If You Don’t Ask.

For a while now I’ve been interviewing authors. Some of these have come about because of the York Pub Meets, (thank you Alex) others at the Sheffield SFF Social (thank you Steven and pals). These British Fantasy Society and British Science Fiction Association events and others have allowed me to get to know the authors behind the words in a book and boost the signal. It grew from there.

Yesterday someone asked me if I was part of the marketing department of Tickety Boo Press.

No I am not. Let’s make this clear. I have no affiliation with Tickety Boo Press. I cannot help you be published by them, I can’t help you get on the right side of their acquisition editors. I do know a few of the publishing house’s authors, some of them in person and others through forums. Like many others writing reviews and interviews, I was approached by either the author or the press.

However, I have a bit of advice to help any author,be they indie, small press, and yes even those who have the Holy Grail of publishers in their corner.

Authors – If you don’t ask, YOU DON’T GET. With that in mind if you want to raise the profile of your book, here are a few places which may help:

Twitter and Facebook. I regularly see calls for book bloggers and reviewers here.

Good Reads. Giveaways are a great way to increase your readership and collect reviews.

NETGALLEY: Go here, but be prepared to pay : https://www.netgalley.com/home/request

SFFWORLD Review/Interview request form: http://www.sffworld.com/for_authors_publishers/

Fantasy Faction They don’t have a direct submission page, but you might want to check out their forums. Perhaps a hint can be found on the about us section of the site?

SFF Signal Fill out a form:  http://www.sfsignal.com/contact/

Don’t be afraid to put your book out there, but do be willing to part with your book for nothing. That is to say a lot of reviewers, bloggers and vloggers do this thing for free, they don’t earn anything from it, so don’t expect them to buy your book and do you a favour by shouting about it.

Limit the number of books you send out into the world in exchange for publicity. Put a value on the coverage it will bring. Also be aware that you can have too much of a good thing. If your name and book cover is on every site for a month, there are some readers who will actively avoid it; there’s praise and then there’s hype.  Others will be sick of hearing about it… you know a bit like that Christmas Number One from 1993?