Now that Dickinstein has been published, it’s time to start marketing and finding readers! Having contracted with a traditional publisher for this title instead of self-publishing it myself, most of this effort will be what I like to call “blind marketing.”

That means I will not be able to see an immediate result from my efforts. Other than reviews that get posted on Amazon or on other sites, or watching my sales rank fluctuate at Amazon, I don’t have direct access to sales reports like I do for my previous works that I published myself.  Believe me, I check those almost daily. So, I’ll have to wait for that royalty statement from my publisher at the end of the month to see if my work is paying off.

This week I scoured the web for review sites and reviewers, listed a copy as a giveaway at GoodReads, offered 3 copies as a giveaway on an Emily Dickinson facebook page, and I took out an ad at Bookmooch.com (pictured to the right).

The GoodReads giveaway runs for a month and so far about 160 people have signed up to win. As I mentioned in my previous post, this is a good way to get readers to add your book to their to-read lists. 66 people have added Dickinstein so far! There’s no guarantee that even one of those people will read the book at all, but here’s hoping they do…and that they post a review of it.

I’ve always allotted a certain amount of money toward marketing. I invested a portion of that this week into an ad at Bookmooch. I’ve been a member of Bookmooch since 2007.  It’s an online book swapping community where you earn points by sending books out that people mooch from you, and then you can spend those points to mooch books you want. About a year or so ago, Bookmooch started running book ads on the side of their site.  I’d always kept this in mind so I took advantage of it and bought a one week ad for Dickinstein. It will direct readers to the book’s page on Amazon, but they can also tweet the ad.  I added my Twitter handle to the tweet feature so that I can see if anyone does it.

Building the ad literally took about 10 minutes and it was bought and paid for in less time than that!  How easy! The only drawback is the price. It was $250 for 1 week. But the way I see it, if I can earn that back in sales from the ad, and hopefully then some, then it was worth it. And what’s more important is reaching new readers.

Fingers crossed the ad is a success!