If you have already read about this book being released this week then, please, feel free to disregard the following. However, before you go, this may be of interest to those who find the marketing and promotion of their work anything ranging from tedious to pleasant, or from supercalifragilistic to the full onslaught of extreme forms of self-flagellation.

I’m not ill-disposed to paying individuals or companies who specialise in marketing and promotion if I can afford their prices and feel their efforts may do some good. I don’t know the best places to advertise books. I know of a few FaceBook pages and I’m a tweeter on Twitter, yes, I know, it’s a throat-cutting experience, but I have to do some form of promotion.

I have a brilliant publisher. I owe them a lot. He, and the people in his company, from the editors to the cover designers, do so much for me that I feel as though I must do something in order to repay their faith. So, with that in mind, I set out to explore the internet to find ways to improve on my meagre efforts.

I looked at Goodreads. I then investigated a return to university with the aim of studying whatever language is used on Goodreads, but with the capacity of memory I now have, I estimated it could take as long as six years to understand and retain all that was needed. Needless to say, but I will say, I declined to pay the necessary fees.

I looked at BookBub, quickly deciding the seven hundred and fifty-odd dollars wanted for the genre the book would go into, was far too much of an investment. But, lo and behold, yesterday I received an email from BookBub telling me my book–What Comes Before, has been ‘confirmed’ to be featured on the 11th of January as a New Release, and the notification of that will go to all my 177 followers.

I had an issue over the 177 followers this notification was addressed to, and this is where you too might have an interest. I do not have only 177 followers on BookBub. I have 613 followers and I’m following 677. I sent Bookbub an email asking why there was a discrepancy between the numbers I said I had and the number they quoted. Their answer might surprise you, and may surprise my publisher, if it was they who indeed; did pay.

Hi Daniel,

Thanks for reaching out! We send New Release Alerts to your followers in the US who have opted-in to receive alerts from authors they follow. It looks like you have 576 US followers, however, only 177 of those followers are eligible to receive this alert.

I hope this helps clear things up! Please let me know if you have any further questions.

I’m left with the places I know where I can advertise my wares, amongst the throngs of others, hoping someone might want to read what I write, and perhaps the number of 177 followers opting to receive notifications of my work, is either ‘par’ or under or over the normal going-rate. Perhaps, each one of those sorrowful 177 souls did not see the–opt out button to tick or click.

Whoever it was who is quoted as saying —being happy if just one person read their work, either worked for BookBub, if BookBub existed when Mark Twain was about, or had sold as many novels as Mark Twain eventually did. Because as much as happiness is relative to an individual and quite honestly–I am as happy as anyone could be, I would love my work to be read by millions of readers —- but I might have to settle for just the one. Ah well, I’m happy just writing, I wonder if you knew that.

What Comes Before— The Third Book in The Heir And Descendants Series—

https://mybook.to/HandDSeries

© 2022, Daniel Kemp. All rights reserved.