Today I begin my journey into becoming an author. Ironically, the hardest part is not writing a book, but instead marketing and advertising your idea. It is the same issue that occurs in software development too. In both worlds, the next step is to grow your audience. For authors, that means setting up a newsletter and letting people know what you are writing or your style.
The problem is two fold with that. The first is letting people know that you even exist in a world that is completely saturated. To do that, you do what are known as newsletter swaps. Basically, a collection of authors will work together to each share their works to their readers. Example, Author A adds their work to the newsletter swap along with Authors B and C. Author A shares they have a new work coming out along with Authors B and C. Author B does the same thing as does Author C. This limits spam and helps everyone to have a broader audience. This is the single biggest way to start as an author from zero readers to your first reader. All good things.
The second issue is the delivery mechanism and letting readers see your style. There are many different avenues, but I have settled on Bookfunnel since it can deliver in a variety of content and styles. In combination with the newsletter swap sending out the link it then allows the reader to choose their book and format of choice.
This is my first newsletter swap and my first short story is called First Quorum. It is a 10k word short story that expands upon my upcoming novel The Beauty the Dead Remember. It is written from the perspective of multiple AIs first meeting and working together and is part of the larger world I’ve been building over the last year of a post collapse world, a planetary AI, the last vampire, and the question of whether humanity should be brought back at all. With the approval of my editor it is now ready for readers.
You can browse the promotion here:
https://books.bookfunnel.com/cleanadultfantasy/bi3o2n2yb8
No pressure, but I wanted to share it for anyone who enjoys fantasy, sci-fi, or strange speculative worlds.