When I'm not writing I do a little of this..

I know I'm supposed to write every day, and when someone asks me about how to write a book that's the advice I give them. The truth is, it doesn't happen. There are days my muse is whispering sweet somethings in the ear of another (bitch). It happens, but that doesn't mean I stop.


Writing should be about 95% of what a writer does, it should always be warm and sunny for my birthday, snow should melt the day after Christmas. You get the idea. Being an indie writer means that the other 95% of my time is also spent marketing, brainstorming, and making every grassroots effort I can plant to find my audience and keep them around.



In addition to my daily writing session which I never miss ever ever, except for maybe yesterday, I do something to promote my books almost every day. Whether it's finding my audience on Twitter, writing a blog post, looking for new venues to promote through, or planning for a con - it doesn't stop after the last page.

I did some writing last weekend, but not much. (Insert guilt pang here.) On the other hand, I started working on my revised Chryslaenor sword prop (Mark III ...heh) for conventions. The current one is a little beat up, and I've gotten teased enough about my 'surfboard' and 'pizza flipper' to change up the design a little. No, this isn't writing, but believe it or not it's good marketing. There have been a lot of pictures taken with the last sword and it's fun!

We will be attending Metacon in Minneapolis at the end of the month, and I'll have some cool new signage for the convention.  (Thanks to great advice from fellow indie writer Daniel C. Nielsen - be sure to check out his blog here: http://danielcnielsen.com/ ) I will also have a LOT of Cristi bookmarks to hand out.  All marketing materials I've put together this month.

Two weeks ago I created a mailing list for a newsletter. (The template I made looks pretty cool, I look forward to using it!) If you enjoy Angst and want to keep up with my book releases, please sign up! I call it a monthly newsletter, but honestly I'll only be sending it out if I have relevant book release news or something else incredibly cool comes up. Be sure to sign up here!

Finally, I've also been testing the waters with advertising through various newsletters and ebook websites. Nothing too crazy, but I've been wondering about other ways of finding readers without bribing Oprah or running a full page ad in the New York Times. (I offered $5.00 and they said no! Where's the love?) The best results I've had so far is with efantasybargains.com - great looking email newsletter, definitely not spammy, and they throw in a nice personal note to help you promote.

The time I have to spend as an indie writer isn't always spent writing, even if it's supposed to be. I do believe the best way to build and keep an audience is to write a lot of books, but between the day job, family, and naps - when writing just isn't going to happen, I feel that a little time promoting Angst every day is time well spent.