So, I’ve been sitting on hold with Clover because I’m doing a book signing tomorrow at my mom’s assisted living facility on St. Simons Island and I need to be able to take credit cards. But that cool “tap to pay” feature isn’t working on my iPhone. Tech support says I need a chip reader. Sales guy said I didn’t because it’s an iPhone. Very nice customer service guy has me on hold while he asks somebody else. This is a little ridiculous but it gives me time to pop out a quick blog about something that’s been bugging me.
Self-promotion. How much should a self-published author do? And where?
The answer – according to the peanut gallery in every self-publishing Facebook group – is that there is no such thing as too much self-promotion if you want to get your books out there. But I have had a different experience with that.
We promoted the heck out of Weddings in Vieques back when I was wedding planning and it got me a whole lot of clients, but it also resulted in a lot of my friends unfollowing me because they were sick of wedding stuff. I don’t blame them.
Update: Tap to pay is working now but it won’t add on the sales tax that we set up using the desktop. Clover guy says it’s working on his end. Hahahaha! Still not working on my end. I mean, it’s a bunch of my mom’s neighbors so I don’t really care if I don’t charge them sales tax – I’ll still have to pay it so that’ll be fun to figure out how to do properly – but this is really stupid. It seems like everything that’s new – everything I have to learn how to do – has glitches. I’m starting to think it’s me.
I’ve been trying to promote my new book series more on my “Sandy Malone” fan page that I set up many moons agon when Bill and I starred in TLC’s “Wedding Island.” I’d actually deactivated it, but it’s back up and running now and people are starting to follow the page again. I also need to get better at Instagram and TikTok. This whole #bookstagram thing is a little tricky. So many readers and authors are promoting their pages and it’s easy to get wrapped up in a giant follow game.
I have a bone to pick with Instagram. They are constantly updating that damned app and I think we need an alternate version for anybody over 50 who finally figured out the last version and doesn’t want to learn a new one. Yeah, that’s a defeatist attitude. But dang. I could spend all day on social media, just learning the ins and outs. And as soon as I learn it, they change it. AAAHHHHH!
Which leads me to TikTok… or rather, #booktok in my case. I’m desperate for followers because, let’s face it, I didn’t actually join until I had to. I didn’t want to invite the government of China into my computer. But now I have. Welcome guys. My desktop is a mess. Don’t get lost.
TikTok is its own animal, and one that I have yet to tame. I’ve been trying. But do you ever get the feeling you don’t “get” something that everybody else understands? Yeah, that’s me.
Update: Guy I’ve been working with for over an hour on Clover just disconnected me and doesn’t appear to be calling back. Hmmmm.
For all I know, TikTok will cease to exist in a few months in the United States so any effort I make could be for naught. But I figure that some American Elon Musk-ish type will jump in and buy it. Either way, I’m not sure I’m accomplishing squat on that platform, either.
Then there’s those new YouTube book shorts where authors read their books on YouTube. Seems a little weird to me. I’m about to do the Audible versions of my books. The YouTube versions are for marketing, I guess. Need to do more research before I tackle that. But thank you to my girlfriend Rita Rich for loaning me all the equipment to record the books.
One thing everybody says is that you should have a solid “author platform” and blog all the time and send out newsletters. But what am I blogging about here? Writing books? I’m the new guy on the block for fiction so don’t follow me, I’m lost. I just want to write books. I’m seriously missing the benefits of working with a traditional publisher but I’m not going to decide for sure on that until six months out when I can run numbers and compare.
Alrighty, so I’ve wasted about 90 minutes on the phone with Clover customer service and don’t have my problem solved. And I’ve written a blog post about what I don’t know how to do. Number of items checked off on my to-do list: Zero.
The graphic at the top of this blog was made by a friend after “Wedding Island” started airing. If you never saw the show, it’s streaming free on Tubi and DiscoveryPlus. It’s not the most flattering portrayal of me (damned editors), but if you watch it, you’ll see that I didn’t make up the stuff that’s in my books. I couldn’t make that up if I tried.
Until next time, happy reading!
Sandy