Book Marketing on Steroids

This post is likely to annoy some, anger others and spur a different group to aim higher. Why annoy? Because some of my writer friends think every writer should have this kind of marketing support. Why anger? Because some of this came about during negotiations between an agent and a publisher. Why spur on and encourage? Because the more we write, the better we get as writers and marketeers. The better we get, the better our sales. And the greater the possibility we have to land one of these contracts where more is done for us.

A bit of background before I dissect this full-page ad from Publishers Weekly. Sharyn McCrumb is a long-time NYT bestselling author. Her ballad novels featuring Nora Bonesteel are continuing favorites. There hasn't been a new one in a long time. This novella comes ready made for success.

That said, Abingdon Press, which has been around for 200+ years, is throwing a ton of effort behind this release. Let's parse this ad.

1. 100-copy early reader campaign. Most of us with small press contracts are lucky to have 10-15 copies to send out. We have to badger our publishers for the Kindle file to attract reviewers. Many of the names for the early readers came from Sharyn herself, but not all. Some came from the publisher knowing who the best earlier readers in her genre are. All are expected to review the book. 
2. 100-copy radio reviewers promo. I don't know 100 radio reviewers. I would need a PR specialist to help with this.
3. Multi-media publicity campaign. I know most of my local newspaper and magazine publishers. Outside of a 50-mile radius, I'm just another writer looking for column inches. I can send press releases and hope, but it helps if you know someone at the publication to grease the skids. As far as national book review pubs, again it's rather a crap shoot as to whether my book will be reviewed or not. I have to try, but I would rather have a bit of help to attract attention.
4. Author signings at large festivals and book fairs. NYT bestsellers do well because they have support.  If an indie or small press author gets in, it's a lonely place. If you are with a publishing company that has high visibility. you'll be overwhelmed. Otherwise, you're likely to be underwhelmed.
5. 20-stop regional author tour in southeast. Again, having a large publisher behind you to set up the appointments helps bring bodies and dollars to your events. You can do it yourself given enough time and contacts. If your book will attract a regional audience through its subject, you'll have a better chance of doing this on your own.
6. National print and online advertising. Not likely if you are with a small press or on your own. I don't have deep pockets to pay for advertising.
7. #NoraIsBack social medial campaign. All of us can do this. We can register our book titles and put together social media events. It takes time that you might not be able to spend.
8. Online reading group guides. We should all have these on our web pages. If our publishers will print the guides at the back of the book, all the better. Some will; others won't. AT least put these on your websites, along with topics you are qualified to talk about.
9. Abingdon Book club and blogger program. This works if your publisher has such programs. If not, you're on your own.

Is this all bad news for indie and small press published writers? No, because there are several things in this list we can all do without spending a boatload of money. We'll spend a boatload of time, thought. It's hard to figure out how to divide our time between promotion and writing the next book. We are often reminded that selling books is a marathon, not a sprint. True, but publishers would like to see a return on their investment in publishing our works. So would we.

We have to be smart to control the stress of feeling we have to do it all. Good publishers and agents can and should help. Alas, not all do.

Book Fairs

I've gone to two book fairs so far this year. I have three more scheduled. Last year I did many more. So why did I cut back this year? Several reasons.

About the best most of us can hope for is a few dozen books sold at a fair. These usually run one day from ten in the morning until sometime between two and four in the afternoon. Others run two days. Since some require an overnight stay due to distance, writers should factor in the expenses when deciding whether or not to go to a fair. If you draw a largish crowd at your table, you'll have to worry about spending only a few minutes with each buyer.

We meet fellow writers on the same circuit and catch up on family and friends. I caught up with Arnetta Philpott Hairston who brings her son's books to events until he's able to do it himself.

Let's do the math. Say I have a great fair. I meet with 30-40 readers, some of whom are already part of the Mad Max "family," while others are shopping for a new book with different characters. Say I sell 25 books at the fair. Now factor in five such events a year. I'd be able to reach 150-200 readers and sell 125 books. Add in at least one overnight for one of the fairs, plus gasoline, food, etc., and the return on each book sold quickly goes into the negative.

