Here is the link to it: My YouTube Channel
I spent three days working the Nebraska Writers Guild booth at the State Fair. I was there to promote the guild and try to get people who like to write to join it, and I was there to promote my own books and try to get people to buy them.
Over the course of those three days, I watched thousands of people walk past our booth. Few of them stopped to look at my books, and even fewer were interested in writing, but I still managed to distribute a lot of our brochures, and I managed to sell almost 40 books during that time, so I was pleased.
In talking to people, though, many “readers” told me that they only listen to audiobooks anymore, so they asked if mine are available that way. As of now, no, they are not. It would cost me too much money (money I don’t have as a self-published author) to employ the talent to create the audiobooks, or it would take special equipment and editing expertise along with a sound-proofed room in my house for me to do it on my own.
I would love to have my books as audiobooks, though, so don’t get me wrong. I simply don’t have them out in that format yet.
What I do have, though, is a YouTube channel on which I read chapters of each book. The long-term plan is to eventually have the entire books on my channel, but so far I only have the first few chapters of each book. I finally added another portion of “Twinges” a few days ago.
I decided to start this channel a year and a half ago as another way to market my books to a much wider audience. After all, YouTube is everywhere in the world.
I wanted to offer enough of each book that a reader might be intrigued enough by what she heard to want to know more of the story. I hoped it would lead to some sales.
I don’t think it has because my videos haven’t had many views. But, I don’t have many subscribers either, so that’s something I’m trying to remedy.
Subscribing to my channel is free, so if you’d care to subscribe and then know when a new video becomes available, please do so. And tell others.
If, by some miracle, I’d ever have lots of subscribers and also get the full books recorded and on the channel, then and only then would I consider adding a paid piece to the channel. So, I’m certain that the channel will remain free as long as I have it.
For now, the channel is simply a way for me to share parts of my books with people who might not otherwise come upon them and with my readers who would like to take a few minutes of their day to listen to me read parts of my books to them.
It’s the closest thing I have to audiobook versions of my novels at this point.
I hope you’ll take a few minutes to check it out and maybe even listen to one of the chapters. Again, it’s just me and my laptop, so they aren’t anything fancy, but I do try to make the stories compelling to listen to as I read them.
Soon, I’ll be adding chapters of the next book — hopefully by the end of the year. I have three more appearances coming up in the next week, and after that, I’ll be devoting myself to the rewrites and edits of my sixth novel so that I can get it out as soon as possible.
Once I start polishing it, I’ll share more portions of it here with my paying subscribers before it becomes available in book format, so if you’d like to become a paying subscriber today, you’ll be one of the first to read portions of my next book.
It’s a murder mystery with a little paranormal and motorcycles. The cover will have one of the following photos on it. They are photos that my dear uncle, Paul Filsinger, took before he passed away — his photos also grace the covers of “State of Georgia . . . and Other Writings” and “Twinges.”
My boyfriend read the draft of it in one sitting the other day because he couldn’t put it down. I hope other readers will have a similar experience.
Until next time. Visit my YouTube channel — the link is at the top of this post.
Happy reading.
Tammy Marshall