Which Marketing Is Worth Paying For?

by @JeffeKennedy

This week's topic we'll be gnoshing at the Bordello is our favorite free and paid marketing venues.




It's always the question, which thing to invest in. The topic comes up repeatedly on my author loops. It's not that we don't want to pay to advertise, but there are a LOT of "opportunities" for authors to shell out money in order to bring their books to readers' attention.


Okay, it's downright predatory out there.

Between the perception created in part by the astonishing success of authors like Veronica Roth, JK Rowling, EL James and Stefanie Meyer that authors are rolling in money and the most understandable eagerness (which can shade toward desperation) of writers who *aren't* rolling in money to get that way, a huge marketplace awaits the unwary writer. All of them claim to deliver book sales. None (in my experience) can definitively prove it.

And, lemme tell you, we're not talking cheap. Book Bub charges up to $1600 to feature your book for one day. Fresh Fiction offers a one-year advertising  package for just shy of $1100. You can pay up to nearly $4000 for a full-page, full-color ad at RT Book Reviews - and barely skate away for less than $1,000 for a 1/6th page ad. Now, I'm not saying these don't return on the investment. Some people swear by them. I can vouch that having Rogue's Pawn featured on Book Bub put the book up at #2 under Fantasy Romance on Amazon. Which was amazing and wonderful - arguably tremendously effective. And my publisher paid for it - even better.

I don't know about the rest of you, but I don't have that much cash to invest. Not like that, anyway. So I tend toward free marketing venues. Do I get what I pay for in those cases? Maybe. The ones I pay for I choose pretty carefully.

Free
Social media. It costs time, yes, but - if you don't succumb to Facebook's endless prompting to pay to boost posts - it's otherwise free. If you do it right, it's also fun and builds a community of friends and like minds. My personal favorites:

• Twitter
• Tumblr
• Blogging
• Goodreads
• Facebook

Paid
My favorites aren't necessarily the smartest investments, but in examining what I actually shell out money for? Giveaways. I give away my books, my friends' books and various prezzies. I tend to favor baked goods. Some examples:

• Guesting on blogs and hosting a giveaway as part of that
• Contributing to a group gift
• Participating in another author's party and adding my own giveaway
• Offering a gift related to the book on my own website
• Swag at conferences

In the end, I shell out the most to attend conferences. Going to those, interacting with readers and other writers, both feeds me and gives me a real-world sense of who is actually reading my books. Nothing is more wonderful than having someone dash up to me at a cocktail party and introduce themselves as the person who wrote that amazing, glowing review. It's a small sample, but I love having that moment.

Promotional Mojo

I would LOVE to tell you stories about the lovely, amazing serendipitous promotional things that have happened to me - save I'm not entirely sure I promoted much of anything except that I got to flail around doing my 'FANGIRL' dance. See. Just before my first book came out, one of my favorite authors in the world, Nalini Singh, asked me to guest blog for her. After I'd stared at her name in my in-box and tried not to pass out, I jumped at the chance. She and her readers both were so gracious and kind to me. I'd really like to be in a position to return the favor some day. In case the Gods are listening.

I've done blog tours since, but maybe it is the curse of the pathetically geeky and vaguely socially awkward. Being charming in blog posts (some people will say 'ever') is maybe not my strength. I'm also hampered by the fact that I find it dreadfully difficult to track any kind of meaningful result back to a blog tour. In my search for promotional mojo that doesn't annoy an entire Twitterverse full of people, I've had a marketing folks tell me that material THINGS were the only way to go from a promotional standpoint. I've had other people laugh and say, "Oh, honey. Don't waste your time or money on things! It's all about (insert social media shtick du jour)." I've been told to be my geek-tastic self. I've been told to forget that in favor of building a platform based on things I don't do particularly well - interacting with people like the whole of the internet might not be looking on, judging me while I'm talking without the safety-net of a script. (Yes, some of us became actors because we're desperate to be told the right things to say when. We're super invested in always knowing our lines.)

I have had two things happen that I didn't consider promotions at the time, but which both brought Twitter followers out of the woodwork: Anthologies. The first was Tales from the SFR Brigade. The second was Thunder on the Battlefield: Sword. Note that I can't say I saw any boost to book sales from either. The only bumps I noticed were to the number of people willing to hang with me on Twitter, but you know? I'll take it because I've since gotten to talk with a few of those people and discovered they're geeks, too. My tribe. 

