The Publication Process, Part 2

For my second installment on the road to publication, I want to talk about something that was really a challenge - finding the right hashtag.

As an author without a publishing house marketing team behind her, I set out on my own to promote The Ducal Detective using mainly, you guessed it, social media.  And in this day and age, being successful on social media is all about those 'tags.  

For the last few months, I've been posting the occasional screenshot of my Battleground Eden series, showcasing which book in the trilogy I was working on, keeping people intrigued by the work I was doing.  For most of my friends, it was a surprise to see me tweeting during normal work hours "writing at the library" or "just finished revising book one," considering I kept it under wraps that I quit my job in healthcare IT to be a full-time writer.  

So, initially, a lot of the activity were friends reaching out asking, "what are you even doing right now?"  But then as my savviness with hashtags grew, so did my followers.  Using #writersofinstagram really brought a lot of new people to the table so that as I worked on my Battleground Eden series, the internet became interested in little old me.

But then The Ducal Detective happened and the publishing process took off, and soon, I'm sitting at my computer screen, looking at my Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing page with a release date for my first book.  And I'm thinking, "How are people even going to know this exists?"  

Enter hashtag number 2: #ebooks.  Seriously, I received tons of book marketing followers and retweets when I used #ebooks in my Twitter posts.  I think that's what started the hashtag craze.  I'd write these nice little blurbs then tack on a bunch of hashtags at the end. AND IT WORKS.  You've seen the tweets - if you're a close friend, you're probably thinking "this girl has lost it," but I swear, these hashtags draw people to my work like light bulbs draw moths.  It's amazing.  I can connect with so many people because of this little symbol #.

So it's safe to say that while I'm not a marketing genius, I have found those special words that bring people to the table and it's really helping hype for the book take off.  Yesterday, I was notified I was in the Top 100 Kindle Mystery Shorts.  That's insane.  Like, I could never have imagined my little novella being received so well before it's even released.

Even if you're not promoting a book, the right hashtag is a great way to spread the word and reach people you normally do not have in your network.  It's a big open world out there.  Use your words to discover and be discovered.

#Armsaround,

S.B.