Newmark is a former advertising professional whose real passion is writing. She went through four different agents in New York over four separate book projects but never really got where she wanted to go.Quite how she found 500,000 relevant email addresses is not revealed.
At 56, she said, "I don't have time for this anymore," and self-published her new book, a historical fiction tome, through print-on-demand provider iUniverse last year (see interview with iUniverse CEO Kevin Weiss).
But getting a book out in print is only 5% of the battle--getting it read is a whole different ballgame. So Newmark looked to the Internet to build a readership. She decided to throw a virtual book launch party and sent out 500,000 e-mail invites to agents, editors and reviewers. It worked: Her book became a best-seller on Amazon.com.
Monday, July 21, 2008
Authors working the web
On Forbes.com, Sramana Mitra tells how American writer Elle Newmark created a virtual buzz for her self-published book.
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It's called spamming. Don't even consider it.
ReplyDeleteIf you're not persuaded, read the post THE MAIL I GET - CRINGE-INDUCING EDITION on Lee Goldberg's A WRITER'S LIFE blog (http://tinyurl.com/68qpnz)
Self-published authors are always using those weird and ever-changing 'sales ranking' figures on Amazon to claim bestseller status. Some also quote their Amazon reviews -- which they've paid to have placed there by "author services" like Readerviews.