What does a Roomba and a writer have in common? Something that is way out of a writers comfort zone, advertising.
In a ZDNet article dated June 15, 2018 Colin Barker mentioned that in 2003 the iRobot company built 250,000 robots. After black Friday 2003 they still had 210,000 robot in the warehouse.
Sales did not grow like they did on the previous year. Management was in a panic.
Why didn’t they sell more robots? They didn’t advertise, and here is the key point that the author made, and advertise at specific events. Word of mouth was good at first but it wasn’t enough.
The same goes for your book. You have to advertise, and you have to advertise where your readers are looking. Think of it as advertising on a billboard and the billboard is along side a desert highway that no one travels. If no one sees the billboard then it doesn’t matter what genre you write in, no one will see your add.
There are a lot of books out there. More and more books are published every day. If a reader of your genre wants to read a book like yours, where will he find out about your book? There are many people that will help you market your book. Show you where to advertise your book. But they will only help, you will still have to do the work.
You’re going to have to do something that big companies don’t always get right and that is effective advertising.
Good luck, and let me know what works.
Stay strong, write on and advertise.
Professor Hyram Voltage