Well, I can say that the crowd funding process for my series, The Silver Ships, was a learning experience. For me, it was not very successful, only about 11% of the target was collected. These are the points I might share:

• Don’t use crowd funding for writing unless you have an established history as a published author.  Crowd funding appears to work best for products, inventions, software, etc.
• If you have a large established social network, this may make crowd funding for a fiction or non-fiction novel possible to a limited extent.
• If you do decide to launch a campaign, you will receive dozens of offers to promote your campaign. The three groups that I invested in were absolutely worthless.

Podcast on Self-publishing

Debra Simpson of North San Diego Business interviewed me for her half-hour podcast. I invite you to listen to as we discuss the challenges of self-publishing, my new novels, and take some listener calls.

I ran across M. Louisa Locke’s marketing tips on a website and thought they showed an innovative approach. There’s hundreds of ways to market your book, but the key is for you to develop the ones that work for you. As Kawasaki and Welch detailed in their book APE, you must be willing to be an Author, a Publisher, and an Entrepreneur to be successful.

M. Louisa Locke’s marketing tips for her third book, Bloody Lessons.

1. I used Twitter, my Facebook author page, and my blog to announce the availability of my latest book, Bloody Lessons.
2. I put the print copy of the book up as a giveaway on Goodreads.
3. I sent out an email to all the fans who contacted me over the past three years and told them the book was now available and asked them to sign up for my newsletter.
4. I also contacted professional review bloggers who had reviewed my previous books and offered to send them copies. I ended up with solid, professional reviews and have gotten many more positive customer reviews on Amazon.com, which I know will continue to help sell the book.
5. On the day of the launch, I made the first book in the series, Maids of Misfortune, free for three days via KDP Select and discounted the sequel, Uneasy Spirits, to 99 cents for a week. By combining these promotions, I was able to point out that a reader could get all three eBooks in the series for under $5, knowing that this would attract readers who had not yet heard of the series.
6. In the first two weeks of publication, I held a contest on my Facebook author page where I gave away $5 Amazon gift certificates to the first people who could answer trivia questions about the new book. I also participated in a virtual book tour that took me to seven book blogger sites. As a result of all these marketing strategies, Bloody Lessons has continuously shown up on the bestseller lists in multiple categories.