Monday, March 02, 2015

About My Experiment in Internet Power...

Yes. I'm guilty of trying to start a viral sensation this past weekend. I'll be honest with you--it started out as a tongue-in-cheek comment about getting 5000 copies of Unfolding Life sold in 3 days. But then my mindset changed when I started getting more public and private encouragement and support than I expected.

Before I ever tweeted and posted on other social media, I really did do the math: selling 5000 copies directly from Createspace would have given me a year's salary in one month (Note: by "a year's salary" I'm talking about just above the poverty line for my state. Most other places would have landed me under that line). Selling 5000 paperback copies from Amazon would have given me the chance to get out of the hole that I dug myself into the last couple of months and get relocated anywhere in the continental United States. And selling 5000 digital copies of the book would have helped catch up, but probably not enough to relocate on my ridiculously stringent and nearly impossible timetable. A mixture of sales would have left me somewhere in between all of these scenarios. This is just a little information for those who are still on the fence about indie authors and throwing support their way. It does make a difference.

Did my little experiment end up working? Of course not. Do you know what I had to compete with? With all the stir about #thedress and #llamadrama, the passing of Leonard Nimoy and then the discovery of the other dress, the idea that I would get buzz about my book didn't stand a chance. I very well could have done a hostile takeover of any or all of these hashtags for my own benefit, but I hate when people do that. Then I got the idea that I should use a clever hashtag for my promos, but I quickly realized that #5kin3days was already taken and had absolutely nothing to do with book sales.

Still, I tried. I asked for support. You don't get what you don't ask for, so I don't regret it. I may look like a fool to a lot of people, but so what? I'm a fool. At least I'm a fool who still has the capability of dreaming.

2 comments:

K R Smith said...

You never know what works until you try it. The tweet was no different than what many authors, struggling to be heard over 1,000 others, do every day hoping someone will notice their book. Keep trying!

Also, many thanks for the retweets on the anthologies I tweeted!

Terri said...

No problem! Glad to do it.