Advice for Indie Authors: Sharing my book with the world... literally!

In a previous post I mentioned that I would be sending copies of my book out into the big, bad, wide world to fend for themselves. Well sort of.

Bookcrossing.com is a community of book fans - old school printed books and none of this eBook malarky! The idea is simple, yet brilliant. You take one of your books and you find it a new home, whether this is by passing it on to a friend to read or leaving it on a park bench for someone to find. The only catch is that you register it on Bookcrossing.com and generate an individual code to identify that book by. When someone is given the book or finds a copy that you have sent out into the "wild", they can then go onto Bookcrossing.com and insert that code to submit their own comments about the book. That person is then encouraged to pass the book on again once they have read it to continue the cycle.

For me this was a brilliant way of getting my novel in front of people who would have never heard of me or my book.

Originally I planned to send out 25 copies, but I didn't quite make that number (I managed a measly four copies!), but it is certainly something I am going to stick with. I left two copies of the book on the London tube (they have never been registered and no feedback has been posted yet), but I was contacted via Bookcrossing.com by two readers - one in the Netherlands and one in Australia - requesting copies of my novel.

Within a couple of weeks of sending the books out they had been registered to say they had been received, and in the last couple of days both of the readers posted comments and feedback after reading a copy of The Drought. Both copies have now been passed on and hopefully the cycle will continue.

In 2012 I want to send out a few more copies to see what happens, because I believe that word of mouth really is powerful tool, especially for an indie author. For every person who reads my book and enjoys it, maybe they tell three of their friends, and they tell three of their friends, and so on and so forth.

I am under no illusions that this is going to ensure I shift hundreds of copies of my novel, but it is just another piece of the puzzle that is self-marketing. Happy Christmas all and if you are looking for a late Christmas present (for a man or a woman!) then why not check out The Drought.