This post is a continuance of my past fumbled attempts to gain notoriety and sell, sell, sell my wordy wares/ebooks on the goblin market aka Amazon. Most recently I’ve adopted a new sales strategy in the attempt to sell my novella, Risk Of Infection. It’s twofold.
One fold: Tweet Simon Pegg.
Two fold: Tweet anyone who has ever mentioned a zombie or the Olympics in one of their tweets… ever!
In fact, a couple of weekends ago saw me, first of all, bombarding the likeable and talented Simon Pegg, sending him a barrage of amusing tweets (I sent 3, but for the purpose of this post allow me to descend into complete hyperbole). My plan was to forgo the strain of having to tackle my twofold option and sending 500 tweets to other random strangers, those who had ever mentioned the word zombie/the Olympics in a tweet… ever! And so I tweeted Simon. I momentarily thought/naively hoped he would read my amusing tweet, further click the link, liking the cover to Risk Of Infection being drawn to read my little novella, all whilst thinking something like:
‘Hey, some ebooks are a bit naff, but this one has something. This guy has… something. You know what I’ll do, because I’m a likeable guy – I’ll put a tweet out to my 2 million followers, one for them to check it out. If even one per cent clicks and buys Risk Of Infection, this guy Tom Conrad will pocket £7000, assuming that is, he’s making 35% royalty on his ebooks. If he upped the price and was making a 70% royalty, then he’ll make some serious wonga.’
That’s what I day dreamed Simon Pegg might say and do.
Unfortunately, the world and their tweeting blue bird have a similar strategy for celebrity endorsements, and obviously for me, Onefold… FAILED.
And so I resorted to twofold. It was hard work. I didn’t, and haven’t made 7,000 sales… yet. Worse yet, after sending 200 plus messages. I was temporarily thrown in the sin bin by Twitter. My account was suspended. My little heart sank as my list of followers read ZERO instead of 3000. I got a message from the Twitter MAN. Buck up your ideas, sonny boy, and stop the wholesale @ing of people, people you don’t even know. I had to tick a box, agree to a new whole Twitter way of life, to not do twofold EVER again… or at least to do it in moderation. My list was soon and thankfully restored. My heart beat again as my Twitter list returned to 3000.
My struggle and search for threefold continues….
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Ramblings of Tom Conrad
Follow me @tomconrad1980 or @theindiepedant
Novels to date: Tom Conrad
You know, there are a ton of people on twitter that do that same thing EVERYDAY….so, I don’t know why you would get your account suspended for doing that same thing. There’s one guy on there that tweets about his books about 6 times an hour…Unless you were doing it every second of every minute, I don’t see how they can suspend your account. Other than being annoying to others, I suppose, I don’t think it’s any worse than any of the others that do the same thing. Heck, I do it…especially when I’m trying to promote a free book.
I’m glad you got your followers back!