Self Publishing 101: Book Sales

I received an email today from a new self publisher, asking just when he could expect his first book sale. Well, that's a great question, but there is no standard answer. I will say this again and again... you have to get the word out. With over a billion websites out there, and nearly that many people trying to sell something, you have to a) have great product, and b) find a way for people to hear about that product.

The first mistake everyone makes is building a website, or opening an e-store, or joining a site that sells stuff, and then just sitting back and waiting for the people to trickle in and buy stuff. Hey, that could happen... but once Mom has bought your book, and your sister, and favorite Aunt, well, things will start to slow down.

Here's the first bit of knowledge to share... once you start a website, it takes time for your keywords and images to get into the search engines, so it will be weeks before people start to find you. Until then, only people you actually give the web address to will find you. Unless you pay big bucks to Google, you can expect to wait a few months for an audience to build up.

Bit o'knowledge #2: Yo haev to have fresh content to get those people coming back. Trust me on this one... when I take a break from cartooning to do freelance stuff, my audience finds something else to do.

If you are writing a book, then you may want to post teasers once in a while, or offer a free download of your first chapter. An Artist may want to create a series of work, promising more for visitors to come back to.

Still, the biggest thing, even today, is getting word out somewhere OFF the web. Web advertising is so intense right now, it is easy to ignore 99% of it, and that bit you can't ignore is usually so repulsive that you may even get off the web for a day or two. :0)

Scott Adams became big when he started adding his web address to his cartoons... in the newspapers. All the big cartoonists, writers, movie makers.. everyone has websites, but those sites are suplimentary to their main product. They offer something additional, and ways to buy, of course.

It is possible to grow your business being web only, but I'm sure that strictly web businesses still advertise and make appearances in the real world. They have to.

So... my advice? Advertise, blog, or go to conventions... anything and everything to get the word out. And yes, it will cost money, and lots of it, but that's what it takes to run any business. And most of that is tax deductible!

Just promise me one thing. Don't SPAM people, or throw your advertising in our faces. That's a great way to lose business forever.

More about Permission Advertising later.

Have a great one... JOHN :0)

PS the above cartoon has nothing to do with selling books... or does it? That's a new comic strip from Knight and Day. You can read more about them in their first two books available at www.HappyGlyphs.com or at my Lulu store. :0)

Fall Cleaning: A Treasure Trove of Comics

For various reasons, I needed to do some research into my own career, and therefore dug through the hundreds (or more!) of original comic strips that I have drawn over the years. What a delight! It was great seeing strips that I haven't thought of in a while, and seeing the originals of some favorites, and totally awesome to find some strips that for some reason or another were never finished or published!

Okay, you're thinking that maybe they were rubbish, if I never got around to drawing or finishing them, and truth be told, I thought the same thing. Then again, you probably don't know me like I know myself. :0) I try to hide the fact that I make mistakes on occassion, and that I can't draw everything no matter how hard I try, and especially that I can sometimes get terribly disorganised... a state that is very hard to recover from.

So... if I didn't finish drawing a strip, it was probably because I got swamped with other projects, or was moving house, or something earth-shattering like that. It is entirely possible that I could have forgotten I was in the middle of a strip. Of course, it's also entirely possible that at the time I found the strip to be challenging, or that at that moment I did think it was rubbish. Who knows?



What I can say is that finding them now I really like them! Nostalgia? Possibly. Change of heart? Probably. I'll leave you to judge whether they are good or not. I've finished The Inquiring Minds strip and colored it, even though the original was a mess of smeared ink and random notes. The Sunday Knight and Day I just redrew it neater, but it is far from finished, but worth a read. The Knight and Day daily was finished, but never published for some reason. I truly think it was just lost in the shuffle. Then again, this was from a time when I was trying to figure out if I should pursue The Inquiring Minds, Knight and Day, or both. A tough time for me, mentally.



There was some other stuff, but these ar ethe strips I thought worth sharing, and I am pretty sure that there are no more 'lost' strips to share. Knight and Day and The Inquiring Minds are now all caught up, discrepancies in number and continuity repaired, and all is well... except that I really need to find time to draw some new stuff and to finish The Ghost Pirate Skeletons of Three Craters Lake!

But, another big deadline looms, and there are last minute changes to the beautiful magazine cover I am illustrating, so new strips will have to wait a few more days. But they are coming! Promise. :0)

All the best, JOHN ;0)