Finding E-Books

As a corollary to my last post on finding digital products, I thought I'd talk about the problems of finding e-books. It's a related issue that's of concern to many authors, especially new ones. How will readers find my books? Fortunately, the tools for finding books have been refined much more than for finding games. Amazon has developed some great software behind the scenes that helps you find books you might be interested in, knowing what you've already purchased.

The problem with Amazon's tools, for instance, from the author's standpoint is that this is a black box. You don't know how Amazon figures this out, and there's no clear way to influence it. You don't know who will find out about your book, or how many of them. So it's not really something you should worry about. It just is, and hopefully it will be of some help.

Authors do face something of a conundrum. For the most part, they don't want to be marketers, or to become marketers. It's hard enough being a writer, and the time you spend marketing your book is time you could be spending writing another book. Yet you see books become bestsellers that you know aren't particularly well-written... so you figure it must be marketing, and if only you could add some of that magic pixie dust maybe your book would be touted by Oprah, too.

If only it was that easy... but there is a middle ground. Setting up a Facebook page for yourself as Author is pretty simple, and an easy way to get started. You'll have to spend some regular time adding to it, though, to make it work for you. Social media like Facebook and Twitter only help if you (or someone working for you) is using them to be social. (Authors may want to enlist a friend or big fan to help... but you have to monitor that to be sure you're getting the kind of help you want.)

Authors who make friends with other authors can cross-promote, if their fan bases are at all similar. The experiment that Draculas conducted was interesting and worked well on a number of levels.

I'm making notes towards a book to help authors market themselves. I think it's most important for authors to know how to get maximum marketing impact for the minimum time and effort. Authors should be spending time writing more books, and making sure they are the best they can be. A good series of quality books is a terrific marketing tool all by itself. Besides, they make money. Dean Wesley Smith, an author who blogs about such things, believes writers should write and spend a minimal amount of time marketing. I agree; if you don't enjoy marketing, don't really understand what it is you should be doing with it, then do enough to cover the basics and get back to writing. You might try to buy some marketing services and see if it brings in enough extra revenue to pay for itself. Otherwise, get back to turning out some books you can sell, and hone your craft.