When you have penned your masterpiece, getting it sold in any quantity requires one of two things: the money of a publishing house to carry out a marketing campaign to bring it to the attention of all those who can influence the public at large. Getting reviewed by, say, the New York Times is going to result in a lot of sales, even if the review is less than a rave.
But if you are self publishing, there is no big vault of an advertising budget. You rely, in the main, on the luck of the draw.
Whatever its literary faults, "Fifty Shades of Grey" started life as a modest self-published e-book. And despite those faults, netted its author a small fortune, All from the power of people chatting to each other - in hushed tones - about what a good read it was.
All we spanko authors dream of writing the next "50 shades", but our chances are very slender indeed.
If we turn up in "Goodreads" - the internet equivalent of the NYT LS - with a new work, containing half a dozen rave reviews, the response is more likely to be that of dealing in spam pop-ups than having a best seller in the making. Too many first timers turn up with such books, and the reviews are so uncritical as to be almost certainly from friends and family - that the existence of such praise causes all sorts of alarm bells to ring.
So you need to go the slow and ordinary route - first get a name first as someone who gives fellow authors helpful advice. And when the time comes is never pushy about how wonderful one's own work is. If they like it, it will get read. And the more who read the introduction, the more who will buy the full version.
Internet users tend to hate spam with a vengeance. Being seen as a spam producer is absolutely guaranteed to kill off a promising career.
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