By Christopher Harris
Rather than obsessing over sales of my first book, I’m concentrating on building a readership through blogs, short stories and podcasts. It’s a five-year strategy based on patience, consistent writing and establishing an audience before investing heavily in advertising. I explain the dilemma!
There is a temptation, when you’ve spent a considerable amount of time, effort and money writing and publishing your first book, to spend the next few months obsessively checking how many copies you’ve sold. I did for the first week, just to see how it all worked. Now, I’m resisting that temptation. In fact, I’ve decided that, for the time being, I wont look.
Not because I’m frightened of what the sales might reveal, although I suspect they would make fairly depressing reading, but because I’ve adopted a marketing strategy in which selling books is not currently the principal objective. Think of it logically, who other than friends and family will buy my book at the moment? In these blogs I have explained my long term strategy, to build a long term writing concern. This requires patience and not throwing thousands of pounds at online marketing. I have absolutely no intention of throwing good money after bad in a desperate attempt to persuade complete strangers to buy a book by an author they’ve never heard of.
This may all sound a rather peculiar way of doing things. After all, I’ve spent approximately £3,500 getting Something About England into print, not to mention hundreds of hours writing, rewriting, editing and generally driving everyone around me to distraction. Surely the point is to get some of that money back?
Nobody Knows Who I Am
There are thousands upon thousands of self-published books appearing every year. Some are excellent, some are dreadful, and a great many are somewhere in between. What almost all their authors have in common is that nobody has heard of them. I am no exception. I could spend thousands of pounds advertising Something About England on Amazon, Facebook or elsewhere, hoping that someone scrolling through their phone might be sufficiently intrigued to part with £12.99.
Maybe some would. But how much would I have to spend to secure each sale? And how many of those buyers would ever purchase another book? The danger is that I’d spend a fortune generating a handful of sales, congratulate myself on becoming a published author and then discover that my advertising expenditure exceeded my royalties by a considerable margin.
The reason so many first time authors remain first time authors and give up is for this reason.
So What’s the Alternative?
My approach is to build an audience before seriously attempting to sell books to it. I’m doing this through my blogs, short stories, Substack and podcasts. I’m publishing regularly, covering all sorts of subjects, from music and football to social history, everyday absurdities and the peculiar behaviour of the human race. I’m also writing shorter, punchier stories that people can read in five or ten minutes, without having to commit themselves to an entire book.
The objective is straightforward. I want people to discover something I’ve written, enjoy it and perhaps come back for another helping. If they enjoy that, they might read something else. Eventually, they might become familiar with my name and begin to recognise the sort of writing I produce. And at some point, hopefully, a few of them will think, I wonder what his books are like? That’s when a sale becomes considerably more likely.
The trick is, when using WordPress, Substack, Medium and social media is that when you hook someone in, lots of other work is available at a click, which is why I an focussing on creating lots of quick read short stories and making sure they are accessible on my platforms for people who like what they red and want more. I therefore create an audience that way and when this structure is all set up I start paying to advertise.
An analogy is investing in expanding your grocery shop when you haven’t even opened it yet, you are running before you can walk,
What are my ambitions?
Do I think I will be a best seller? Not a chance in hell. A moderately good seller? Unlikely. I’d hope I can eventually shift 1-2000 copies per book and build a really decent audience for my blogs, which are already going very well. Almost a cult writer, maybe.
The encouraging thing is that this process is already happening, albeit on a modest scale. As I said, my blogs attract readers without paid advertising, 15,000 last year in over one hundred different countries. Much of that traffic comes from Google searches and WordPress itself, rather than social media.
Many articles, evergreen blogs, I’ve written continue to attract visitors months or even years after publication. Sounds braggy, but it isn’t, I’ve done that with no effort, just consistently publishing. Build, and they will come, long term. Sure , I can go out and blow an advertising budget today, but generally that stops working when you stop paying for it. A decent article can continue introducing people to your writing for years.
Of course, reading a free blog and buying a £12.99 paperback are two very different propositions. I’m under no illusions about thatBut if I can gradually build thousand regular or occasional readers, I won’t need an enormous proportion of them to buy a book for the exercise to become worthwhile.
The Five-Year Plan
I’ve increasingly come to regard this as a three-five year project. Not three years before I sell a book, obviously, I’ve already sold some. But three years to establish a recognisable body of work and, with a bit of luck, a reasonably loyal readership. By then, I will have several books published, rather than just one, I should have five in print by the end iof 2027. In other words, I’m not trying to create a brief burst of excitement around a single publication. I’m trying to establish something that might have a commercial life for many years. In my next blog I will tackle writing and my mortality!
What About The Paid Advertising?
I have earmarked approximately £5,000 for marketing and advertising, happy to invest moire if it works and happy to invest less if it doesn’t, but I have no intention of spending it immediately. My current thinking is to begin investing more seriously in advertising after about twelve to eighteen months. Small amounts on numerous places to see what works and then focus funding on then good ones.
By then, I should have a much clearer understanding of which subjects attract readers, which stories generate interest and whether any of that interest translates into book purchases., I can experiment with relatively small amounts of advertising before committing larger sums, which seems infinitely more sensible than launching myself into an expensive campaign armed with little more than enthusiasm, optimism and a credit card.
So Why Not Look at Sales?
Because at this stage, they tell me remarkably little about whether my strategy is succeeding; it can’t, because it’s long-term. If I sell three books next month, does that mean I’ve failed? Of course not. If I sell thirty, does that mean I’ve cracked it? Not remotely.
What interests me much more is whether my stories are finding an audience and whether my name is gradually becoming familiar to a small but growing number of people. Those are the figures I’ll be watching. Book sales will matter eventually. Indeed, if nobody is buying anything after several years, I’ll have to acknowledge that something isn’t working. But expecting substantial sales six weeks after publishing my first book, without an established readership or meaningful advertising, would be absurd.
So, no, I won’t be looking at the sales as I have my plan, and if I see the sales are dreadful, I may lose my enthusiasm, but if I think they are great, I may think I’ve arrived and lose focus of my long-term objectives. Do I feel tempted to take a squiz? What difference would it make if I did?
Make both our days by buying a copy of my book!
Something About England: Amazon.co.uk: Harris, Mr Christopher, Turner, Louise: 9798181129351: Books
Welcome to Denham, a fictitious Sussex village where behind respectable doors, well-tended gardens and familiar faces, things have a habit of going badly wrong.
Obsession, ambition, deception, jealousy and petty rivalry run through this collection of tragi-comical and satirical short stories. From poltergeists and lottery winners to cricket club feuds and environmental disasters, ordinary people embark on discovering just how quickly an ordinary life can unravel into an extraordinary mess.
Darkly funny, occasionally poignant and populated by characters who are rarely quite what they seem, these stories explore the peculiarities of Middle England, and the uncomfortable territory between respectability and ruin.
