Just a little advice

It never fails to amaze me how we have become such an instant society. Now, what exactly do I mean by that? We have become a society in which entertainment, whether television, movies, or books can be had at the press of a button almost anywhere in the world and at any time. As a writer, that means you must have a constant presence in order to stand out among all the clutter.

I have been on vacation for the last few days and have not written any new posts or made my presence known on the internet by promoting. Now, you would think that such a short span of time away from marketing and promoting my books wouldn’t have an effect on sales. But it has. In just three days of internet silence my daily sales have dropped about thirty percent. And I do believe that if a week had gone by my sales would have dropped even further.

I wrote an article about this phenomenon a few years back when I went on a longer vacation and saw my sales drop dramatically. In order to sell books you must maintain a web presence on the big writer’s sites and writer’s and reader’s threads and communities at all times. People are constantly bombarded with ads and have learned to ignore them like an over-fed frog ignores a bothersome fly. The only way to get noticed is to keep involved.

Though I know we all need a vacation from the stresses and absurdities of life, the work of a writer is never done; whether it’s creating new characters and stories or marketing existing works to get read. To make it big in the publishing world you must put forth the effort to get noticed. Sales do not happen just because a book is a great read they happen because people find out that it is a great read. And that is achieved by marketing.