Book promotion (and self-promotion) by Internet

Chris Cadelago of the San Francisco Chronicle has a story about Scott Sigler and Seth Harwood, two novelists whose knack for Internet self-promotion is paying off with impressive sales and -- in Sigler's case -- a major book deal:

Scott Sigler and Seth Harwood have spent the past few years writing novels, disseminating them over the Internet as serialized podcasts and amassing audiences so considerable that top-shelf agents and publishers are now eager to represent the authors.

But well before Sigler revealed podcasting as a new frontier for book promotion, the San Francisco author was rebuffed hundreds of times by major publishers. Sigler's science fiction-horror thrillers attracted little attention.

That changed in 2005, when he offered his first novel, "Earthcore," as a free, downloadable 22-episode podcast on iTunes and his own Web site, www.scottsigler.com. A few hundred early listeners soon swelled to 5,000. By the time he posted "Ancestor" and "The Rookie," his second and third books, which he also narrated, he had 30,000 digital disciples.

Sigler refers to these loyal listeners as junkies because they keep coming back for more. It was the junkies who helped him land a deal with Dragon Moon Press, a small Canadian fantasy and science fiction publisher that liked the idea of a newbie author with a sizable following. It was the junkies who helped Sigler's "Ancestor" climb to No. 7 in overall sales on Amazon.com, which played a role in landing him a deal with the Crown Publishing Group.

Smart, smart, smart. All novelists -- aspiring and published -- could learn from these guys.

Comments

[Mark Hester]

Scott is now entering into the world of Webcomics with much the same business plan as he had with Podcasting/Novels.

I am his business partner and the Artist on the first one, The Rookie. Check us out at
http://addictivecomics.com/therookie or read the Behind the Scenes blog at http://addictivecomics.com/therookieblog

Mark Hester