It's a publishing jungle out there!!! The Wa(rn)ing Writer!!

And by the title you have already figured out the topic of this weekly post.
If you are a first-time self-published author, and you know nothing about marketing strategies, you might find yourself struggling with the usual question.
Ok, I have published my book, how to make people buy it?
And that is a very important question, so the best thing that I can suggest is make an extensive search on the internet, about:

💥 Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+ groups, where experienced indie authors are ready to share their tips and advice.
💥Blogs of indie authors who give hints about how to market your book.
💥Companies which offer free of charge or paid marketing/promotional services
💥Arrange giveaways of your book in exchange for an honest review.
💥Create a blog about your writings or about what inspires you to write
💥Organise book signing events
💥BE CREATIVE!

Social media groups for authors:

This is a very valuable source for any sort of advice, from how to market your book, to how to choose the right book cover and where to find cover artists, where to find a proofreader and many other forms of support.
Of course, be sure you open an author Facebook account, a Twitter account together with LinkedIn, Instagram and Google+ where to grow your audience and professional connections.

BLOGS:

There are many authors who constantly write in their blogs some important piece of advice on how to bring your book in front of the public. Many of them will share their experience, good and bad, to make sure that whoever reads will never find him/herself to the same problems, or will have the same success faster.

You might wonder why an author would give away his/her secret of success? Because we are not in competition, there are readers for everyone, and there is no reason to be mean to each other. Moreover, with your blog you can reach many other potential readers and fans, they might not be the ones who will buy your books, but you will increase your visibility, and after all, it is all fun, which is the best part of it!

Paid/free marketing services:

This one requires you a very careful look before you send money to whoever. There are many kinds of services, and as much as many offer a good service for a reasonable price (ranging monthly from 8-15$ to a yearly fee between 49-200$).
Most of them give exactly the same service, but they target different audiences, adding one or few extras. Therefore, you might easily believe that having two or three different subscriptions to those services can give you extra visibility without going bankrupt. Moreover, if you put into practice the advice you get from other authors you might easily have already a great starter package that takes you and your book out of the anonymity.
Then, of course, there are the free services, and those are totally risk free, as the biggest risk is that they won't much help, but on the other hand, you haven't invested anything right?

Reviews:

Those are crucial, because they give a reason to the buyer to stop and look at your book. It gives the message to other readers that someone bought that book, someone liked it and someone else didn't, The more the reviews, the more your book become interesting and visible. Be sure that the first action you take in your marketing strategy is getting those reviews. Ten is the minimum target you should aim at.

Organise book signing events:

You can ask one local independent bookstore, or library whether they could host your event. Generally they won't refuse, because you will attract potential buyers, not just for your books, but also for the books they are selling.

BE CREATIVE:

This means, of course, that you have the right to use your imagination to attract people to take a look at your book, to entice them with your writing skills, and ability to create original plots because nobody knows whether you will be their next super favourite author!!

One thing I warn you about:

BEWARE THE SHARKS!!!

Those are the people who ask for insane prices and offer nothing but fried air. How to recognise a shark from an honest service provider?

Generally, those are authors who found a miracle formula to attract readers and sell millions of copies of their book, they are going to promise you skyrocketing sales in just a few weeks or months. They show you how many millions of copies of their books they have been selling and since they are so kind, they are going to offer you the same success for crazy prices (600 to over 1000$ 💀💀💀).

The best thing is that they do not say "we are going to bring your book in front of 500K readers distributed into four different social media groups," they are just selling you an advice without even bothering to promote your book.

At that point my question is, if you made millions with your books, why would you need my money for a piece of advice? 

There are thousand of authors who give advices for free!!

Now being sure that what works for one book, not necessarily works for other books, and that nobody can promise you millions in sales, you can be sure that this person didn't sell much anything and all of his/her income comes from this kind of service he/she sells for a high price.

Many authors wrote already about this big threat at the expenses of inexperienced indie authors, but one more post (this one) is not going to harm, and perhaps will save the bank account of other indie authors, who feel depressed about the low sales of their books.

One thing always to remember is that success is not something that happen suddenly, besides some rare cases. With zillions of books in the market, the question is who is able to stubbornly continue something that resembles more a marathon? Remember that success might or might not come, it might come soon or it might take the publishing of other seven books, nobody has the answer.

The best advice I can give you is to never lose your hopes. If writing is your passion, treat it this way, and never give up. Always keep your passions alive, after all, Rome wasn't built in one day.

I am not a super bestselling author, but I would like every indie author to feel relaxed about their sales, and not to stress too much, we all want to succeed, but only time will teach us the best way to do it, which will be different for each of us.