Today’s Author Interview is with Ash Litton. And I love that there’s a unicorn on the cover!

Do you have any advice for other authors on how to market their books?

Ash: I’m always an advocate for all things in moderation, but the reality of marketing is that you need to A: have a planned schedule, and B: prepare in advanced. Don’t be afraid to have a script – I’ve always written up a rotation of advertising blurbs and run the same blurbs across multiple platforms across multiple days, weeks, or months. I’ve included pictures, too – the cover art by itself, or sometimes a “promo card”, as I call it – to help give a visual incentive for potential buyers to follow the vendor links.

Did you make any marketing mistakes or is there anything you would avoid in future?

Ash: Starting out, I didn’t do any marketing, and I felt the results of that. I think I had the gratuitous buys from friends and family during the first month or two, but after that, I didn’t sell a single copy for at least six months. I switched up my behaviour, started marketing my work through Twitter, and saw the spike in sales. I’ve since found dedicated genre groups on Facebook and have extended my promotions there, and have seen an added increase in sales. It also helps that I’m putting out more material each year. The more you have to sell, the greater the chance you have of making sales.

Do you think that the cover plays an important part in the buying process?

Ash: To a degree, yes. There are groups dedicated to the analytics of covert art and sales projections, but in my own opinion: so long as the cover doesn’t look like a Hollywood “ransom note” with pieces cut and pasted together, I don’t think many buyers are going to care whether the author spent $5 or $500 for cover art services.

Did you do a press release, Goodreads book launch, or anything else to promote your work, and did it work?

Ash: Outside of a pre-sale promotion by my regular methods of advertising, I haven’t done anything so formal, no. I will be considering it with my larger works, though, but until I hammer out release dates for those, then I won’t be able to set up a formal game plan outside of “shop around, see what my options are, and put together a tentative outline of execution”.

Which writers inspire you?

Ash: Quite a few. I was first introduced to Neil Gaiman through the Illustrated Film Script of MirrorMask, when I got a copy of the book to read from the library. Through Neil Gaiman, I found my way to the late Sir Terry Pratchett. I started reading books by Laurell K. Hamilton back in high school, and the same with JK Rowling. I don’t remember how it was that I discovered Jim Butcher, but I was so glad I did.

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Ash Litton is a writer and lover of sci-fi, fantasy, and all things fictional. She is the author of No Signal, Thoroughbred, Evening Hallow, and Comeuppance, and works on other Appalachian Dream Tales between her ongoing novel projects.

When she’s not writing, she’s drawing, and when she’s not doing either of those, she’s dreaming up new projects to work on. Born and raised in rural West Virginia, Ash has always wondered what things lay hidden in the hills around her. She attended West Virginia University, where she studied the English language before returning home to her family in rural West Virginia.
You can follow her on her website, as well as Facebook and Twitter.