After the Herculean effort of finishing Mirabilis: Winter and working with our code maestro, Simon Cook, to get it in the App Store, Leo and I started to think about ways to get the word out. One of the best forums for this is BookBuzzr, which is usually used for print books. BookBuzzr lets you set up a flipbook widget so that people can take a look at the first few pages of your book before they decide to buy.As chapter one of the Winter book is free on iPad anyway, we also put that on BookBuzzr just before Christmas and promptly forgot all about it. (Two plates of turkey with all the trimmings and a bottle of Crozes-Hermitage 2003 can do that.) So I was astonished this week to take a look on BookBuzzr and find that Mirabilis is the #1 most-viewed title on BookBuzzr's comics and graphic novels section.
Now, I know what you're thinking. BookBuzzr is mostly looked at by proper literary types. You know, the folks who read Dan Brown and James Patterson. So how big a deal is it to be top-ranked in comics? Well, we're also #1 in Young Adult and #1 in Science Fiction & Fantasy. And we're in fourth place most-viewed on all BookBuzzr books last week.
How this will translate into app sales remains to be seen, but if you're a novelist or comic book creator and you're looking to publicize your work, I recommend giving BookBuzzr a try. Don't worry about giving part of your work away for free. If the story is compelling, people will come back for more. As Cory Doctorow says, today the artist's enemy is not piracy but obscurity.
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Very exciting news indeed Dave and many thanks for sharing the BookBuzzr tip with us.
ReplyDeleteAfter all of last year's frustrations, 2011 is looking like it really is becoming a Year of Wonders.
Oh yes, Peter, I well remember the hair-pulling of last summer as we inched - indeed, millimetered - towards being able to get Mirabilis out to the public. But those days are behind us now. The UK hardcovers are due in just a matter of months, the iPad app is still in the charts, and I'm getting on with the first part of the Spring book. Oh - and I almost forgot, there's an EPUB version of the first issue too: http://www.epubbud.com/book.php?g=JDJB4A3F
ReplyDeleteThat's hot off the presses news for you :)