mkhmarketing (https://startbloggingonline.com/) under CC BY 2.0
It’s the worst part of this being-an-author gig. I don’t like promotion. Really don’t like it. The task of building any kind of following doesn’t come with an instruction pamphlet, and that makes it a rather scary proposition.
Publishers don’t do marketing anymore. They expect a writer to have a brand, a platform, a website, blog, Twitter and Instagram and Tumblr, preferably a street team to help do the promotion, and a rabid army of fans who’ll buy anything the writer produces, up to and including their laundry list.
But even with all those things (minus the last two, in my own case), it seems to impossible to get your book discovered. There’s just so much social media noise out there, that we’re overwhelmed with images and data and information. Trying to get a book noticed through all that is like trying to sweep up sand from the desert floor.
And just as pointless.
I don’t think people go on Twitter, or Tumblr, or Facebook or Instagram or any other social platform to buy books. Or even to have books pointed at them that they might think they’ll buy later. No number of regular posts or tweets saying “Here’s the buy link!” is going to translate into sales. I rarely click on things like that in my own feed. Why should anyone else click on mine?
Even where there is a stronger author-reader relationship—such as those two people and the cat who follow my author page on Facebook—sending the got-a-new-book-you-might-like-please-go-buy-it! message doesn’t get through to them. Facebook hides posts, showing them to maybe the cat before demanding money to show them to one of the humans as well. Truly, if you want to reach more than 5% of the people who specifically signed up to your page, Facebook is going to make you cough up the dough, and even then good luck getting to more than 30-40%.
I can’t say, either, that even promoting to those groups on Facebook dedicated to books, some with tens of thousands of members, have parlayed into sales. I post on them maybe once a month now, no more often than that. Partly because I’m shy of pushing myself out there too much, but mostly because even though I’m a member of those groups myself, I almost never see much of them on my feed. It’s that thing about Facebook hiding posts again. Facebook, for some reason, doesn’t *want* to be a place where people can find new books.
Newsletters are supposed to work, and I do use mine. Sporadically. When I have something important to say – so that means possibly a couple of times a year. I don’t believe in sending out regular newsletters telling you about my latest recipe find (Baked Oats. So YUM) or that I’ve taken up acrylic pouring (messy, but fun!). Even though I try to find a giveaway for each newsletter as a sweetener, I don’t want to impose, you know? Plopping into people’s inboxes shouting “looky here!” is not my style.
It all feels so… so PUSHY. And I can’t believe readers buy books because the author pushed them. I don’t, after all.
It’s that old chestnut: don’t push sales on readers, *pull* them in instead.
That’s why I buy books, because I feel pulled into a genuine interest in them. Great cover, great blurb, a friend’s recommendation (that is pure *gold* to a writer, to get people recommending their books to friends)… that’s what gets me interested, every time.
What I never know, though, is how to parlay my own book-buying behaviour into a strategy I can use to promote selling. So instead, I’ll go back to writing the next book and hoping that I can come up with something soon. Because I’m about to compile the entire Shield series into a boxed set, and I’m on the last 25% of the next steampunk Rafe and Ned book. I’ll need a strategy soon…
Any ideas, people? What’s worked for you if you’re promoting your own stuff? And what makes you decide to go and buy a new book?
About Anna
Anna’s a devotee of old-school sci fi, focused on handsome young heroes fighting aliens and firing nifty laser guns as they battle to save what’s left of humanity. Or equally handsome young steampunk pilots adventuring in 1900s Aegypt. She lives with her husband in a quiet village tucked deep in the Nottinghamshire countryside and is supported there by the Deputy Editor, aka Molly the cockerpoo, who is assisted by the lovely Mavis, a Yorkie-Bichon cross with a bark several sizes larger than she is but no opinion whatsoever on the placement of semi-colons.
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As a PA I am constantly seeking new ways to promote my authors’ work. I have found that this review site, with a few others I won’t mention here, give you the most ROI. I also think there are certain publishers who are ripping off authors. They give you a cover, mediocre, at best, editing and proofing, then throw it out there with no after care. They just seem to pump out as many books as possible, figuring that they’ll get more money that way rather than publishing quality books. Personally, I’d rather go it on my own.
Yup – blogs like this are golden. Without them, I have no idea how we’d get heard and seen. I certainly do the blog tours and put the books out for review, but it’s maintaining the moment that I find so hard. It’s not helped by being (i) a slow writer at one book a year if I’m lucky and (ii) not really writing m/m romance. The niche gets narrower.
I wish I had the answer for how to get noticed, but after ten years of failure I have no answers. I couldn’t even get a single person to sign up for my newsletter (save for a non-reader friend who did it to test something for me) and ending up shutting it down after a year. I am rapidly reaching the “what’s the point?” stage in my so-called writing career.
As a reader, I can let you know what I do to pick up new books. This is not including authors who I am already hooked on, where I am waiting impatiently for their latest release.
1. Publisher newsletters. I do read those, probably more than the author ones. If the cover and/or blurb interests me, I go to buy, or, if I can’t afford it right away, I add it to my wish list at Amazon.
2. “Also boughts” at Amazon are another way that I choose books. I also used to look through the similar books on the listings, but Amazon has recently done something stupid to those and while some books are similar, far more are just ludicrous and are similar only in that they are both books.
3. I sometimes do check the book rec groups on Facebook, but like you have found that they rarely show up much on my feed. But if I am looking for something particular and don’t know where to start, a visit to the group directly and a search for a keyword can be pretty useful. Chances are, someone will have already looked for those unicorn shifters or whatever else before I ever did. And if not, a post to ask in most groups can offer some results.
Oh yes, that feeling that like Sisyphus, we’re pushing rocks uphill in the effort to be noticed… I empathise with you on that. It’s downright painful when you’ve already poured so much of yourself into the book, to try and dig down to find more. And so disheartening when you seem to be shouting into the wind.
While I realise how books get onto the ‘also boughts’ – something of a Catch22 situation! – I’ve never really worked out how to get my books onto the ‘you liked X, and these are similar’ lists. Amazon’s algorithms are clear as the densest mud.
Yea, shouting into the wind, in the middle of a hurricane, while buried under those rocks. That about sums it up.
And I agree that Amazon’s algorithms are dreadful, along with their ads. Though I foolishly keep throwing good money after bad with those in the hope that some time I might figure something out.