I do it. Anyone reading my blog knows that. But last night I had a reality-check.

I’m in a writers group with four members, myself included. We usually meet once a month, but because of scheduling conflicts, last night was the first time we’d gotten together in six weeks.

I was bemused to discover that, despite what I thought was a thorough promotional blitz across twitter, facebook, G+, and this blog, not one of my three fellow members was aware that I had a short story out this month from Lightspeed Magazine–a story they critiqued, no less.

This is a very supportive group, and we follow each other on twitter and facebook. It’s not like they don’t care. So the situation begs the question: if I can’t get the word out to people I actually know, if I can’t get their attention, what hope for the wider world?

Unfortunately, I have no answer for that. We’re all busy with our own lives and thousands of things are vying for our attention. But it’s my business to write and sell books and stories. Obviously, how to succeed at the “sell” part is going to take further thought and innovation. People cannot buy books or stories if they don’t know that the books and stories exist.

Time for new ideas, I think. Or magic pixie dust.

Not too long ago, a friend who has had some impressive success as an indie writer on Amazon sent me a link to a blog post titled “Why No One Is Buying Your Book And What To Do About It” by Jeff Bennington.

After taking a few seconds to indulge in a dark scowl, I set my ego aside and read the post.

Jeff summarizes the problem like this:

I don’t mean to be cruel, but I have to be honest.
No one has ever heard of you.
Readers do not know you exist.

Well … duh?

I read through the post and my initial reaction was that it was just another superficial attempt to unravel why some books and authors take off in popularity and others don’t. There wasn’t any real meat to it — but the author freely admits he doesn’t have the magic formula, which I admire. Formulas are frequently offered in the indie publishing world, but just because a “formula” worked once doesn’t mean it will work again.

In talking about how writers can get themselves and their work noticed, Jeff uses a circus metaphor:

You have to go into the big world, put on a pair of stilts, and start shouting “Hey, everyone, look over here! I write suspense novels with jaw-dropping twists. Anyone interested?”

He finishes with the mental image of authors in clown suits splashing around in a vast “ocean of e-books.”

Not being in the best of moods, my first reaction was, Well, there’s another five minutes of my life I’ll never get back.

And yet … I kept thinking about that clown metaphor.

Most of the time, I’m a fairly reserved person. I like to do things for myself, and I don’t like to ask for favors — which makes promoting books problematical. Many writers tend to be introverts, and it’s always seemed grossly unfair that, in this modern day, we’re expected – even required – to go out into the world and push our books. Traditional writers have no advantage here: publishers have long been demanding that they have the elusive “author platform” too. But of course the world is what it is and “fair” isn’t part of the equation.

So I stewed over what Jeff had to say and gradually, the metaphor contained in his post transmuted in my head to the code phrase “clown shoes.” Never mind that Jeff doesn’t actually mention clown shoes anywhere in his post. My take-away from what he says is that despite our personal reserve, we have to find a way of getting the eyeballs of potential readers looking at us and our work. The code phrase is my way of keeping this in mind.

Here’s how it works:
Suppose that I hear of a method of book promotion that’s worked well for some writers. My customary response would likely be to think, Oh, I don’t know. I’d be pretty uncomfortable asking people to help out with that. And worse, what if nobody paid any attention to me?” Now, I’ve started consciously interrupting these negative thoughts with the code phrase, “Clown shoes!”

Meaning, for me, take some chances and don’t be afraid to fall on your face.

It’s “clown shoes!” for me when I ask you (the world at large) to help me out by contributing an Amazon review for one of my books in the hope that a multitude of reviews will enhance sales.

And it’s “clown shoes!” again when I write a blog post like this one, discussing the insecurities and emotional conflicts bubbling up behind the indie publishing experience.

But “try new stuff” is the ongoing mantra, and the code phrase “clown shoes!” helps me remember that.

The strangest part of all this is that, like most introverts, I don’t even like clowns.

Oh well.

I’m in a quandary. Book View Café makes use of a promotional book-giveaway offered by the website LibraryThing.com, in which a hundred ebooks are given away to early reviewers. The hope is, early readers will post reviews which will encourage other readers to try the book, who will in turn post reviews, resulting in a rapidly expanding pyramid of appreciation that will, via exponential growth, soon take over the world!

Or at least sell a handful more books.

I’d like to include my upcoming novel Hepen the Watcher in the program, but to do so I need to come up with five fairly well-known novels that could be seen as “similar” to HtW, particularly in the sense of “If you liked Book-X, then you’d probably like Hepen the Watcher.”

So I’m looking for suggestions of books to swap in for the Book-X variable.

It’s a bit awkward, because at this point none of you reading this have actually read HtW. So how would you know? But I’m hoping some of you have read the first book of this series, The Dread Hammer. And if so, are there any fairly well-known novels you might suggest on that basis? Books that are similar in attitude, whether from the same genre or not?

Help?