Guest post – Holli Castillo

I met Holli last year through Blog Jog Day when I won her first book. Regular readers might remember my review of her first book and my interview with her, along with another guest post she did for me. Now her new book is out, and she’s back to discuss with us… marketing! That ugly beast us indie authors fear so much. Holli is “indie” in the sense intended by Sarah Polla – she’s with a small publisher, and had to do lots of promotion herself. Ladies and gents, please welcome Holli Castillo!

Promotion is a bear no matter how many books you have published. Unless you’re already famous, as a writer you do most, if not all, of your own promotion, whether you’re with a big house, a small publisher, or self-published. 

After my first book, Gumbo Justice, was published by Oak Tree Press, I was online constantly. I set up my websites, joined writer’s groups, checked out my Amazon rankings every three seconds. I did a lot of work, and I sold okay for an unknown writer. Oak Tree Press is a small publishing house, and I always expected to do my own promotion.

It was two years later before my next book was published, this past July, Jambalaya Justice, the second in the Crescent City Mystery Series.  The length of time it took to get the second book out there was completely my own doing. My publisher was waiting for the manuscript, but I was taking my time. I think on some level I was afraid that it wouldn’t be as well-received as the first, or wouldn’t sell. Or maybe I wasn’t as hungry to be published the second time around. I don’t know. But eventually I was happy with it, and she was happy to have it, and it’s out there.

The first book still sells okay for a two-year-old book. It seems to sell on its own, when I’m not doing any kind of promotion at all. Which has me wondering why I was on the computer every second of my life trying to drum up sales, and if I would have sold the same if I had spent my time doing something else.

I’ve recently found myself repeating the phrase, “I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” more times than I can count. (That and “The economy has not just hit me hard, it has beaten me into submission.”  But that’s a blog for another day.)

Lately, it seems as if there are never enough hours in the day to do what I want to get done. I’m sure most people feel that way, but sometimes time seems to have passed me by and I don’t know where it went.  I joke that there’s a break in the space-time continuum or some other kind of science fiction-y thing has happened and time has skipped me by somehow.

I am not a schedule kind of girl, so that may be my first problem. But I do make lists of what I need to get done, and try to check them off as I go through them.  In fact, I have three separate lists, one for what I refer to as my “job-job” (that thing I do daily that brings me a paycheck and supports everything on my other lists), one I call personal that includes everything from balancing my checkbook to writing a new chapter for my third book, and another list for the things I need to do as PTO president of my youngest daughter’s school.

Because I have these there different and distinct areas of life now, I spend significantly less time promoting than I did before, and I wonder if it really makes a difference in the end.  I do read other’s blogs and comment occasionally, and I also visit a few of my favorite websites when I get the chance, but I can’t help but wonder how do you really know when those things you do strictly for promotion actually pay off.  I guess it’s one of those things we’ll never really know for sure, kind of like where did my entire day go.

Methink there’s no magic recipe. Just keep writing, and you’ll sell eventually. Thank you, Holli, for sharing your experience with us! As soon as Jambalaya Justice comes out as an e-book, I’ll make sure to download it!

Holli’s details: www.jambalayajustice.com and www.gumbojustice.net

Posted by Barb on 19/10/2011

https://creativebarbwire.wordpress.com/2011/10/19/guest-post-holli-castillo/