Promoting a comic book PRE-PUBLISHING?

[Maya]

I'm in the middle of creating a comic book. Several tips for publishing say to start building your fanbase before publishing, only because that will assure publishers that your book will be bought, and it won't be a waste of money to publish your book.

I've created a blog and a Twitter to build a fanbase, but they don't attract much attention. How should I build this fanbase? And what can I do to draw more attention to my blog? So far, I've posted a little sneak peek of some quotes from the script for the comic book, and when I can, little shorts featuring the main character will be posted, as well as some character sketches and the like.

NOTE: I absolutely refuse to go the self-publishing route, I don't care if it means my comic book never gets published, I will not self-publish it.

[Joss]

Here's a link from someone who's written 2 books on building an online reputation. She's written free articles giving advice. You can search her blog for such articles or, I guess, read the book. http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com/ I follow writers on twitter who follow her advice and they've been able to build an online reputation for themselves. I've literally gone from seeing them when they first joined twitter (I followed them when they were brand new and unknown, lol) to building a good name for themselves.

I can give you what these writers did to build their reputations: 1) they follow people (mainly other writers) and engage them in conversation; many people auto follow back.. 2) they retweet other people's tweets - when you do this, they are more likely to retweet your tweets to all their followers. 3) they have blogs and post regularly about things that other writers might be interested in and they also tweet the link to those posts. they also tweet writing articles written by professionals that might be helpful to other writers 4) They don't heavily promote their books or their work, though they might tweet about the process of writing a book, like if they're stuck on a part they might tweet about it or tweet about how much they've written for the day. 5) since they've mainly connected with a community of other writers, a lot of their tweets are writing or book related - something their followers (most writers themselves) can relate to. 6) they communicate with other writers using known writing hashtags.

It's kind of weird that in order to build an online reputation for your book, you have to talk about everything but your book.

When on twitter, Talk about writing and your favorite books. Find commonalities with other writers. Follow them and comment on their tweets and retweet their tweets. They'll do the same to you. If another writer needs someone to read his manuscript - take the time. They'll reciprocate. Or at least retweet their request to your followers. It's the support you're giving other writers like yourself that will make them support you in return, and maybe even read your book if you decide to publish it. Don't over-promote your book. Most of your facebook and twitter posts should be about things other than your book. Heavily promoting it will be #annoying to your followers and will make them unlike your page or unfollow you on twitter. With blogs, follow similar blogs and become a regular commenter, don;'t spam your links or book. Make the comments relevant and substantive.

I'm an aspiring novelist. But, I know there are a lot of comic book writers on twitter. They've followed me and I've followed them back. Find them and connect with them, you have something in common, and writers are also readers. Find out what hash tags they use on twitter. Also, connect with fans of comic books, especially those who like books that are similar to yours. Many writing tags on twitter are used by all writers regardless of what they write. I can't remember them but you can probably google them and then start using them. People will follow you if you have something interesting to say. Find some debut authors and see how they're promoting themselves when they have very little name recognition (of course some will get help from their publisher, but the author has to do the bulk of it).

Some of your ideas sound like a good start. I suggest you carry through on the shorts and maybe even put them in an ebook on Amazon and offer it as a free download - leave your twitter and facebook link in the file. And, don't be shy about posting your links. I've seen writers simply ask for more followers on facebook, lol. One asked because he needed X number of followers before he could personalize his author page. I followed him because I'm always happy to help out another author. Like people's facebook pages and they might return the favor, or just ask that they like yours in return. Lastly, be patient. It takes time to build an online reputation, so don't expect people to start swarming your twitter and blog all at once, and definitely don't expect an immediate following.

And if your comic book never sells to a publisher, don't lock it away in a drawer never to be seen again - unless it really is an eyesore. Publish it as a free ebook. that's one way to build up your fan base. if people like your free book, they'll read the next one and if you offer one for sale, they might buy it. There are people who publish stuff for free on Amazon and a lot of them do it just because they love writing and want people to read their work, and not because they want to publish.

I know of one self-published author who's selling thousands of ebooks a month. He said it took a long time for his books to start selling. So, be patient and dont' expect immediate results - with self-pubbing or with building your social media platform. Good luck with your book. & sorry for rambling.