I don't claim to be the most business-savvy author you'll ever meet. In fact, I'm still learning. But the toughest lesson I've learned is that it takes money to make money.
For the most part (and there are rare exceptions) writing a good book isn't enough to make you successful. There are lots of good books out there, and it's tough to get noticed in the crowd. You can try all the free sites in the world and sell a few books, but that won't support your writing habit.
Then there are other places that charge varying degrees of money to publicize your book for you. Usually the price of their advertising matches the size of their audience. The bigger the number of their followers, the more money you have you spend to get listed with them. But there's a reason that authors buy promotions with those sites—they sell books!
I'm not going to give you a comprehensive list of sites that will publicize your books. A quick search on the internet will give you that information. Two moderately priced ones I had good luck with are E-Reader News Today and Robin Reads. Each costs around $50 to promote a book in the mystery genre.
There are also services that will send out tweets to their followers and others that will post to groups on Facebook for you. Some offer to promote your book across a wide range of social media. What you do depends on how you want to reach your target audience.
So if I had to start over, I'd make sure I had a "bank" to use for paid promotion services. I know it may seem unnecessary after sinking money into editing, formatting and a professional cover, but it's worth it.
And that's my 2¢ worth. Now I'm off to learn from my fellow authors!
September 25, 2017 – Tell us your biggest business lesson learned. If you were to start your writing career all over again, what would you do differently?
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Everyone wants money. We have to be so careful these days not to fall into a scam.
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