Before Matt Stewart landed a book deal for his literary novel, The French Revolution, he'd already received numerous rejections. First, it took 8-9 months and more than 150 pitches to find an agent. After some promising critical feedback from one, and 3 months of revising and resubmitting the book--voila! Then his agent only had to find a publisher. Over 30 rejections later, Stewart came up with a brilliant marketing plan.
TWITTER.
Beginning on Bastille Day 2009 ("I was doing something revolutionary") and with a nod from his agent, he would serialize his novel (at 140 characters per tweet) to encourage people to check out the book. Stewart also offered it on Amazon's Kindle for $1.99, as well as a free upload on Scribd for one week.
The result?