A few months back, I wrote a post called Lesson Learned: A post about promotion where I very openly discuss my successes and failures (and money blown) trying to market Son of the Siren and reach readers. Long story short: all the effort and money spent did not move the dial.

One of the things I mentioned in that post was that I sort of failed on the social media marketing aspect in that I hardly tooted my own horn or talked about the book. I don’t have a lot of followers across social media (still) but I’ve decided to post daily, or even a couple times a day, on Threads, Facebook, and Instagram, to try to drum up interest in my books. Right now I’m focusing mostly on The Name and the Key because I learned that we are not doing preorders for that book, so I need to summon as much interest in it as possible beforehand to ensure a good release day. No pressure or anything.

My plan is to bombard followers with gorgeous graphics. I have mentioned my overdosing on Canva Pro (the one month free trial really helped me load up on graphics), but that I also rely on Canva templates to make my Instagram posts look beautiful.

The main templates I’ve been using for The Name and the Key come from a designer called Flossy Finch, who created a template bundle called the Dark Glamour Social Media Bundle. There are 300 (!) template pages, and I’ve been filling out every single one. I’ve mostly kept to their aesthetic of blacks and greens and reds, but every now and again I’ll completely redo a page in different colors to showcase different things about the book. But overall, the template pack helps create a darkly creepy, but beautiful, design set.

I also snatched up the Celestial Gold Foil Papers & Frames from the same designer because I plan on using that to help create pages of the Book of Simoneth (the grimoire in The Step and the Walk) using commissioned art of the demons I’ve created. I just paid for the first commission of Isabelle, but I have no idea when that’s going to be completed. The application said guaranteed delivery by July, which, to be honest, would be after release, and I’m trying to get art before it. But I digress.

Anyway, one of my biggest concerns is that I’m talking about my books too much. But I’m friends with authors online and I observe what they do, and they openly advertise their works. Not all the time–sometimes they talk about what they’ve been reading, or recommend other authors, or give writing advice, or give a little bio about themselves–I also plan on doing this to shake things up. I’ve done a fantasy rec post where I mentioned 14 different authors and styles of books (ranging from manga to short stories to classics); I have also done little bios and snippets of myself here and there.

As long as I keep getting my hands on beautiful templates from a variety of creators, I think my campaigning for my book might be more successful than it was for Son of the Siren.

Doing all of this creative advertising work in Canva (and BeFunky!) also helps keep my impatience and nervousness at bay. I’m currently waiting on an editorial letter and a cover design for the book. I looked at past records and when we did Son of the Siren, I had already gotten the letter and cover design by the second week of January. I know there’s still plenty of time, and I did send the book to my editor the middle of December, so I’m probably rushing things. This is because I’m excited and scared. But as long as I keep myself busy with doing Instagram templates that I copy over to Threads and Facebook, I think I’ll be ok.

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Readers who are writers, how do you promote yourself on social media?