It’s funny how useless it is to invite “friends” on Facebook to events. The response rate is less than 1%. In marketing that ratio is acceptable for cold leads – out of 100 people that never heard from you before, 10 might be interested, and 1 might buy.
The same goes for LinkedIn. When my first book got published I got really excited and wrote individual, personalized emails to hundreds of connections. I imagined they all wanted at least one copy, because I was certain if anyone of them had written a book I would certainly buy one (even if it was bad). It would just be cool to have a book on the shelf from someone you know. Also, I seem to love books more than people.
Those hundreds of messages resulted in two sales. Two. And crampy fingers. With the amount of money authors make on royalties these days I could barely afford my triple bypass frappuchino for breakfast the next morning. Self doubt kicks in. It might say something about people’s perception of me, or about the quality of my…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Living by Experience to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.