But how else do we reach our readers, you howl. I want to do book signings and be loved by my readers, you whimper. I want to thank them for buying my book, for supporting my writing efforts. It's a conundrum most debut writers face. We won't have the big book tours paid for by our publishers. We won't pack Barnes and Noble through having a poster in the window and a small blurb in the papers. We won't be on the Today Show, NPR, Oprah or CNN's book show. We won't have a publicist pushing us here and there, guiding us through the pits of marketing, unless we hire one. We have to do the work ourselves. That said, we have to be smart about how we spend our time.

I wondered if I was crying into the wilderness until I read a piece in the Wall Street Journal last weekend. Titled "Fiction's Digital Alchemist," the article features how Paulo Coelho, everything best selling author (NYT, USA Today, etc.) has changed his outlook on marketing. The article laid it out pretty clearly. Before he cut out book events, he calculated the following:

"In the past, each reader at a book signing would ask him to autograph about three novels (he has 27 out) and pose for a photo, amounting to a two-minute encounter. All told, that meant interacting with maybe 90 readers at a few dozen book events each year." Oh phooey. My estimates are way too high. Sigh.

He goes on: "Now he can write 'at least one kind word' to roughly 30 people a day and reach more than 10,000 a year. In the past six months, he has gained 4.1 million fans on Facebook through "likes" on his page."

And that, my fellow writers, is a good use of time.

Several years ago, I heard a middle grade author talk about answering every personal tweet. Granted, she only said things like "OMG. So happy you loved my story. Happy face." She kept a small file of  responses which she cut and pasted into her responses. Her fans stayed and were very happy.

For those of us who have day jobs, or who are shy and don't like to put themselves in front of people, or who may not be able to travel for a whole host of reasons, this might serve as a trail guide for reaching readers. I put together a daily timeline for responding to email, FB and Twitter. I alternate between writing and interacting. It's easy and takes the stress away from balancing reaching out and writing down.

I answer every, and I mean every, personal note. My numbers on FB, LinkedIn, Goodreads and Twitter continue to grow. My newsletter has nearly 1000 members. Can I say that any of these activities leads directly to sales? No, but if I don't do anything, I guarantee I will turn inactivity into no sales at all.

Now I figure out how these contacts translate into sales. Wish me luck.

Tweets, Blogs and Videos

I've been reading a lot lately about using social media to create brand awareness. As writers, we are the brand. And so are our books.

Blogs and web sites are good starting points, but you cannot stop there. Yes, you have to have a web site when you have a book. Yes, you have to have a blog when you are getting ready to have a book. Once you have the book, you need to look at different ways of getting the message out.

Facebook: It's no longer enough for you to have a presence on Facebook; your book also needs its own fan page. Amazing how many there are out there.

YouTube: Book trailers are growing in popularity -- and in inanity. (But that's another posting, perhaps). Book trailers need to be everywhere: a link on your blog, another link on your web site, a Facebook link, etc. They need to go viral to be effective.

Twitter: Not the Twitter of "I got so drunk last night I puked. Oh, here's a photo of me and the toilet." The Twitter of sharing waaaay too much information is also a brand management tool. Attract a group of followers by being a follower. Post a tweet about something you are doing -- like speaking or book signing. Ask your followers to re-tweet. Doesn't take long for tweets to go viral too.

Ah, I hear the cries of "This is way too much work." It is a lot of work, but if you want to be successful as a writer, you need to consider every possible angle. More and more of the big publishing houses are limiting the amount of marketing they will do for a new writer. Maybe 6 weeks of hype, then you are on your own.

Might as well practice now while there is still time.

A literary week and then some

Last week was dominated -- happily (yes, I know it's a adverb!) -- by things literary.

The first event of the week was a fantastic presentation by Sharyn McCrumb and Adam Edwards, authors of Faster Pastor, Sharyn's third NASCAR book and the first one written with a co-author. I had the pleasure and honor of reading an advanced reader copy of the book and reviewed it for Valley Business Front earlier this year. If you want to laugh out loud, this is a good book to read.

