#IWSG: Opportunities

It's the first Wednesday and time for the Insecure Writers Support Group, whose mission is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds! IWSG is the brainchild of Ninja Captain Alex J. Cavanaugh Thanks, Alex, for starting this group and keeping it going. And thanks to this month's awesome hosts: Murees Dupe, Alexia Chamberlynn, Chemist Ken, and Heather Gardner!

When you get an email about an opportunity to promote your work, do you pounce on it right away and sign up? Or do you flag the email intending to return and forget until it’s too late? Like me.

Recently, I read the email and, despite nine million other things I needed to do—I immediately signed up for two (yes, two!) opportunities to promote my books.

The first opportunity came from Smashwords to their authors who write mysteries. Did I want to serialize The Case of the Bygone Brother on Wattpad? There would be extra promotion from Wattpad, as well as from Smashwords. How could I refuse? (Well, I could have by not responding.) I have several other books partially serialized on Wattpad, so I thought why not? The promotion started a week ago Tuesday. Since then I’ve uploaded eight chapters and gained thirty-nine followers. Thirty-nine doesn’t sound like many, but I’d be happy if a couple of them got tired of waiting for the next chapter and bought the book. Or once the book is finished and they liked it, they could purchase the next book in the series. Here’s the link: https://www.wattpad.com/story/72359159-the-case-of-the-bygone-brother-an-alex-o%27hara

The second opportunity came from a group to which I belong, the Science FictionRomance Brigade. A couple of enterprising authors threw out the idea of making an anthology of the first chapters of sci-fi romance novels. They were hoping to produce two volumes—one sweet and one spicy. Almost overnight they had enough authors sign up for four volumes! Ten authors in each volume. What a lot of choices! A taste for readers to see what they like before buying. At the end of each first chapter, there’s a buy link for easy purchase. Best of all, each volume of this anthology, Portals, is free. My sci-fi romance The Pilot (An Outer Rim Novel) is in Volume 2, which was released yesterday. Portals: Volume 2 can be “purchased” (it’s free) at the following:

Amazon: https://amzn.com/B01G7RXDY4

Nook: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/por...

Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-us/e...

iBooks: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/po...

ARe: https://www.allromanceebooks.com/pr... 

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/books...

The deal with Wattpad cost me nothing, while a small voluntary contribution helped with the cover cost of Portals. So for little money, I took the opportunities to get my books in front of readers. Will it pay out in the form of additional purchases? I hope so. But like most promotion, it’s hard to tell what works.

Click here to find others on the Insecure Writers Support Group Blog Hop. Or go to IWSG on Facebook to see who’s blogging today.