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Writer's pictureJoshua Dean Perry

Boo! Going Viral or Lip Syncing For Your Life: Marketing in the Indie Landscape

The Tiny Ghost Newsletter, edition #10, June 23, 2022


Hey Glamour Ghoul!


Everything is trekking along this week in Tiny Ghost headquarters. Books are being edited, revised, covers designed, and we're so excited to share more amazing announcements in the coming weeks. This week however, with our first title firmly established in the market, two books available for pre-sale, and more on the way, we've been focussing a lot of our attention on marketing.

As an indie company we have limited resources with which to reach as wide an audience as possible. It may shock you to know how much it costs to list one book on Netgalley! Or run a Goodreads giveaway. And as a publisher I feel a very strong duty of care to our authors to make sure their work is being seen by the largest audience possible, the audience the work deserves. This means leaning heavily on the tools available to us, in particular social media.


From the get go we've had an amazing time interacting with bookstragrammers and bloggers. The bookstagram community is welcoming and supportive and was a really great place to begin our outreach (and a place we hope to continue growing that outreach and meeting new people!). Over the last couple of weeks we've dipped our toes into the somewhat intimidating TikTok pool. As someone firmly planted in the elder millennial bracket I was apprehensive to get too involved in TikTok but there is no platform more influential when it comes to marketing books.

And from the jump I've discovered that it can be a fun, simple, sort of silly, and very effective way to connect with readers. We've even had some early success! Within the first couple of weeks actively posting on the app our following has grown to over 1.5k and we've even had a post explode, reaching over 250,000 views!!! Considering our first post has plateaued at around 300 this is mind blowing!

We're also enjoying all the interactions we're having over on TikTok and finding new ways to promote our queer books.It's actually wild what you can achieve without paying wild sums of money, simply by being yourself and sharing what you do. Which is also part of why I want these newsletters to do more than promote our products or share announcements. I want to give our followers an insight into what goes on behind the scenes and what it takes to bring these books to market, and to continue to foster a community of readers.


Social media marketing relies heavily on the support and interest of the public and it's been really overwhelming the positive reactions we've garnered thus far. So I suppose all this is to say thank you! And also a little call to action. A comment, like, follow, or share goes a long, long way when trying to promote an indie book, so if you see us out there doing our best to get the word out about our authors and their amazing books say hi or tell a friend or hit that little heart. You'll make our tiny, ghostly hearts sing.


We'll have some more big news coming soon (cover reveal anyone???) and more insights into what it's like being an indie publisher.


I'm excited for the path ahead and to continue to find new exciting way to let people know about our books!


Stay scary,


Josh


P.S. As we continue to grow it's so exciting to see who's along for the ride but we're also really interested in what people are keen to see more of. What would you like to see covered in this newsletter? What sort of books would you like us to publish? Which communities would you like to see represented? Let us know if the comments, and help us build a reader focussed publishing experience!





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