That's more yes answers than I'd gotten spending days emailing book review blogs.  I still don't count reviews until they're published, but even if only one or two of those 11 people read and review the book, the few minutes I took emailing the blog was definitely worth the effort.

The lesson here is that book review blogs aren't always the best places to go to try to get reviews.  Again, we'll have to see if the yes answers transform into reviews down the line, but it's a start.  The ball is rolling.

Another thing I did was ask to write an article for a popular political website, tying the process of writing my book to the website's political bent.  My book is essentially apolitical, and in the article I mentioned how I didn't set out to write a political novel.  They accepted and published the article, and my name's out there now.  I've made that connection with hundreds of potential readers.

My point is that I've been too narrowly focused on only looking at book review websites.  You have to widen your field to attract the largest possible pool of readers.

That said, I recently re-checked the reviewers list on The Indie View, and out of three new additions to the list, two people agreed to read and review my book.  So keep checking back.  They might not take sites off the list that are closed or otherwise booked up, but they do keep adding.

TL;DR: Get the word out there on sites other than book review websites, if you can.  Lots of people read books who don't read book review websites.  Also, keep checking The Indie View's book reviewers list for new reviewers.