A missed flight in Detroit on my way home from Confusion has landed me unexpectedly in Charlotte, and the surprisingly huge Charlotte airport has free Wi Fi.  I can't let that opportunity pass so while I wait for my standby seat to go home, I'd like to reflect on the work I've done in the last year to sell RADIO FREEFALL.

You might think an author's job is to write the books and selling the books is up to someone else.  Tor certainly does their part.  My editor David Hartwell, his assistants Dennis Wong and Stacy Hague-Hill, publicist Alexis Saarela and others I haven't met yet get the word out there as best they can.  But RF was just one book in a large catalog, and a debut at that.  It's not surprising or disappointing that Tor didn't push the book out there.  It just doesn't make economic sense considering what they stand to gain by it.

So the rest is up to me.  Inspired by this post by David Louis Edelman, I'd like to list out what I did to promote the book, and give you my guess about the effectiveness.  But it isn't all about the benjamins with me.  I also do this for fun, remember?  This is my hobby, so I should enjoy it too.

In this first post I'm going to tackle the big stuff.  About 90% of my promotional expenses went to two things: building my web presence and getting to know the people that buy the books in person.  In the next post I'll talk about the dozens of little things I did, most of which amounted to nothing but a funny story.

The Web Site
I made my own web site a few years ago, prompted by an Asimov's message board comment from Jim Kelly.  I used Print Shop to put it together.  No, that isn't a typo, Print Shop has a web page designer, and it worked, after a fashion. But for the book I knew I needed a professional touch, so I hired Dave Edelman.  That's right, not only is he bursting onto the SF scene with defribrilator paddles in hand, he also makes web sites.  You be the judge how good a job he did for me.
How effective?  A whacking great lot of effective, by my scientific method of measurement.  The web site gets a few hundred hits a day, and some of those must go on to buy the book.  They way I see it, if there are people who will still fall for the Nigerian banking scheme, which any idiot knows is a scam, then there is someone out there who will fall for anything.
How fun?  More than I expected.  I've learned to code HTML, after a fashion, and now I can add stories to the site.  But I wouldn't say the web sit is much fun.  Updating is a chore, and I don't spend as much time at it as I should.

The Blog
This one goes separate from the web site since I didn't have to pay for the design.  GoDaddy has these templates you can use.  It isn't as adaptable as Wordpress or some of the other blogging software, and occasionally it screws things up badly, but I'm happy with it so far. 
How effective?  Hard to say.  I get about 200 hits per day, but I suspect those are mostly some kind of spambot.  I can't imagine 200 people a day looking at the blog and not commenting, but I could be wrong.  How many of these looky-loos go on to buy the book?  No idea.  Janiece bought a copy based on the blog, but I've read Janiece's blog and I'm sorry to say she seems far from typical.  Which, were I her, I would totally take as a compliment.
How fun?  Metza metz.  Blogging has its good days, and its bad.  Any day I can get someone on LiveJournal to misunderstand me and call me a lefty or a Khmer Rougian is a good day.

The Cons
There really is no point for a debut science fiction writer to go on any sort of book promotion tour.  In fact, according to the Christian Science Monitor, the book tour is not a good idea for anyone.  But for the debut science fiction writer, trying to reach individual readers via signings and readings in chain bookstores and libraries is frightfully inefficient.  Science fiction fans are scattered thin on the ground, and it's tough to get enough together in one Borders to make a plane ticket and hotel bill worth my while.

But we in the science fiction world catch a lucky break in promotion.  Fans accrete together in hotels across the country on a regular basis, much like slime moulds forming fruiting bodies.  Just about every weekend of the year sees one or more cons where you can deliver a message of marketing to a few hundred people who are likely to buy a hardcover science fiction book.

How effective?  If I were to tally up all the books I've sold at cons versus all the money I spent traveling to them, I would probably cry.  On the inside, of course.  But that isn't the point.  The point is that the people who do pick up books at cons are vocal readers.  They are the index case of an epidemic, the first ones infected who then go on to spread the infection to the rest of the population.  (There I go, first comparing con goers to slime moulds, then to infected patients.  You should totally take that as a compliment, con goers.)  At Confusion I did a panel on plot that prompted at least one attendee, Annalee Flower, to buy the book.  She seems like the sort to blog the book and keep the long tail wagging.
How fun?  About as much fun as an extreme introvert can have hanging out with a big group of people he hardly knows.  As I slowly become better acquainted with the sort of people who go to these things (they're not like slime moulds in any other way, and very few of them are infected with anything other than excitement about a book) I find I have a lot more fun.  At Confusion, for example, I saw John Scalzi, Jim C. Hines, Tobias Buckell, Paul Melko, Steve Bucheit and Karl Schroeder again.  And I met a few new people, like Catherine Shaffer (who almost let me borrow an orange) and Patrick Rothfuss (who bought me dinner-THANKS!).  And I talk to people who's names I almost never catch, because I'm an idiot, but rest assured I enjoy the talk.  I'll have to meet you two or three times before I can recognize you without your tame tag.

So for the big ticket items I think I did pretty well for myself in my first year as a novelist.  I would recommend to all new writers doing all of these things, only better.