My Marketing Experiences (5th instalment)

Marfa Ridge, Malta

My latest marketing experience was the result of an invitation from my local Rotary Club to give a presentation at one of their weekly meetings.  I spoke about my self-publishing experiences, together with another topic that they requested which was of interest to them, on the basis that afterwards signed copies of my book would be available for sale with the profits being split 50/50 between myself and the charity of their choice.

I only sold 3 books, but the comments and suggestions for future marketing have proved to be very useful.  In fact, it was as a result of that presentation that I set up this blogspot, and I am now selling my first book in Kindle format.

Previously, an electronic version was available via lulu.com , but this did not prove to be very successful, probably because very few people know that electronic versions of books are available on Lulu.  Also, payment is via PayPal which can be difficult when you are only making sales rather than sales and purchases, because there is a minimum amount of money that can be withdrawn from your account and a maximum per annum.

I would add that I found setting up electronic versions to be free of charge, and easy to do.  Also, that  the percentage of the sale price that the author receives when selling a book in Kindle, or other electronic formats can exceed the Royalty received when selling hard copy books.  Therefore, it is to be recommended.

Another recommendation from Rotary Club members was to have a presence on Facebook and Twitter.  I am now in the process of setting this up with links to this blogspot.  The problem is that time is precious, and my time should be spent writing books rather than being continually involved in updating communication pages.

In fact, my next book – A Ticket to Zululand – is now nearing completion, and I have to get on with proofreading etc.  Therefore, I have decided that I will only be updating my blogspot once a month in future.

In my next posts, I will be covering other marketing options that I have been offered, but at a high cost.  I have not taken advantage of any of these so far because after evaluation, I did not believe they offered value for money.  All marketing/advertising is a risk, but there are some areas where I felt the outlay involved could not be justified.  I will explain why later.