A couple of years ago, a friend of mine, a New York Times #1 Bestseller, was scheduled to do a book signing in North Carolina. He was excited because another #1 New York Times Bestseller was scheduled to be signing with him at the same time, and he imagined that this would be an epic event. So he went onto his mailing list and emailed his fans, letting them know about the big event.
He arrived at the book signing on a stormy winter evening and found out that his turnout was okay, given the weather. But the newer writer, who was debuting his second novel, had no fans show up at all. It was a total bust.
My friend asked the new writer what had gone wrong, and the new writer answered, “I guess my fans didn’t get the memo.” You see, the new writer hadn’t emailed his fans. He didn’t even know that he was supposed to keep a list.
Every writer—everyone who even wants to be a writer—needs to have a way to contact fans. If you have a new book debuting, your publisher can’t do much to help. They don’t keep records of who has purchased your book. So it is up to you to generate some excitement.
Keeping a list is easy. You simply put up a web page and invite people to get on your mailing list. On your web page you can blog about anything that you like—your love of emperor penguins, your Aunt Sophie’s lime pie recipes, or your desire to backpack across Mars before you die. You don’t have to talk much about your writing at all, but you do need to start now.
You see, building that list can take years. You invite past schoolmates, old friends, relatives, or people you’ve worked with. You might share information about your writer’s journey with them and give them excerpts from your upcoming works.
It gives you a way to begin creating a fan base, and when you have a book come out, you’ll find that literally thousands of people may contact you. .
Begin building your list now. Make sure that when your books come out, your friends get the memo.
Oh, and don’t rely on Facebook anymore. When I post a message to my 5000 friends on Facebook, so few of them see it, it really doesn’t work anymore. You see, the people who run these social media sites really don’t want you to be able to advertise to your fans—unless you pay them handsomely—which is why you can’t trust your business to social media.
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The folks at Infostack have a new bundle that gives you thousands of dollars worth of tools to help build your own fan base for less than $50. This should be especially valuable to self-published authors, but if you want to build a large fan base, I can see how this is worthwhile for any writer. Pick it up today! I’ll only be sending out one reminder.
You can look at it here https://davidfarland–infostack.thrivecart.com/traffic/
