Druming Up Attention

So, basically, I have been writing stories since I was young and, even though, I have another profession, I decided to try my hand in the self publishing world. Not unlike other people before me...


So, I decided I needed to drum up some attention by releasing some short stories I wrote for FREE before releasing my novel (which I expect to charge for). I found several websites that offer these services and quickly published some of my short stories. They have been selling well - by well, I mean better than I expected but not great... Yet, I have been wracking my brain about how to get the word out there so my stories are available to others on a broader scale. I am sure others have had these problems when starting out and it is a natural part of the process. But I am an impatient New Yorker. What can I say?


I think it is important to be proactive whether your book has been out there two weeks or a year. My advice, from my limited experience, set your book apart from others within the retail site. I made little promo videos for each short story I released, posting them on youtube. Every time I log onto my channel, the views of my teaser trailers have gone up. A teaser works because it really brings the book alive, but you need some artistic ability if you don't want to spend a pretty penny.


I am fortunate to have some artistic ability with different mediums. My advise, for those that draw, is to get familiar with Twisted Brush. Twisted Brush is a digital art program that can be downloaded for free at download.com. It is useful in many ways. One such way is it can be used to create covers for your ebooks or create slides for book teasers. But like I said, you must have some artistic ability to be able to draw with Twisted Brush. Copyright free images can be purchased, but be prepared to spend some dough to put a entire video together. Once you have your image slides, windows has a great program called Video Maker which should be on XP and Vista automatically. It is incredibly easy to use and create effects such as fading from one image to another. Dabble with the program. Sometimes I learn more by playing around with a program than someone telling me how to work it. So play on...


For inspiration check out my channel on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/user/smadera23
You can download my short stories for FREE at: http://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/sandramadera
Follow me on Twitter (screen name: S_Madera)