A Single, Viral Success Can Make A Huge Difference For Creators

A majority of writing advice when it comes to the business side of things is to remind authors that their career is a marathon, not a sprint. Generally speaking you get a lot more out of just putting one foot in front of the other, writing one story, and one book, after another so that you can build up your archive over time. Because the bigger your archive gets, the more your readers can consume, and the more people will have to enjoy when they discover you exist.

With that said, though, it's important to understand the effect that a single, big success can have for a writer... especially if they're depending on modern digital infrastructure and algorithms to work in their favor.

Because sometimes that single bump has long-reaching impacts.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

Engaging The Machinery That Moves More Books

Authors have to worry about a lot of different numbers. So, I want to take a moment to talk about the kinds of numbers authors have to contend with, and the effects they can have on your career. And while a lot of these numbers are very small (especially in terms of the Internet), these goals can be hard as hell to actually reach. So if you have authors out there whose work you enjoy, keep some of these things in mind. And if you're an author who is looking for a call to action for your audience, consider trying to rope them into some of these options to see if it will give your career a bit of a boost!

Book Reviews

Book reviews are one of the most basic numbers authors are generally concerned with. After all, reviews mean that people are reading your books, and it provides a running commentary that might get new readers interested. However, consider that when a book receives at least 50 reviews on Amazon, this causes the algorithm to start advertising it to other users who are looking for similar books. And the more reviews someone gets, the higher up their book will show in searches, with the possibility of it being on the front page.

And while these numbers are for Amazon, remember that whatever digital platform you prefer, the more reviews a book has, the better off it is for you as the author.

Now consider the impact that receiving a few hundred reviews on your book might get. Perhaps you sold a bunch of books at a convention, or you had a Kindle Unlimited giveaway and readers chose to rate and review as a way of paying you back. This essentially kicks off the website's algorithm, which both gives you a permanently higher rating than books that don't have as many reviews as yours does, but it also provides you a jump in attention. Because when the site sees that your book is doing well, the machine registers that it is currently popular, and it starts pushing it to other people browsing the site, doing a bunch of free advertising for you.

Free advertising which could lead to you finding more readers, and making even more sales, than you otherwise would have without that boost from a big review number.

Social Media

Social media platforms are the lifeblood of all sorts of creators because they let us reach our audience... in theory, at least. And the algorithms that govern social media work very similarly to the ones that run the online bookstores. After all, these websites want to promote things that are popular, because that keeps people on the website and scrolling through their feed.

So what happens when you start acquiring big numbers on social media platforms as an author? Whether it's for your book, one of your other projects, or just sharing some of your thoughts on the issue of the day?

When you make a post that gets popular on a social media platform (particularly a big platform like Facebook or Reddit, but this also applies to Blue Sky and similar upstarts), the algorithm starts up and begins boosting your signal. For Facebook or Twitter, it's more likely to show up in the For You feeds for users who may not know you, since the algorithm is showing it around to people that are statistically likely to have a reaction to those posts. And on Reddit your post may show up on the front page of the site, meaning that anyone who shows up might see exactly what it is you were posting about. This exposes you to more people, and makes it very likely you're going to pick up a lot of fresh subscribers and followers.

And what does that do for you? I'm glad you asked!

Social media platforms favor people who have a large number of followers. So if you had 1,000 followers one day, and then after a successful post you found yourself with 10,000 followers, you'll find that your posts are now getting more distance, and being seen far more widely than they were before. The reason for that is the algorithm supports you in ways it didn't before, because one of the major priorities for the algorithm, and how it treats you, is the size of your audience. This, at least in part, determines your reach.

If you do very well you can even get paid by the platform, but I gave details on that in Can You Get Paid By Social Media Platforms As A Writer? Probably Not.

YouTube

Not every author is on YouTube, but there are a lot of us over there who are trying to court an audience by making book commercials, audio adaptations of our work, or just talking about the behind-the-scenes of being an author. Speaking of, shout out to Alice The Author, whose channel is packed with great writing advice and information!

However, a single viral (or even nearly viral) success on this platform also shows how a big splash can lead to permanent changes!

For those who haven't read my older entries on this platform, YouTube requires creators to have a minimum of 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 hours of watched content within a single 365 day span before the site shares ad revenue with you. That is both a tiny number in terms of the Internet, and an impossible number in terms of what most creators can accomplish. And this is something I have some experience with, because I was with Azukail Games for their journey.

Because while Azukail Games had subscribers aplenty, the channel just could not get the view hours. Videos kept going nowhere thanks to changes to the site's algorithm, and it kept losing ground because the channel was several years old... this meant with every passing day it was having hours taken off the total view count.

What put us over the top (netting us over 1,000 hours) was a single video, The Problem With Pentex. This video essay about a niche aspect of the RPG Werewolf: The Apocalypse garnered a lot of interest (perhaps for the mention of the infamous copper merchant Ea Nasir), but more importantly the boost it provided to the channel's view hours (and to our subscriber count) permanently boosted the channel up to a new tier.

So while this one video didn't launch the channel into the stratosphere (it got 10,000 views, not a million), it put us on a whole other level that we have been climbing from ever since.

Your Numbers Make A Difference (Especially En Masse)

I've said this before, and I'm saying it again because more people need to know this. What determines the success of an author (or really a creator of any stripe) is how many people show up for them. It's your purchases of our books that determine whether or not we get royalty checks, it's your views and listens that determine whether we earn any ad revenue, and it's your likes, shares, and subscribes that determine whether social media websites are actively restraining our signals, or boosting them because the machine believes our posts will keep more people on the platform.

And while having an engaged and growing audience is great, those big jumps when something gets popular can be a serious hand-up.

Now, that doesn't mean that as an author you should bend all of your attention and will toward going viral, and that you should only make posts, write books, etc. that are geared toward said virality. Generally speaking, going viral isn't something you can really engineer (without a lot of money and effort, at least). However, a lot of folks don't realize that those kinds of successes have long-term effects, even if the initial event seems like nothing more than a flash in the pan at the time.

The Reason This Is All On My Mind Lately...

The reason this has all been on my mind of late is (shameless self-plug) that I've been hammering hard on a new ongoing audio drama channel over on YouTube called The A.L.I.C.E. Files. A dark sci-fi reimagining of Alice in Wonderland, the channel will feature an ongoing narrative about the events happening inside the mysterious Carroll Institute, as well as smaller, independent stories that act as stand-alones.

And those numbers I mentioned earlier, the 1,000 subscribers and 4,000 watch hours? That's proving EXTRA hard to manage.

Which is why I wanted to ask everyone who read this far to please do me a favor. If you could subscribe to the channel, and listen to the stories we've posted so far (but especially the most recent installment, 50 Two-Sentence Horror Stories where we meet Dormouse), I would greatly appreciate the effort.

Because while we're doing our best to get as much great stuff out there as we can, we basically need something to go 10,000+ views viral to boost us up to the level we need to be at. And every click, view, and comment on the video gets us that much closer!

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- The A.L.I.C.E. Files (where many dramatized versions of my stories can be heard for free)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

If A Tree Falls In A Forest (The Reason Authors Are Always Promoting Their Books)

We've all heard the question, "If a tree falls in a forest, and there's no one around to see it or hear it, did it actually fall?" Now, from a raw physics perspective, of course we know it fell. You just told us it did. Even if there aren't human beings nearby to perceive the tree falling, that doesn't change the fact that it fell. Philosophically, though, the question is asking us whether something that happens with no one there to perceive it truly occurred. Or, taken another way, does it matter if the thing happened if no one ever knows about it?

This is what creators are dealing with, and it's important for folks to understand this. Because we can write all the novels, make all the videos, record all the audiodramas, and so on that we want... but if no one sees them or hears them, we may as well have done nothing at all.

So... are you watching? Are you listening?

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

NIMFYP (Not In My "For You Page")

Academically I think we all know why authors are constantly trying to promote our work. Simply put, if we don't do it then no one else is going to do it for us. Because if we had a PR team willing to do all the marketing on our behalf? Hoo boy, I can promise you there wouldn't be a peep from probably 90% of authors out there.

We want to write books (or short stories, or make audio dramas, etc.). We don't want to be making promo posts any more than you all want to be seeeing them.

However, we need to do those things, because if we don't then you're never going to find out about our books. Whether it's making posts on social media, writing blog entries about our process, or even making mini commercials or audio teasers for the books that show up on YouTube, we have to do everything we can to try to get eyes on our work, and to get people talking about it.

But as Alice The Author pointed out recently on her channel in A Plea To Bookstagrammers, people just keep barking at us to shut up... even if they actually like the things we make, and especially if they tell us they "respect our hustle" but are sick of hearing from us.

This is, in my opinion, the digital equivalent of the old NIMBY problem... Not In My Back Yard.

NIMBY is the disconnect between someone saying they want something to exist, but not wanting that thing to exist anywhere near them. They want low-cost housing for poor and disenfranchised people, but they want it somewhere else so they don't have to look at it. They want prisons to keep dangerous people locked up, but they wouldn't want one anywhere near their town. They want expanded highway systems, or job training centers, or data hubs, or whatever else it is they believe is going to be a social good... but they don't want it in their back yard where they'd have to look at it, and where it might affect them, personally.

This is how someone can say, "Authors work hard, and we should support them so they can keep writing books!" and, "I'm just so sick of nothing but promotional and marketing posts from creators!" in the same breath. Because they mean both things sincerely... but the disconnect is they want other people to support those authors. They want other people to see those promotional posts, and to give their money to these writers. They just want to float in an online space where they don't have to see yet more ads trying to get them to buy this, read that, watch this, and so on, and so forth.

And you know what? That's a fair desire. Seriously, it is. The Internet is so jammed full of advertising (both obvious and concealed), that it's easy to feel fatigued when you scroll through a group or your For You Page, and you just see more and more of the same.

However, if you are someone who wants authors to survive (whether it's authors in general, or just a handful whose work you actually like), put your money where your mouth is, or stop saying that you support us in theory, as long as you don't have to actually do anything.

Put another way, we need your praxis, not your theory.

Thoughts And Prayers Don't Do Squat (Take Direct Action)

A disclaimer for this section. If you are already actively supporting creators in the ways you are able to, whether that's buying books, writing reviews, following them on social media, sharing their posts, watching their videos, listening to their podcasts, or whatever else, you can sit down.

This message is for all the people in the back who didn't hear me the last time I put this out there. And there are a lot of people who don't like hearing this, but you need to internalize this if you're going to actually help creators at all. Are you listening? Good, because this is important.

If you are not taking specific actions to help creators, you are doing nothing. If you are proclaiming that you support them as creators, but then actively attempt to avoid doing anything helpful, you might actually be doing less than nothing.

And no matter how many people you think are helping, it's probably about 10% of that number, as I pointed out in Your Audience Support Is Like A Reverse Iceberg.

Now, to be clear, I'm not saying that you have to do everything in your power to support every creator out there simply because they are a creator. What I am saying is that you need to be aware of how your actions do (or in many cases don't) help the authors you care about, and whose work you want to see more of.

For example, are you buying merch from creators, or giving them money directly so they can keep making stuff? Are you following them on social media, interacting with their posts, and actually reading the articles or listening to the podcasts and videos they make? Are you sharing their stuff on your own social media channels, or spreading the word in groups you're part of because you want to help boost the signal? Are you leaving ratings and reviews?

Or are you just sitting back and wishing them success?

Because while I don't wish to malign anyone's spiritual practices, I believe the most important attitude you could adopt is to be the change you want to see in a creator's world. Don't wait for a random fan to come along and discover their work... be the fan who tells your friends and family about the stuff they make. Be the person who leaves the comments on a creator's video that gases them up, and tells them how much you like what they're doing. Be that person who shares their work in another group so when they find their own creations out in the wild it makes their heart swell.

Don't just sit around waiting for someone else to help... be the first one to offer your hand. Because if enough people pull together, you can suck someone out of the clutches of the algorithm, and raise them up so they can finally take a deep breath, and throw themselves into their work with gusto!

If we all did that for the creators whose work we love, it would be a lot easier for them to survive, thrive, and in the end give us more of the art we want!

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

Beware Book Marketing Frauds (They're Everywhere These Days)

So, you've finally done it. You managed to get your book published, and it's available for sale! Your chest is swollen with pride, and you take to social media to inform anyone who might listen about your achievement, and to make your sales pitch to folks who might want a copy. And at first, it feels like you're getting a lot of positive attention. You're getting comment sections full of congratulations, and you're even seeing some upvotes come your ways... but that's when you start to notice a pattern. People you don't know, and whom you've never interacted with before, who are giving you empty praise that makes it seem like they didn't even look at your sales pitch, much less at your book. They start asking you to contact them, or worse, turning up in your inbox trying to talk to you about your book.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, friends, but your work is not so brilliant and captivating that people are fighting over the ability to help you make more sales. Unfortunately these people saw that you published a book, and they're swarming you like sharks smelling blood, hoping to pry open your wallet before you know any better. This week I'm here to help you avoid being victimized by any of these scams... because they are legion online.

Yeah, I can get you more sales. Sure. Absolutely...

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

Read Between The Lines (And Stay Suspicious)

You can't believe everything you see online. However, a lot of authors are primed for scams, precisely because we want to believe we are the ones who are going to beat the odds. That our stories are so great and so special that all it takes is a glance, or reading a sample, for complete strangers to be totally mesmerized and excited by what we made.

However, when you're interacting online, I want you to treat any interaction as if you're on a dating site, and you just received an unsolicited email from an extremely attractive person who seems really into you.

Which is to say that you should be asking who they are, what they want, and what game they're playing.

You've just been waiting to meet someone like me, hmmm? Pressing X to Doubt...

Whether you have someone trying to start up a conversation with you in your comments, or you're getting a message in your inbox, consider asking yourself the following questions:

- Have They Given You Any Details?: A lot of the time these messages are filled with empty praise. They tell you how creative "your book," is, or they say your cover is, "so eye-catching," but it very much feels like a script. If there aren't any specifics mentioned, even something as basic as the title of your book when you ask them, "Which one are you talking about?" you should be suspicious.

- How Fast Did They Respond?: If you put up a post talking about your book, and you get a reply within a few minutes, that's not a good sign. Ask yourself how long it would have taken for someone to see your post, and to read the sample or actually check out your book. Because if it feels like they were ready to shoot you an answer sight unseen, that should make you question what's happening... doubly so if the message/comment also feels like boilerplate from the above point.

- Do Their Messages Make Sense?: Now, this is not intended to be a grammar snob point. If someone tries to talk you in a comment or message, and it feels like English is their third or fourth language, this isn't inherently suspicious. But it can be a yellow flag you should keep in mind for the direction this conversation eventually goes.

Now, once you've gone through all of these flags, you may still want to continue the conversation. Maybe you even feel like things might be going well, and you actually want to private message this person. This is usually when this mysterious new admirer tells you that they want to help you sell more copies of your book! Isn't that kind of them?

Don't get your hopes up. Because sure, it's possible that this person has legitimately been following your career for a while, they love your work, and they just want to show you they appreciate you. It's even possible they want to help you out by inviting you onto their podcast or YouTube channel, maybe even giving you a long-form review on their blog. But once your new friend makes that offer, much like that suspiciously attractive person on a dating website, that's when they start talking about money.

I could get that done for you... for a SMALL fee...

Just like how your prospective date tries to get you to subscribe to their Only Fans, so too will authors find that these admirers and well-wishers are just trying to sell them on a service. For a fee they insist they will get reviews of your book on Amazon, or sometimes on sites like Goodreads. They'll often make you all kinds of promises, as well... however, it's important not to get caught up in the sales pitch. Are there marketing specialists who can help you reach hundreds (or thousands) of new readers, and help you get huge sales? Sure, they're out there.

But they don't try to hit you up on Facebook chat for a fee of $80.

There are a lot of services out there which authors can hire to help them boost the signal on their books. There are bloggers, YouTubers, and podcasters who review books, there are book review companies who have a stable of authors, and there are publicists who will build entire campaigns for you to make sure you're reaching the right audience. All of these services have their own websites and official business contact information, plans you can purchase, and reviews you can read from other authors who have used them.

That person who randomly messaged you on social media? Yeah... if you're really lucky, they're someone who is just starting out in their career, and they haven't realized how woefully unprofessional that approach looks. They might try to do their best for you, but if that's their opener, you're already in a rough spot. What's more likely, though, is they're just a scammer looking to take your money and peace out with it.

Don't let them do that. Only go through verified services, and only hire them if it's something within your budget that you think will actually help get your books into people's hands. When people like this reach out, your best bet is to report them, block them, and move on with your day.

Lastly, while we're on the subject, check out Alice The Author over on YouTube. She's worked with several services like this, has reviews of them, as well as other ways for you to avoid getting scammed!

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.

"Just Write Another Book" Is Not A Marketing Strategy

 If you spend any amount of time on writing forums, social media pages dedicated to helping writers, or if you go to writing and fiction conventions, you are bound to see an old head out there who is giving the same advice to every, single marketing-related question out there. And like so many pieces of advice, it might look good on the surface, until you stop and think about it. That advice

"The best advertisement for your current book is your next book!"

This might sound good. It might feel motivating to you. If you just keep writing, then success will eventually come your way! However, in the modern day where we're trying to write and sell books, it's pure horseshit... worse, it can make you dig yourself into a hole that you can't dig out of.

Take an entire spoonful of salt whenever you hear this.

Before we get into the nitty gritty this week, don't forget to sign up for my weekly newsletter to get all my updates right in your inbox. Lastly, to be sure you're following all of my followables, check out my LinkTree!

Lastly, don't forget to check out my Vocal archive for additional fiction, articles, explorations of weird history, and more! And, of course, check me out on Blue Sky, since that's what we're talking about today!

Some Reasons They Say This

The reason this advice always seems to come from older folks is that this advice was sort of viable when many of them started their writing careers. If you were a novelist several decades ago, for example, it wasn't uncommon for you to receive an advance on your book if you had a mid-sized or larger publisher. So even if you never sold a copy, or you only sold enough copies to cover your advance, you still got paid. Not only that, but you got paid when you handed in the manuscript and it was approved for going into production. So if you were a good writer with a fast turnaround, you could (at least in theory) earn yourself a pretty fat check at least once a year for a new book, even if your last book was sagging in sales. And if you did that often enough, usually royalties would start stacking up sooner or later.

Additionally, a lot of them come from an era where the marketing landscape was very different than today. Some of the really old writers (or those who worked with major publishers), actually had companies that marketed their books on their behalf. They would set authors up with interviews in magazines, or on radio and TV shows. They would run ads for new books, and ensure that periodicals talking about new releases mentioned their books. And even writers who only go back a few decades into the 90s remember a time when you could have a newsletter with a few thousand people on it, or a mildly active social media presence, and that ensured you had a vibrant, growing fan base. It wasn't a full time job that got in the way of you actually working on your next manuscript.

