Self-Publishing Mistake #1

Mendi Eylül 14, 2022

I'm the type of person who sits down to a meal and eats the broccoli first. I hate broccoli. My reasoning is...get the worst out of the way first and then enjoy the rest at a leisurely pace.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be reporting back on the launch of my self-published novel "Dancing in the Shadows of Love." Everyone has to start somewhere and I started this project with a completed novel that I believe in and little else.

Inevitably, there were many mistakes and, so far, there have also been a few heady moments of success!

But, applying the broccoli principle (that is, face the worst first), I'll start with the mistakes I made and leave the successes for last (to end on a high note!)

Self-Publishing Mistake #1

Without a doubt my biggest mistake has been the Launch Competition.

So, what went wrong?

* I asked social media expert Jane Friedman if she had any ideas on why the competition was such a loss leader. Her suggestion was that either my social media reach wasn't big enough or that I ran the competition at a time when people weren't "listening."

* Author Davin Malarsan, with his sensitive heart and sharp mind, suggested that people would have preferred to just help me rather than feel they were "getting something" for helping.

* The comments on Stephanie Faris's blog post "Annoying Self-Promotion" suggest that the market is saturated with giveaways and competitions.

I agree that all these factors contributed to the 'failure to launch' of my promotion campaign.

But there were other contributing factors as well:

#1 Too complicated: I've run three other contests on my blog. The entry requirements were simple (comment and/or follow) and the prizes small. Two were very successful, one was moderately so. This competition, because I was asking for more active participation from my blog visitors, I thought offering substantial prizes would give it wings. Instead, visitors were put off by my entry requirements.

#2 Too long: I had originally planned a 3 week launch campaign. But, I forgot a lesson I learned when I was knee-high to a grasshopper. Coming from a family that had once been involved in the horse-racing game, my Dad is an intuitive and lucky horse gambler. Every time I went with him to place his bets, he always said, "Never change your mind. Stick to the horse you choose first." I didn't - I changed the course of the competition to 6 weeks to give Competition Two entrants enough time to read the book - and lost the gamble. The first week generated some interest; by the third week I was bored, my followers and friends and readers were bored; by the last week I was counting the seconds that I could put this mistake behind me and move on.

#3 Too busy: I remember lazy days of five-day cricket matches and shops closing at 1 o'clock sharp on a Saturday, closed on Sundays. Now cricket matches take half a day and the shopping malls never close. Life rushes by in a whirl of constant activity. Social media is no different. Everyone, myself included, is desperately trying to carve out time from their real life to squeeze in a bit of writing, a bit of promo, and bit of chit chat about their own novels. Intentions are good...but the reality is that time is of a premium to everyone.

#4 Too expensive: I had a budget in place (based on what I would have spent using a local POD company.) The launch campaign was supposed to only take 25% of that budget. I completely underestimated the cost and the panic-effect. When I saw I was getting no response on the launch competitions, I panicked and tried to compensate by offering Amazon US$ giveaway vouchers in addition to the launch prizes. At a foreign exchange rate of US$1 = ZAR7, the competition has decimated my budget. I also underestimated airmail postage costs to various parts of the world. Yikes. I'm sure it's much cheaper to feed carrier pigeons! Although I'd have needed a turkey to carry the weight of some of those prize goody bags! (Do turkey's fly?) But as my nephew Michael would say to me, "Suck it upppp, Aunty Jude, suck it up!"

#5 Too noisy: Well, I warn you in my "About Me" page. There, in black-and-white, it says, "I talk too much. I get overexcited when something catches my interest." In the first flush of launch excitement, I bombarded my social media sites with my excitement. And made so much noise about it that everyone (including HRH Theodora!) headed for the hills! My sincere thanks to those brave souls (you all know who you are!) who stayed around to help amidst the din and clamour.

Am I disappointed? You betcha! Have I learned an important lesson? You betcha! Will I run another blog competition? Nope.

What do you think? What makes a good blog competition? Can you offer any advice on what you think I could have done to improve the response to my launch campaign? What do you think contributed to its sad demise? Are launch campaigns and giveaways now so passé an author is wasting his or her time using this as a way to spread the word about their book? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments!