The links in this post are mostly now broken. I unpublished these books a long time ago, even though the series was completed, as I wasn’t happy with their quality. The domain name has since lapsed and is now owned by somebody else.
Original post follows
Studio Tendra’s first week has gone better than I expected (although the post on our cover design process kind of sunk without notice).
We’ve seen some downloads, some feedback, some positive word. All in all pretty good for a five day old venture.
But, as you may not know, we don’t have a grand master plan here beyond making the books as good as we can make them. Sure, we’ve got ideas and plans for how to market these things but they’re all still pretty much up in the air.
Which brings me to you. I need your help. I’d really appreciate any suggestion for how to market these ebooks (or ebooks in general) that you can throw in my direction.
No matter how obvious you think it is, put it in a comment or in the feedback form. If there’s a venue you think I should check out, mention it. If you have a website or a forum you run that you think might be useful for marketing websites, feel free to pimp it. If you have a service that might help, by all means talk about it. If you’ve published yourself, I’d love to hear some of what you’ve done. Feel free to mention what book it was you were promoting as you make your suggestion. I’m open to anything and everything that isn’t sleazy or creepy (so no review-buying or people-stalking, thank you :P).
If you can, put the suggestion in the comments in case it might be helpful to others who are in my position.
Oh, and isn’t anybody curious about what Tendra means? :-)
ETA:
Some suggestions from twitter:
Shelley Powers pointed me at Free Kindle Books and Tips and the features that KDP Select offers. She also mentioned Amazon’s forums, which I’ll have to check out.
George Walkley pointed out that some people have been using Google Hangouts to good effect. And that kindle.amazon.com might possibly be an underused option.
Tom Abba said the following:
Establish audience, lots of free tasters, dropped out at random (ish) and then hit them with the pay what you want.
You need the author equivalent of ninja gigs. imho.
Ninja gig is unexpected, free, counter to expectation and gets attention. What can a writer do that gets the same results?
Which, to me, sounds like a Seth Godin Purple Cow and those are hard to come up with. Maybe this old Kathy Sierra post represents a good framework for coming up with ideas?
ETA 2:
Pablo Defendini answered Tom’s ninja gigs question with the following suggestion: “Flash fiction in a public gDoc.”
Which I think is a pretty interesting idea and would be more fun for people to watch than, say, writing an entire novel in a google doc. Very close to the live, performance, vibe of ninja gigs. I like it.