And in those worlds, yeah, adding a new title into the mix might just be what you needed to stir up the waters, and get people coming back to you. But not only do those worlds not exist anymore, writing another book was never a viable plan for selling something you already have on the market.

Why It's Full of Shit

Firstly, we need to talk about the gambler's fallacy. For those who aren't familiar with it, the idea is that if an event has happened less frequently in the past than average, then surely it will occur more frequently in the future to balance out the odds. Put another way, if your current book should have sold well according to projections, but didn't, then surely your next book will overperform, and that will be a net positive for you!

Unfortunately, it's a fallacy. If your odds of a book being successful are 1 in 10,000, and your first book didn't come up a winner, the odds for your second book aren't any better. More to the point, though, even if your second book does sell better, there's no guarantee that anyone who reads your second book will go back and buy your first book. So you could follow this advice, write a really successful second book, and then the needle doesn't budge at all for titles you already have in your archive.

More to the point, though, you already have a book you're trying to sell!

I need sales NOW, not in 1-3 years!

At the end of the day, this whole idea of writing another book to get attention on your first book is just hope. That's all it is. There's no data to back it up, there's no numbers to it, it's just a piece of homespun wisdom that worked out for a handful of people, so they decided to keep touting it. And even if it didn't work for them, they know it worked for other people, so clearly it's a, "60% of the time it works every time," kind of situation.

A real marketing strategy is a plan. It has steps, it has verifiable things you can do, and most importantly it is focused on selling the book you already wrote and have available on the market!

Some aspects of an actual marketing strategy might include things like:

- Run a digital giveaway to get attention on the title.

- Buying limited Amazon ads the first month of release.

- Getting your book into the hands of reviewers who will tell their audiences about it.

- Plugging it on social media, in blogs, or in videos that you make.

- Bringing the book to conventions, particularly if you are going to be on panels as an author.

Now, there is no guarantee that these steps will make your book a bestseller either. Perhaps the convention you go to is a bust, and the audience just isn't into your genre. Maybe your Amazon ads target the wrong keywords, or your book came out at a time when there was a boycott on. Maybe the reviewers you picked didn't like your book, or their audiences had a lukewarm response. Maybe the social media algorithm suppressed your signal so only a handful of your friends and family actually saw you post about your new book.

Nothing is guaranteed. However, think of your marketing plan as the cheese cloth method. While there are gaps in every individual layer, the more layers you have, the more likely you are to have some kind of success. Because each thing you do is likely ro reach someone, and if you reach enough someones, then your book will find an audience who will buy it, review it, and talk about it with their friends.

None of this is to say that you shouldn't get to work on writing your next book, or working on your next project, as soon as possible. But acknowledge that if you didn't do the marketing for your first book, writing a second book that you aren't going to do the marketing for just looks like you're doubling down on a losing proposal.

Support The Literary Mercenary

If you want to see me produce more work, consider some of the following options!

- My Facebook

- My Blue Sky

- My LinkTree

- My Weekly Newsletter

- The Azukail Games YouTube Channel (where I contribute video content)

- My Rumble Channel (longer videos that won't show up on YouTube)

And if you happen to have some spare dosh lying around, and you want to be sure my supply doesn't run low, consider become a Patreon patron, or leaving a tip by Buying Me a Ko-Fi!

Also, if you're curious about how to write for tabletop RPGs, don't forget to check out my show Tabletop Mercenary, which you can find on both the Azukail Games channel, as well as my Rumble channel listed above!

Like, Follow, and Come Back Again!

That's all for this week's Business of Writing! For more of my work, check out my Vocal archive, or at My Amazon Author Page where you can find books like my sci-fi dystopian thriller Old Soldiers, the Hardboiled Cat series about a mystery solving Maine Coon in Marked Territory and Painted Cats, my sword and sorcery novel Crier's Knife, or my most recent short story collection The Rejects!

 

And to stay on top of all my latest news and releases, collected once a week, make sure you subscribe to The Literary Mercenary's mailing list.