Fun Fact! Balzac, the most revered of French novelists, wrote, “For artists, the great problem to solve is how to get oneself noticed” in Lost Illusions. In 1887, Guy de Maupassant sent up a hot-air balloon over the Seine with the name of his latest short story Le Horla to promote his work.
From ancient times to modern society, the author’s self-promotion has a long history. Many authors tried to catch people’s eyes with self-promotion. But things about it come easier in modern society. At least, writers do not need to send up a hot-air balloon only for one story. With the Internet, self-promotion is more diverse, effective, and cheaper. Suppose you are a writer who wants to apply this method to gain more exposure, accumulate readerships, and even get the opportunity to get published. In that case, you should clear and define different goals at different points in time.
The Goals of Self-promotion
(1) Short-term Goal: Increasing the Exposure of Story
In the beginning stage of self-promotion, the target for every writer is to maximize the exposure of their stories. In short, let more readers know about you and your stories. Especially when you are an amateur writer or when you start writing a new story. To make people have a primary impression of your stories, you can apply social media, comments, and the Author’s Note (if you have already become a Stary writer) to promote your works.
(2) Medium-term Goal: Building Up the Readership
Making others hear your stories might not take too much time in the digital era. After achieving the short-term goal, you can pay more attention to building up your readership. The purpose of this term is that people should not just hear of the stories but read the story and become readers of you. Therefore, it is a stage to form a circle of readers. The number of readers might have an effect on your stories’ commercial values.
(3) Long-term Goal: Getting Published Even Adapted
Along with getting published as paper books, there is a trend of adapting popular novels into multi-media products, such as audiobooks, movies, video games, etc. It can be seeming as the long-term achievement of self-promotion that developed from the short-term and medium-term goals. Whenever a story gains broad exposure and is read by a large number of people, commercial companies will recognize its value and potential.