Book Bloggin'

You've got to start somewhere

Do people still read blogs?  The whole reason i'm making a tangible book is so that I can literally force my writing into peoples hands.

I'm hoping so.  Because if blogs aren't dead, i'm pretty sure email newsletters gotta be on their way out.  Blogs at least seems like an almost-good way to keep everyone updated.

I suppose I should try the newsletter thing, too.  Whatever works.

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​Let me tell you about this goal I have.  I have a feeling that if everyone on earth (7.6 billion people) read my book, 98% of them would hate it.  So, maybe 152-million people wouldn't hate it.  However, I have a feeling that about 98% of those people wouldn't be super into it.  Of the 3-million people who are super into it, maybe 98% of them would be too frugal to buy it.  Of those 60,000 people who buy it, I'm hoping no more than 85% of them wait a long time to do so.  But the 9,000 people who do buy it in its first week would make it hit gold on the New York Times Best Sellers List.  To review, if 0.000001% of the world buys my book when it comes out, it will be a complete literary success by almost any definition.
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That's not my goal, by the way.  That's the introduction to the theory behind my goal.  My actual goal is to just get this book into the hands of as many people as I can possibly get it to, because if only 0.000001% of the people I show it to like & buy it, then I need to show it to a lot of people.

​But how many people is "a lot?"

I have no idea.  I struggle with the concept of "success" in the context of selling a book.  I've never done it before.  I honestly believe it's already a success, because I made something honest and I worked hard.  It's fiscally a success because it's already out of the red from pre-sales on kickstarter, alone.

But like I said, I worked hard.  I'm still working hard trying to figure out how to "do well" and hit imaginary milestones.  What number should I pick?  Maybe 3000 in the first week?  That seems a bit ambitious for a book that sold 64 preorders in 90 days on kickstarter.  However, 3k in a week would ensure a spot on The Wall Street Journal's Bestseller list.  But do I really care about that?  Or do I just care about socially-recognizable milestones?  If a local newspaper had a feature called "The Local Garbage" (i'm envisioning a list of books by local authors that sold at least 100 copies to date), even that would be a real thing to strive for.  But since that doesn't exist, and 3000 in a week seems a bit steep, I'm just hoping I sell any amount of copies to people that enjoy it. 

Back to the bigger question of "HOW THE HELL do I get a ton of people to know this book exists?"

My marketing research tells me it's going to be mostly word of mouth.  So here is a serious question for YOU:  What can I do for you to get you to talk about this book to everyone you know?