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  • Showing only topics in ~creative with the tag "self". Back to normal view / Search all groups
    1. Self published authors, how do you market your books? Nothing I've tried has had any success.

      So, over the pandemic, I decided to follow a dream and write a novel. I followed all of the best practices I could find, had it beta read by folks so that the finished product would be as polished...

      So, over the pandemic, I decided to follow a dream and write a novel. I followed all of the best practices I could find, had it beta read by folks so that the finished product would be as polished as possible, posted it on Amazon's kdp site in ebook and paperback/hardcover, and then set out to get the word out, but nothing seems to be attracting any attention to it.

      To be fair, I know I'm not going to be the next Stephen king, but at the same time I feel like I should be able to find an audience somewhere. I've tried Facebook ads, i run a blog I post to semi regularly, as well as mirror posts on FB and insta, I've tried a couple of short videos on tiktok, but since its launch a couple years back, I've managed to amass just under 20 bucks Canadian in royalties.

      Now, money wasn't a motivator when I began this new trek, but it would be nice to feel like the world I created has reached a few people and given them at least a small amount of entertainment.

      If you're an author that's had success with some form of marketing, please share, and if you're someone who reads new stuff on the regular, where do you go to find new stories?

      35 votes
    2. Old Poems from a Summer

      Dans la vie intérieure, le temps tient lieu d'espace. (In the inner life, time takes the place of space.) Simone Weil, La Pesanteur et la Grâce (Gravity and Grace) Inside [the black hole's event...

      Dans la vie intérieure, le temps tient lieu d'espace.
      (In the inner life, time takes the place of space.)
      Simone Weil, La Pesanteur et la Grâce (Gravity and Grace)

      Inside [the black hole's event horizon]… [what used to be a spatial
      coordinate] is the time. … The singularity… is not a place in space; it
      is a moment in time.
      James B. Hartle, Gravity: An Introduction to Einstein's General Relativity


      In my old poems I saw
      the sentimental one
      scenting sighs,    seeing scars
      everywhere, twisting them
      into words, arranging words
      so they fit in a grid,
      regular,    repeating.

      Preoccupied, she wanted the answer
      to the only question: What had made her
      like this? An effect that sought the cause and
      nothing else. Her city caught in a verdant
      early summer day, light abounded; she
      felt time had been running out silently.

      How much has really changed ever since?

      I now have an answer, and more.
      She made me; cause, effect. Questions!
      How will I be? What will I be?
      What am I?

      I am a tiny bit of what she wasn't:
      the all-embracing space and time beyond
      her self, her fear of being forgotten,
      solitude unwitnessed, and pain futile.

      I am not just her descendant either.
      Holding her precious gift of exposed self,
      I too am exposed to what I am not,
      asking how much has changed, what I'm changing.


      This is a new one I wrote today.

      Edit: replaced one "the" with "an".

      6 votes