Sideways promotion

How does an author get the great book-buying public to know that they and their books exist?  This is a question every author has to answer, but it's even more of a challenge for self-published ones.  The Internet is awash with millions of books, and we need a way to get people to notice ours.

The way not to do it is to spend all day on Facebook and Twitter posting links to your books and asking people to buy them. We have to be more subtle than that.  I call it sideways promotion.

Sideways promotion is anything that raises your profile as an author.  For me recently that has meant speaking on a panel at the World Science Fiction Convention, and leading a workshop on writing SF  for Havant Literary Fesrival.  Attending events and tweeting about them is a great way to grow your followers.  I gained over thirty new ones during the five days of Worldcon.  And many of those new followers would read about my books on my profile.

Sideways promotion is adding value by being an interesting speaker at events, or by writing blog posts that give people tips or useful information.  It all adds up to building a picture of you as an author  expert in their field.  As a result of one of my blog posts I've been approached on social media by a columnist from a writing magazine, asking for content on women writing SF.  That's sideways promotion at its best.

Once you've appeared at a few author events it becomes easier to get invited to other events.  You've become visible to the world.  And including details of your books on every profile you set up can widen your reach considerably.  If you are active on the web a Google search will bring up the titles of your books alongside your name, which is just what you want.

I'd recommend a sideways promotion strategy to all self-published authors.  We don't have a third party publisher telling people how good our books are, and saying that ourselves doesn't work.  We have to get endorsement of our work in different ways.  Sideways publicity is a very good way to do if.