One of the things I am beginning to 'get' where it comes to marketing books. It's easier if you write the same kind of story over and over. In short, I think if you have a type, readers will then follow up on the first purchase with a second. IF like me, you write a lot of different kinds of stories, it makes it tougher.
When I put Desert Inferno on free, it drew a few buyers to From Here to There because both are contemporary western love stories. It didn't help the other three I currently have up on Kindle because the readers apparently don't see the connection.
In my writing, all of it, I create characters and dynamics of stories that will be set in very different situations yet always offer some basic similarities for the action and energy of the stories. I don't want to write stories where over and over it's the same thing with different faces.
When I write fiction, I like exploring issues, as I do with the blogs; but in a fiction story, you do it with characters to make it more interesting than a straight lecture. It's fun to write like that-- to put out ideas through the vehicle of a story. But it may not be that marketable for an assortment of reasons, not the least of which is that the books don't fit in boxes.
The other problem in thinking about all of this is I am slowly realizing I don't write romances. My first hint to this being the case should have been that I can't stand to even read romances. What I write are stories about life, about problems in the country, about issues, but with a man and woman at the center experiencing it all while they fall in love. What the heck is that called?
Moon Dust is a story about education in our country, about the aftermath of childhood abuse on adult relationships, and about the militia movement and what some will do to maintain power. Oh wait, it's also a love story based in the Willamette Valley
Then there is Golden Chains which is about the art world both how art is created and forged. It is also a murder mystery. Oh wait, and a love story. Willamette Valley and the Oregon Coast.
And of the five I have on Kindle, Hidden Pearl doesn't seem to be attracting attention at all. This might be because the people looking don't know what to make of that title. The thing is the title is critical to the story as this story is about the human desire to have a leader who can help us understand life, how we give over power to those people and the damage that can come from such misplaced trust. In our seeking something, like the hidden pearl, we can entrap ourselves with phonies that look real but are fakes. So it's about that struggle, about cult misuse of human desire, of hypocrisy. Oh wait, and a love story based in the Willamette Valley of Oregon.
These stories simply don't fit into a niche-- nor are they a lot like the two books I have put on give-away on Kindle. But then those two books weren't a lot alike either. The five books I have yet to put up, because I am thinking about all of this, they aren't like these five either.
When I began with ePublishing, I knew there would be problems with the kind of stories I wrote because of my earlier experiences with editors and publishing houses. What they wanted, I wasn't delivering and didn't want to deliver. My books do not fit into niches and niches are what sell. In some ways the stories I choose are literature. In other ways simple stories with no pretensions. And yet in other ways they are about the relationships between males and females, the dynamics, the mystery, and the wonder of it.
What I thought with ePub is that there would be a way to get past genre and simply interest readers in good stories at low prices, that yes, did talk about some serious issues but in a pleasurable read. Now I am not so sure that works. Do readers of romances want to think beyond sexual encounters and silly women enticing wonder men by their tiny perfect bodies? If my stories though are not romances, then what can I call them?
That's the issue for me to figure out right now. Really for any writer who doesn't fit the boxes publishing houses have established. If you fit the boxes, no problem. If you do not, then you have to find a way to convince readers they don't want those boxes. Not an easy task.
