Writing.Com General Discussion

I'm going to assume you're heading down the traditional route of agent/publisher - if not, still pay attention because there are no free passes in self-publishing.

When you submit to an agent, one of the things you should tell them (in the cover letter) is how many people you can reach out to, should your novel be published. You are the person with the biggest vested interest in the novel doing well, so you'll be expected to do most of the donkey-work promoting it.

If you tell them 50 (including friends and family), there's good chance the publisher will pass you up no matter how good your novel is. The secret is networking, both on social media and any other ways you can think of. At the moment I can reach about 250,000. The usual rule of thumb is that around 2% will actually purchase (equating to around 5,000 sales). In my case, nearly half of them are people who are interested in the reading the kind of story I'm writing, so a realistic number might be 25,000 to 50,000.

From these figures, you can see why advertising on Facebook usually fails. To get the exposure you need to make the sales you want, you need to invest serious money into an advertising campaign. However, networking will introduce you to a lot of interesting people and provide you with a reach - all for free.

You might also get some side benefits. I was recently friended by one of the top authors in the country. If he endorses my novel, it'll be like sprinkling it with pixie dust. Man, I really hope he doesn't think my novel sucks. Anyway, get to networking, join some facebook groups that cater for your target audience.