Here's an interesting tidbit I just learned an interesting tidbit about self promo effectiveness: different strokes work for different folks. Example, I have a friend that just released his first short SF himself with no promo, not even a website yet he is doing better (sells wise) first three months than I have with any of my shorts with an accredited publisher. Not sure if its his title, tags or what but it is an amazing anomaly.
I'm wondering just how is your friend able to measure how well he's doing if he doesn't have a website. What exactly is the yardstick he's using to determine he's doing well?
Michael's comment contains the answers to your questions, Edita. Read it again and you'll see that he wrote,
I have a friend that just released his first short SF himself with no promo, not even a website yet he is doing better (sells wise) first three months than I have with any of my shorts with an accredited publisher.
(My bold.)
He doesn't need a website to sell books. He doesn't need a website to know his books are selling.
In other words, who is promoting his work and by what means?
Those questions are different to your first questions. They're not the same questions expressed in other words.
Where is his work published? Zines usually pay a fixed price for a story or an article. So I gather that's not it.
Again, Michael already provided this information in his comment:
I have a friend that just released his first short SF himself
His friend self-published the work.
And a publisher will insist - and I mean insist -- that the writer establishes a website. Some publishers will set up their own in-house Author Page but that's in addition to the author having his/her own website.
Some publishers might insist. Most won't. I've had more than forty books published, most by major, Big Five publishers, and do not have an author website or an author page on my publishers' websites.
And if he self-published, how in the heavens is the reading audience aware of his work? Where is his audience? Doing well in sales means his short SF is being purchased. In that case it must be featured somewhere - Amazon.com - and if that's the case there must be an author page. There must be "paying means" PayPal or something that will forward him his royalties but these will not come in the first 3 months, regardless of who is selling his work. And if there is PayPal it usually means there has to be an author website of a self-published author with commerce capability.
I assume his audience is at Amazon, and they have found him there.
Having an author page at Amazon is not the same as having an author website.
Michael made it clear in his post that he was talking about his friend's first three months' worth of sales.
It doesn't follow that if one has a PayPal Account, one will also have an author website, and sell books direct from that website. My mother in law has a PayPal account but she's never written a book, nor does she have a website.
You mention 'title, tags' so he must be advertising which is what self-promo implies. But how exactly is he advertising...? Most of the writers do it via their websites...and through cover art posted on many social sites and publisher's domain.
Tags are used on Amazon and so on. They're not an advertising tool, they're a marketing tool. It's important that we use our words with precision.
"Most" writers don't advertise their own works, and if they were to do so they wouldn't do so on their own websites: that would be a wasteful duplication.
There's so much more to advertising than posting cover art; writers posting their own cover art on social media sites is not advertising, it's promotion; and writers don't post their own cover art on their publishers' websites, their publishers do that as standard.
How exactly did you determine that this self-published (I presume here) author is doing better than you? Did you see his royalty statements?
I assume that because my friends are lovely people they'll be honest with me when we discuss the sales of our books. If they choose to exaggerate their sales that's up to them, but I can't imagine that any would.
I can, however, imagine that if I demanded that they provided me with proof of their sales figures, they would, quite reasonably, find that offensive.
You're right, this does boggle the mind. Edita
It does.
