Promoting Novels Through Online Channels and Self-Publishing

How much non-novel writing goes on behind the scenes of selling an independently published novel online?

From a reader’s perspective, there’s very little of that work to see.

An author writes their book, launches a website, makes a video or two, gets followers on social media, and they’re on their way.

Parts of that story apply, but so much of it is a fairytale. There’s much more writing going on than a stranger’s eye can see, more text being churned in the background than what goes into making a novel.

Social media may be in the mix, but for authors of fiction, it’s not top priority. Its high-speed, ever-changing nature means it’s fickle and unreliable. New platforms arrive while others close down (my podcast platform changed four times in four years!). Some platforms alter their business model midstream. (Pinterest is currently doing this.)

To be frank, most platforms are better at promoting health supplements and drink bottles than books like novels.

But I can guarantee 2 things about combining social media platforms with fiction:

• All platforms tell you their product will help you sell your product.
• None will say “No!” to taking your money no matter the outcome.

I think all authors of fiction should forget social media. They must take care of business at home before dipping their toes into that chaotic realm. 

Grounding their projects on their home website is paramount, as this is the only place an author has true control of how their material appears to the outside world. This is their work’s stage. The author gets to decide how it feels, flows, and takes their readers on journeys toward the ultimate goal (buying books).

Let’s face it, everywhere else attracts competition for our readers’ attention. Anything that takes them away from pressing a purchase button is competition. Social media is loaded with distractions. Each vies to rip the reader away from you and your important content.

Your website is you and only you. If done right, your stories will look, sound, smell, feel, and taste perfect to the right reader.

My site is my work’s home. (You’re looking at it)

I get to choose this page’s background. I get to choose these words (and pics) and font. So the experience I have with you is intimate, controlled. None of my competitors is here. There are no distractions. I have your complete attention.

There is something more to add to this point.

You came because you are highly qualified to be here. You’re best suited to see this post because that’s how it was meant to be. You don’t realise it yet, but this meeting was something more than some kind of crazy destiny.

It was made to happen.

Everything I wrote on this page was done to attract you. Every bit of research you did to find me happened as it should’ve. This post isn’t a random pop-up from an ad site. You looked for it with purpose. We met because you questioned the Internet, and I wrote an answer for it. The algorithms said we should meet.

There was a heck of a lot of well-orchestrated writing (and your searching) to make that happen. The algorithm did its job. Destiny wasn’t accidental.

This is the type of writing work that’s done between writing novels, and it’s as important as the fiction itself.

Now that I’ve revealed that something special was applied to the site to bring you here, I’d like to share more of what happens behind the scenes of writing SEETHINGS (and its sequels) that says more about how we met.

This website is the hub of everything I do when I’m not writing my fiction. This is where the dark fiction content is expressed, discovered and hopefully understood. Sometimes I’ll write a post where the dark fiction connection is obvious. Other times, like now, the link is tenuous. All of what I write counts.

The novels are multifaceted, so I have clusters of content written to match them. The page you’re reading right now is part of my self-publishing facet (or hub). It’s a post that talks less about dark fiction and more about the processes of publishing novels using an effective website to promote and sell books.

Several other posts on my site do that (they can be discovered on the site). Some are built around the writing process, others around aspects of reading books. This hub grows with every post.

In time, Google (and other search engines) will discover this page and add it to its catalogue. This indexing will soon provide a steady stream of readers to my site, those who specifically ask to see this type of content after typing it in a search bar. 

It’s crucial that the content I put on this page is made for this topic. If I digress, the indexing system likely downrates it. The page is about self-publishing online, so it must remain focused on that topic to stay alive.

Hub building is a crucial part of the greater online promoting story. Topic clusters help search engines figure out what a site does and what authority it has within those topics. Without the hubs, the posts are orphaned. They are disconnected, therefore have no collective power to promote site authority. Google leaves it alone and moves on to a site that does.

Sites with cluster engineering outrank those without.

And then there is a common problem all authors must contend with when positioning their site (and their fiction) in online spaces. No matter how unique our work is, there are already billions of us doing unique things with our fiction. From a search engine’s perspective, we don’t look any different.

I have to contend with that realisation every time I write a post and send it out. As a writer, I’m a needle in a needle stack.

“Dark Fiction” and “Writing” are heavily supported online topics.

There are already millions of authors writing, digesting, and regurgitating these subjects every day. I can’t do any better facing it headlong. I have to shuffle sideways and then find a unique position to broadcast my message from.

If I want to be seen, I need to be more specific about my own variety of dark fiction ideas, thoughts and feelings and follow those lines to their end.

One way I do this is by breaking up my stories, looking at their subcomponents, and using them as muses to write new online material. Like all stories, there’s always more to discover between the words.

I only need to look at a chapter, a page, or a paragraph.

There’s something about photography in this chapter, something about the nighttime on that page, something about secrets in those paragraphs.

And there are the characters.

There’s plenty to pull apart when talking about them, their motivations, fears, thoughts and actions!

Currently, I have 16 major clusters for my dark fiction. Posts, like this one, have a light connection to my dark fiction, while others are knee-deep in it. It will become part of a growing cluster of content that I call my “Self-Publishing” hub. Not every post I write on the site talks about self-publishing. As mentioned, some talk about photography.

If I’m writing for my “Photography” hub, I’ll make sure it’s pointing to that hub and not the “Self-Publishing” one. The same will apply to the “Serial Killer” hub or the “Lightning” hub.

Yes, there will be hub crossovers.

Not every post belongs to a single hub, nor should it be. The post that describes a first kiss points to the “Lightning” and “Intimacy” hubs. If that first kiss strikes you like a lightning bolt, it can’t sit in just one hub. It deserves two!

Am I right?

So there are sixteen hubs and a thousand posts to support them. Each post is carefully aligned with the proper hub (or hubs) so Google can catalogue and present them to readers correctly, so someone like you can find a specific post and do what you’re doing now — find my writing and read all about it.

When someone asks what writing is done behind the scenes of writing novels to promote them online, I can confidently reply by sending them this post.

When the website nears completion, and every post is correctly aligned (is it ever really finished), the next part is social media sharing.

If you know anything about applying social media to deep, dark fiction to get a positive outcome, I’m all ears (and eyes).

–Michael (Dark Fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)