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Jonathan Epps's avatar

Promotion is an interminable process. You’ve been quite successful with your newsletter. It’s the reason I followed the page. You write well when illustrating the process and your strategies therein. It’s fascinating to track it along with you, mainly because I’ve gone through a similar experience with my self-published books. Without a mainstream publisher’s money and reach, finding the largest and best audience is inordinately hard. Andrew Weir did it by spending ten years online—way ahead of the indie novelist curve—and, in addition to writing in a genre he knew about and was popular, he took his self-built readership’s plot advice through the ten years, making narrative changes to fit their needs. In producing The Martian, he produced his audience. It was a brilliant stroke, if aided by timing and position, being the first of our kind to start this back in the late 1990s, I believe. Being the first to fill a void best is always the ticket to success. With that in mind, I think the feedback you got from your subscribers is probably correct: monetize the thing that attracts the most eyes. Monetize your newsletter; publish your chapters for free with a free newsletter post in the mix to satisfy all needs. I spent years with queries to agents. I’ve pitched editors in-person from the Big Five houses. I’m on Amazon, moving over 1150 copies of my first thriller, which is decent for a nobody. But that costs money. You’ve got to try everything you want to try. It’s a rough business. I’m at the point of sending pitch letters and a copy of whichever book I’m pitching to filmmakers, sending the book which best matches its themes and subjects to their work and experience. For example: I’ve got two vigilante thrillers. One deals with mass shootings with a middle-aged male protagonist (No Winter Lasts Forever), and the other deals with sex-trafficking, based on the Epstein scandal, with a mid-twenties female protagonist (Until Morning Comes). Both subjects scare off agents, publishers, and readers alike, but both books feature a moral center within their heroes which transcends the hideous nature of the themes. I recently sent Until Morning Comes to Rose McGowan—she’d be a perfect fit to direct a film adaptation—and I sent No Winter Lasts Forever to Matt Damon. It’s a crap shoot, a ridiculous one. But, at this point, I’ve done all of the preparatory hard work. All I need is that stroke of luck, and this is one lottery I’m willing to play. 🤷🏻‍♂️

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Gayla Gray's avatar

I enjoy reading about your journey and now the pivots you are and will surely take. I'm not your target market for your book, but I enjoy reading about the business side of it. :)

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