Beyond the Gauntlet

It’s been nearly five months since I published my book on Amazon, and this blog post is my official announcement that I’ve completed the first phase of my campaign to promote Clingstone. Aside from soliciting Amazon’s top 10,000 reviewers, I queried several bloggers registered with the Indie Reviewers List and the Book Bloggers Yellow Pages. I had decent results with the latter sources and would highly recommend their perusal to any authors intent on self-publishing. I received several positive responses despite the much smaller pool of bloggers; additionally, a few were willing to give me a promotional spot on their blog even though they couldn’t commit to a book review. I feel like I’ve tapped enough sources now to move on to the second phase of my promotional campaign.

And what is the second phase, you ask? It’s much less time-consuming than the first, and that is simply to continue maintaining my blog, updating the reviews when they come in, and continuing the monthly book giveaways here on my website. I realize this is all a giant literary snowball that needs to keep gaining girth and momentum as it rolls down the hill, and that will take considerable time. Instant success is a myth; success is wrung from months, years even, of persistent effort. And so the hard slog will carry on.
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I didn’t really know what to expect from this experience when I started, but I’ve really enjoyed myself. It feels good to try new things. This will also be a transitional time for me as I devote more of my time and energy into writing the first draft of my new book. It’s still in its infancy stage, but I’ll post some updates from time to time in the months ahead. Until then, I look forward to Clingstone’s pending reviews and sharing them with all of you.

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