Last weekend I thought I’d experiment with a new (to me) type of promotion. After very little traction on social media (Twitter and Instagram, mostly) I decided to set my book to free, post a link to a bunch of places, and hope for the best. I knew I wasn’t going to “sell” any copies this way, but hey, it’s my first book. Really all I wanted was to get some more eyes on the thing, gets some reviews, and hopefully harvest some of that sweet sweet external validation all authors crave.
Long story short: it worked. Quite well. Okay, it worked very well.
With the first few hours 100s of people had downloaded Troupe of Shadows. By the time I went to bed we where up to 800-something. When I woke up over 1000+ people had downloaded the thing and it was the top free book in a bunch of genres. It didn’t quite breach the top #100 but it came very close on a few storefronts.
This was both incredibly exciting, and utterly terrifying. Outside of writing groups and friends and family taking a look at my work, I really haven’t gotten this much exposure before. Reviews have only just started to trickle in, but the idea that there are 1,234 people with Troupe of Shadows sitting in their kindle library makes me sweat with anticipation for what they might say. Those numbers might not seem a lot to a seasoned author, but it’s a big jump up from 10.
The vast majority of that traction came from reddit’s r/fantasy, and honestly I think the popularity came down to two things: 1) the cover, which I had absolutely no hand in designing, and 2) striking a chord with the community’s sense of humour.
Don’t get me wrong. I think my book is good. But I’m not deluded enough to think all the hype was from people reading the blurb or the first page.
Obviously, it’s one thing to download a book, another to read it, and another thing entirely to actually review it. I expect the majority of those people will never get around to reading, and the majority of those that do will just silently put the book down without ever expressing a public opinion about it.
That said, all of this has inspired me to get my butt in gear and start working on the rest of the series. Self-publishing is a marathon, not a sprint, and hopefully the collective memory of the internet will still remember this one weird little book by the time it’s sequel arrives.
If you’re reading Troupe of Shadows right now, I hope you enjoy, and if you’re interested in keeping up to date with it’s follow up projects give me a follow here or on the socials!
Jennings Zabrinsky 