Marketing My Novel, Step 1

While I am going through the editing and re-write process, which is far lengthier than I anticipated, I have developed a marketing plan for my novel. Remember, as a self-published author, I wear two hats: writer and businesswoman.

My marketing plan–which is a work in progress–is designed to give readers a taste of my writing style before the release of my novel. How so?

I authored an 8000+ word suspenseful short story named “Strange” which I am releasing soon on Amazon.com. The cover art has been commissioned.  When released, the story will sell for 99 cents.

Hopefully, readers will sample my story and decide that  they would like to read Moore (pun fully intended) writing from me. The next step is to release the novel–shortly after releasing the short story–before those who enjoyed “Strange” forget about me.

I may have made a mistake in this by-the-seat-of-my-pants marketing plan. I want to share my mistakes with you, so you can learn from them and avoid them in your own marketing.

My short story “Strange” involves death, but not murder. It is suspenseful, but in a different way than my murder mystery novel.  The characters in the short story are nothing like the characters in the novel.

In hindsight, I think I should have written a murder mystery short story using a main character from my murder mystery novel. That would not only introduce the reader to my writing style in the up-coming novel, but would have hooked them into getting to know one of the characters.

Hmmm. If I am a smart cookie, I will do that anyway. I will write another short story to introduce a main character from the novel–maybe two short stories, each focusing on a different character–and e-publish them to whet the taste of readers for the novel.  That way, if a reader likes the short story and the character, the reader can buy the novel.

I like that plan. Now, where am I going to get the time to do it? That’s a post for another day.