8 Comments
Jan 4, 2023Liked by Darcy Pattison

As a retired teacher, I'm on target to indie-publish at the end of this year. Your honest insight into relationship marketing saves me a lot of money. Thank you! Everyone-knows-10-people: my grassroots organizations like Chamber of Commerce, Women Writers, & Early Childhood Educators are helping me to develop these relationships. I also sub in the schools. My mentor told me moms & grandmas are on Pinterest so that is an effective tool I will explore. She loves it!

Expand full comment

Love seeing your analysis! I just started reading Beloved Economies, and I’m really going to look at publishing through this lens as I approach 2023. We need to try totally new ways of making and selling books.

Expand full comment

I went as a preschool teacher, but it seems like more elementary teachers than that were there. And I would have loved your books in my preschool classroom. :) Great read-aloud material.

Expand full comment

Association for the Education of Young Children. Here's one link. Every state should have a conference annually.

https://www.naeyc.org/events/annual

Expand full comment

I've definitely seen a shift in AMS ads that is sad for us indies. But it's still some visibility. Darcy, for your books, you might try tables at some AEYC conferences. Even if not direct sales on that day, it could lead to some good school relationships. As a teacher, I went to MiAEYC every year and spent way more on books than I should. This led to the first big fight of my marriage (hah!), but those specific books are still on my shelf 30 years later. And you could offer to do a presentation as well to get right in front of the science teachers.

Expand full comment

Thanks for that, Darcy, It's good to know we aren't the only ones up against it.

It's hard to find something that actually works. I've joined three big 'guru' named how-to-sell-your -books memberships and none live up to their promise. Scattershot promotions on Fiverr (even though they say they are targeted audiences) fail to produce any sales. Posting on all the author sites produce marginal results (if any) at least no noticeable increase in sales. I wish you good luck with D2D; I've been on their books for 7 years and have not sold one copy through them. But perhaps the merger with Smashwords will make some changes.

Expand full comment