Aww, thanks for your kind words, Sandy!

Thanks so much for sharing your working plan, Ramon. I think you have ably demonstrated the amount of work it takes to reach your audience!

As an author and marketer I want to deliver value, and that is what I tried to do with the book and its marketing.

I already had about 3000 Twitter followers and a lot of contacts in Facebook and Linkedin. I was very active in the startup community in Brussels (Belgium) which was helpful to get clients for my coworking space (Betacowork Coworking Brussels). I knew some of them were going to be helpful but my target audience was not among them, so I created the website for my coworking book and also a Twitter and Facebook account. The website has content that is extracted from the book and other resources and exclusive articles.

When I launched the crowdfunding campaign I emailed a lot of my contacts with a very easy and big unsubscribe. My logic is that people want to hear about what I’m doing, just like I like to hear about what they are doing, not only if they could be prospects. I help out a lot, now it was time to get help.

The website included a form to collect emails and the backers emails where also kept on the crowdfunding platform. I contacted this people without regularity when I had something worth sharing.

I attended international coworking conferences in Europe and the USA, gave talks. Even if I was not speaking I always had a tshirt with the website on it. I shared targeted posts on Twitter with the hashtag of the event…

I also went looking for journalists to send them the book and get reviews, but that did not work so well.

There’s a whole lot more to it, but this covers the core of it 🙂

Glad to hear it, Ramon. When you say you worked hard at promoting the book, can you tell us what you did? I think my audience would be very interested to know!

Sales are going good. I’m earning more than with the previous two books and getting paid monthly. The other two books were in two completely different fields (MacOS X and the European Constitution) so they did not help for the sales of this one. I worked hard promoting the book and trying to reach the right audience. Now it is more like a passive income gig, it demands little to no work.

Thanks, Ramon. For me, the key question is: how are your sales going? Also, I’d guess you’d have built up a good audience with yoru previous two books. Is that the case?

I did spend a bit of money in the cover, but I could have skipped it and use their cover creator.

Editing was $1200 for a bit over 45k words.

To market it I first run a crowdfunding campaign. I did raise enough to pay for all, but the most important thing for me was the marketing of the book, to spread the word. I did have some social media followers and contacts that helped 🙂

For me, self publishing is a definite yes. Finding a publisher, negotiating and getting paid are out of most people’s reach, specially if you are writing for a niche market. Plus you get a much lower revenue unless you are a star.

This was my third book, the previous two were published with McGraw Hill and Ediciones Espejo de Tinta (now defunct)

Thanks for your newsletter!

So glad you found the column useful, Nancy. I like the “business” side of the job and find it an interesting diversion from writing (as long as I don’t have to do it all the time), But we’re all different. It’s important that you figure out a way of publishing that best suits YOU!

Last night I was curled up in tears from four years of busted printers, fried computers, editors that bailed and left me in the lurch, learning to set up a blog site, etc. You totally get it. The writing was a breeze. It’s everything that follows that’s the challenge. Your post will be prominently displayed above my computer. I’m guess I’m not nuts, just a
writer trying to get published. I seriously question the cost not only financially, but emotionally as well. Your timing was providential.

One reason I self-published with Booklocker is that after speaking to publishers’ reps at various conferences through the years, I learned the impossibility to get someone to read my book, let alone buy it. I also know as a librarian how truly awful the other options can be–we won’t buy books from these companies.

I just returned from the Public Library Association conference in
Philadelphia. One publisher was touting how great he was and what he could give me. I stared at him. “I wrote the book. Paid the editor. Paid to set up the web site. I’m taking all the risk. What can you offer me? As for the advance, do the royalties start after I make up the advance, or run concurrently?” He was speechless.

Daphne, as always, you wrote a wonderful column that speaks to the realities of being a writer.

Thanks,
Nancy