Jumping Trains

I must say that there has been an explosion of Facebook author/reader train sites - sites where authors basically read each other's work, give it honest reviews, and in return gain a single reader - someone who will presumably do the same. It is a laborious way to pick up a reader but this method has been invaluable to me for several reasons. One is that I need to see what indie authors are producing out there, and see what the norm is for various genres. Another is that I literally have found no other way to pick up an audience of any kind as an unknown indie author. What audience I have, is basically other writers who have found me on the reader/author train sites doing what I call read marketing.

Here are the nine sites I've found: Book Trains for Indie Authors, Self-publishing Book Club, Book review train, Book review swaps for free, Indie Author/Reader Subway, Authors/Readers United Book Trains, Author Reading Trains, Independent Book Reviews, Authors, Readers & Books Unite, and Book Review Group and Trains. They are in flux: a couple of them are on break, or in and out of the trains business. I can tell you which of them were the first and who runs them in some cases. I have respect for the moderators because I know it's a lot of work and I can also tell that many authors are unscrupulous: willing to reap the reward without necessarily doing the reading, or doing as shallow a job as possible. Moderators are getting better at stating and enforcing the rules clearly, and also identifying the trains clearly with cool train pictures at the top. Many of the sites are now running smoothly whereas they used to be plagued by fly-by-night hucksters who were basically very inconsiderate to their fellow indie authors.

I have twenty-six books on the market but only about a dozen that I am actively hustling; I have given up on the haiku pretty much, in terms of marketing, as I don't believe I can even get a fair number of people to read it, much less leave a review. But I care a lot about my reputation as a short-story writer; I have nine volumes out there, and I really want people to read them. I care more about them, perhaps, than even the biographies, which I wrote for family but which prove to be unusually popular with other writers. I refuse to push my autobiography but it kind of sells on its own and does ok. My perception of myself on the market is colored by the fact that most of my audience is other writers. And fortunately they respect the fact that I have very thin skin and learn best inductively - seeing what works and what doesn't, seeing what their reviews don't say, that kind of thing. You need to have your work read in order to learn anything about the way you are seen on the market.

I have a number of theories which I will lay out on this blog if you are patient and can wait until I put them on the table. First is that the various markets don't overlap. I can do well on kindle but that won't affect how well I'm doing on paperback or ACX sales, because people who read on kindle keep reading on kindle, and don't tend to cross over and read in two or three different ways. Second, even within kindle, different audiences (like other authors, readers-only, ku-only, amazon deals customers) don't tend to cross over. People use single sources to buy from and shop from, and if they used that source yesterday they'll use that source today.

Another is that we are dealing with very small percentages. If three out of a hundred people who read your book like it, and only one out of ten of those like it enough to go out and buy another one, you have to cast a wide net to get a lot of people to read that first book in order to get the ball rolling in any way. And even writers like Steven King, though his percentage may be five out of a hundred and two out of ten, is still dealing with low percentages. So whoever you are, you have to cast that wide net and get started hauling in what you can. It's not going to be an easy road. And those percentages won't really change unless you become a better or different writer. Your experience will help you become better but won't raise your percentages significantly right away; it's going to be a long and steady process. So you have to dig in for the long game.

These sites, to me, have been a godsend. I now know some of my readers; I know them by their work. I now have some information about what works and what doesn't. It's like fishing, and keeping track of what you can dangle that will get some bites. Eventually, you dangle the right thing. Many thanks to the moderators who make it all possible. More about the other markets: paperback, acx, ku, etc., later. I can't say I'm an expert. But I've lifted myself out of the basement, and am scrambling up into contention, all without digging into a precarious family budget.