Charlie Finlay is a great writer who taught me a ton about writ­ing back when I didn’t really deserve it.   He has a new fan­tasy book series launch­ing, set dur­ing the Revolutionary War, and the first book is called Patriot Witch.   I have really been look­ing for­ward to this.  Historical fan­tasy set in this time period is rare as far as I know, and cou­pling the period with a writer like Finlay is going to be a treat.

CCfinlay: You Say You Want A Revolution?

But what I really wanted to point out to you today was this inter­est­ing strat­egy he’s using to build buzz for the book.  He’s giv­ing out free early copies for the book, so long as you go and post a review on one of the mer­chant sites.  Then he’ll send you an advance copy of the next book, so long as you do the same. I sus­pect he is going to chain peo­ple all the way through the series this way.

I think it’s a clever way to get some men­tions out there. If I were him, I would have asked for blog posts as well, for read­ers with blogs, but maybe Amazon.com reviews will have more of an impact on sales.  I’m not sure.

Charlie, like most newer nov­el­ists, has not much of a mar­ket­ing bud­get behind his book.  These days, mar­ket­ing falls on the shoul­ders of the writer more and more.  I col­lect strate­gies like these to offer to my clients as part of my web design series.  I’ll be watch­ing this one to see where it goes.

I wish I had time to take him up on the offer, but things are get­ting really hec­tic around here between look­ing for a job, free­lance, and Escape Pod.  And I’m also writ­ing again a bit.  Not enough time in the day, damn it.

Tagged as: book marketing, books, Charles Coleman Finlay, historical fantasy, publishing