You've finally finished polishing the manuscript you've slaved over for months and months and are itching to press a few buttons and be able to say "I'm published!" First let me say: Congratulations! But beyond easily uploading your book to numerous sites like Amazon, Smashwords, CreateSpace, BookBaby, Kindle Direct Publishing, Lulu... (the list goes on), here's where that Mt Everest discoverability challenge hits you in the face (if you're not prepared for it) and leaves you wondering where to even start? Hmm. Yes. I WAS prepared for it, and I HAVE started, and I STILL feel like this! But let me not discourage you with that. This self-publishing world is as vast as a desert, because all the effort you put into getting your book published is barely even half the journey. That's when this foreign train of marketing arrives at the station and you have to hop on and hang on tight as it speeds away (or, you know, crawls away) to your success. You may feel like learning how to publish your book was hard, and that teaching yourself how to market your book is impossible... let me assure you it is not. Because I am an extremely introverted person, with only minuscule social inclination, and wanted to be one of those rare people with no online presence. That went out the window almost straight away (obviously)- I even researched (thoroughly) about how to avoid this aspect... yeah no. So I had to teach myself all about it (which was a monumental thing for me by itself). However, having at least made it to the other side, I find myself quite proud of getting here all by my lonesome. It's a fulfilling journey. And so if you're in my shoes wondering how to get people to find your book so your sales skyrocket overnight and you can retire to the Caribbean and sip icy drinks with those little umbrellas for the rest of your life because you suddenly became a millionaire (wouldn't that be nice!), I hope what I learnt on my journey can help you reach your own destination.

First Point: if you don't have Facebook, you really don't have to get it. Google it. =) Get Twitter instead, it's actually better for authors, or something like that. So do this ASAP. Seriously, I wish I had started BEFORE I even wrote my book... but I only started about 2 months before I published. Anyway, the reason for this is you want to create a platform to launch your book to, rather than just launching it to the endless expanse of the online book world and hoping readers will find it (because unless it's another Hunger Games type thing, this is unlikely. Sorry, but it's the hard truth). On Twitter, you want to have consistency both in when you tweet and what you tweet, so think of something you can 'sell' to your followers and stick with it. There are dozens of applications you can use so your tweets go out at times the most people will see them and to spread out the tweets you make when you go on a binge... like Hootsuite, which is free and what I use. Twitter is still something I'm grappling with, especially when trying to find the balance between 'selling' yourself, the author, the person people can relate to, like and hopefully follow, and 'selling' your book, sending out enough tweets that people don't forget you have one that you want them to read... Check out my Twitter profile https://twitter.com/KellyBatten_1 and see how I've done it. Read heaps of articles on getting yourself sorted on Twitter- the more informed you are the better understanding you have of what on earth your doing and therefore the better you can actually do what you plan on doing! Good luck!