Lately, I have been working on skill development, finding little things I can learn, and expanding opportunities around what I can do with those skills. I ended up going back and working on a fantasy sci-fi series that mostly I was working on as a side project.
As I was doing it, I wrote a few chapters to one of the books, and I passed it along to a friend to read it over and see what they thought of it. They gave me good feedback, but really, I wanted someone to tell me it was bad and needed some work. So, I did the same thing again and passed it to another friend asking them to tell me how they felt about it. The process repeated and at a certain point, I wasn't sure if they didn't want to hurt my feelings or actually thought it was good.
However, something clicked, and I saw an opportunity. To preface I never really thought about self-publishing a book before, yet the man himself, MJ, did it. Why couldn't I? So started thinking about the process and execution I could use to make that happen. I returned to my friends that I asked to read the chapters for me before. I asked, "If there were more pages after what I wrote would you turn to page X?" They both responded that yes, they would. Now that led me to think about other follow-up questions that could be asked.
So, this is the idea I got from doing that. The problem was how I create intrigue for people to want to read the books. How can I get an assessment of people who would buy my books? I decided to create a webpage, that would work as a sales funnel, but without it actually selling anything, just gathering information. Later I could use this site to sell the books from. What it would do is offer people to read a few chapters of the book for free, with a survey at the end asking questions similar to those above, and then offering them a newsletter sign-up, in which they would be given updates to the books release date, offer more details about the worldbuilding to build more intrigue.
What I hope to get out of this is a list of potential buyers, who already find value in the limited writing so that when I release the books they will read it, then tell their friends and family about it, and they too buy, and also potentially join the newsletter. Eventually, I would like to create a story that is told through anybody's preferred media. Whether they read, watch, or experience through play, that's later down the line after I have gotten a following of interested people.
I was wondering what some of you think about this idea, or if any of you have had experience in self-publishing. I'm still working to flesh out the copywriting, and marketing so any ideas are more than welcome. Thank you for any responses, criticism, and insight.
As I was doing it, I wrote a few chapters to one of the books, and I passed it along to a friend to read it over and see what they thought of it. They gave me good feedback, but really, I wanted someone to tell me it was bad and needed some work. So, I did the same thing again and passed it to another friend asking them to tell me how they felt about it. The process repeated and at a certain point, I wasn't sure if they didn't want to hurt my feelings or actually thought it was good.
However, something clicked, and I saw an opportunity. To preface I never really thought about self-publishing a book before, yet the man himself, MJ, did it. Why couldn't I? So started thinking about the process and execution I could use to make that happen. I returned to my friends that I asked to read the chapters for me before. I asked, "If there were more pages after what I wrote would you turn to page X?" They both responded that yes, they would. Now that led me to think about other follow-up questions that could be asked.
So, this is the idea I got from doing that. The problem was how I create intrigue for people to want to read the books. How can I get an assessment of people who would buy my books? I decided to create a webpage, that would work as a sales funnel, but without it actually selling anything, just gathering information. Later I could use this site to sell the books from. What it would do is offer people to read a few chapters of the book for free, with a survey at the end asking questions similar to those above, and then offering them a newsletter sign-up, in which they would be given updates to the books release date, offer more details about the worldbuilding to build more intrigue.
What I hope to get out of this is a list of potential buyers, who already find value in the limited writing so that when I release the books they will read it, then tell their friends and family about it, and they too buy, and also potentially join the newsletter. Eventually, I would like to create a story that is told through anybody's preferred media. Whether they read, watch, or experience through play, that's later down the line after I have gotten a following of interested people.
I was wondering what some of you think about this idea, or if any of you have had experience in self-publishing. I'm still working to flesh out the copywriting, and marketing so any ideas are more than welcome. Thank you for any responses, criticism, and insight.
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