Sharyn and Adam were very generous with their time, talking to a crowd of around 75 who braved sloppy, snowy roads, answering questions and signing books. The event was a fund-raiser for the Westlake Library, the newest community center at Smith Mountain Lake.

The second event was private. A few friends gathered over lunch to talk about marketing for writers, both self-published and commercially published. We have been working on a marketing plan for new writers. We challenged each other, asked questions, brought in outside ideas, and I captured everything in an organic document. We want to test this with some of our friends who have books in print. We also think this would be a good resource for writers who have yet to publish, but who are getting close. We all determined it was never too early to think about how to promote your works. We also decided that it was hard work, but worth the effort in the end.

And finally, the weekend concluded with me finishing My Name Is Red, by Orhan Pamuk. Winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2006. This literary novel is worth the investment in time. It is beautiful. I wish I could read the original Turkish, but if the English translation is faithful, I don't need to. The novel breaks all the "rules" for what agents say they want. It has so many different narrators that you have to refer to the bottom of the page to see who is speaking. The narrators do not have different voices. There are descriptive passages, adverbs, and other contemporary taboos. Perhaps because it is historical fiction, set in sixteenth-century Istanbul, that Pamuk broke all the rules and still found an agent. I'm glad he did.

And now back to removing words ending in "ly" from my manuscript. (This caused no small amount of concern when I searched for "ly" and found over 1,000 of the bad critters. Then I remembered that a main character is "Emily." Solved that problem. For now, she is "Emilie." Can always change it back. . . .)

Have a productive week and to all my writer friends, keep cranking out pages.

Promoting Your Book

I was multitasking this morning -- reading my favorite blogs and listening to the Today show with half an ear.

The Today show announced that Al Roker had written a novel. A mystery novel. So, okay, I thought. Then I listened to the story. Talk about promoting a debut novelist. The entire Today show team acted out the start of the mystery. It helps to have at least 60 seconds of air time, Matt, Meredith, Ann and the rest hamming it up and giving Roker a huge send up for his novel. Alas, all it takes is money, a big name, access to top morning show personalities, air time, etc. What the rest of us poor writers lack.

I turned back to my blog reading. Rachelle Gardner noted a brilliant trick one author uses at her book signings.

"Novelist Wanda Dyson puts yellow crime tape around her table when she does books signings. Do you think that attracts more readers than tables that have nothing interesting to draw a reader's attention?"

I sent the idea to Sally Roseveare for her next signing. If she coupled crime scene tape with her large black lab (stuffed), everyone would stop to see what was going on.

Whaddya think, huh? Crime scene tape for those of us who write mysteries and who don't have the access that Al Roker has?

Alternative Publishing

I went to a discussion on Monday on the pros and cons of self publishing, sponsored by the Valley Writers Chapter of Virginia Writers Club. Four members all had self-published, with varying degrees of success. The general consensus was that self-publishing works if you have something of local interest (Sally Roseavere's novel is set at Smith Mountain Lake), is non-fiction (memoir by Rodney Franklin and history by Jim Morrison) or humor (Becky Mushko). No one is getting rich slowly this way, but their words are being read.

One prevailing theme was how involved a writer has to be in marketing his/her book. (To avoid this awkward construction, I will use "her" as the collective noun.) Hand selling at readings, out of the trunk of a car, or through local book stores and gift shops moves a few books. Not enough to garner interest from an agent, however.

I didn't hear anyone talk about alternative publishing and alternative marketing. I would love comments about these topics:

Publishing to electronic books, i.e., Kindle

Podcasting to attract listenership

Using social networks, i.e., LinkedIn, Plaxo

Using FaceBook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.

I have nearly 4000 personal contacts on one of the social networks. When I posted a note that I was reading a particular book on marketing, my friend noticed a definite blip in sales.

How else can we market our books? What are your experiences?