So maybe the advice that your best promotional tool is your next book really has some merit. Which means I should get back to that.

Promo Pushes - The Good, The Bad and The Serendipitous

by @JeffeKennedy

Because I ended up with an extra guest post on tracking sales, I gave up my regular Sunday spot to that. And, to save KAK another post on how she's not at the point of dealing with this week's topic - Our Best Planned & Best Serendipitous Promo Pushes - I offered to take her Tuesday post.

The thing about promo pushes is that most writers hate doing it. Worse, I think the marketers or the ones who do love that kind of thing make us feel worse about hating it. They remind me of my extrovert friends who simply can't understand how I can stay home - or sit by a lonely lake, as above - when there's a party to be had. More than that, they *worry* about me, that I'm somehow secretly unhappy and messed up that I don't want what they do.

OF COURSE I should want to sell books! What the hell is wrong with me??

The thing is, most writers want to write books and hope the selling will take care of itself. I just got off the phone with an amazing writer I feel lucky to count as a friend, talking her out of her tree about hating promo. No matter how we try to distance ourselves and treat our books as products, marketing our books continues to feel like dancing naked for the crowd, hoping they'll love you. Hell, I had to jump on James in the comments yesterday, to point out that he's doing more promo than he thinks he is.

Not many of us are good at this.

Thus, the serendipitous promo success - the one you didn't sweat and bleed for - is like manna from heaven. Having a planned promo push actually work in an identifiable way is the second best.

The best planned promo event I've done was a Facebook party and quiz that I did with my much more famous friend Darynda Jones. It took all bleeding day, was a ton of work, but we had fun - very important - and, thanks to her copious and enthusiastic fans, it garnered a lot of attention for me and my books. It worked way better than I hoped. And I have been unable to replicate it.

As for serendipitous promo, I'd have to pick those glorious occasions when a reader gloms onto my book and shouts their love to everyone in hearing distance. These come out of the blue and feel equally miraculous. They are also, I suspect, far more effective than anything else.This can't be planned or extorted - never mind that many authors try to - and that's part of why it works better than anything. It's sincere, real and true - and everyone who hears the message knows that.

All we can do is give our best and be grateful when serendipity bestows her blessings.

What I Should Be Doing

Ever had one of those weeks where you totally effed up the days of said week? A weekly gig that ALWAYS goes down on Wednesdays got rescheduled this week for Friday. Ergo, in what passes as an excuse for my brain, because I'm going to the Wed gig today - it cannot possibly be Friday. Then the caffeine hit fifteen minutes before I have to rush out the door for said gig. So I apologize in advance for the following fifteen minutes of stream of consciousness. Welcome to the inside of my head. It's a messy, disorganized place.

Promo. Dear Gods, promo.

What I'm doing:
Signings
Bookmarks
Cover cards
Guest Blogs
Cons
Facebook
Twitter - a tiny little bit. I seem to be awkward in the shorter venue

What I'm not doing:
Most notably, I'm not tracking actual sales back to any of those efforts.

Here's the deal. In marketing for every other industry on the planet, you expect to see some return on investment. The rub is that authors have to measure the worth of our time - do we serve readers better by planting our butts in our chairs and pounding out a new book? Or do we serve readers better by attempting (and in my case, failing) to be amusing on Twitter? Where's that balance?

When I worked for a large software company that shall remain nameless, they'd send out a mailer to registered customers about a new product. A 1% response rate (people calling our phone line to order) was a great response. Marketing swooned when 3-4% of people called. So did we, cause it meant our phone lines were swamped. But with the current state of traditional publishing's sales reporting, there is no way to assign cause and effect to any promotion an author pursues. Amazon is MUCH better about that, and I suspect a watchful author could indeed track sales back to a specific promotional effort and thereby tailor his or her efforts to reach and please more readers in that fashion.

Reaching readers is the point. Establishing relationship. Learning what resonates with the people reading what you write and providing some method for readers to feel a part of the larger world of characters and stories. All of that said, my very favorite interaction with readers is in person. I have met and become friends with some of the most amazing people from all over the world by going to conferences and conventions. I've made friends all over the world via email, Facebook and Twitter - but always, always, I love getting to meet and see these people without the veil of technology between us. And you know? The single question I hear readers ask the writers they meet?

"When's the next book coming out?"

Having a date (and, if you're lucky, a cover flat) to give in answer - is that the best possible promo and way to serve readers? If so, pardon me. I'm going to grab the Alphasmart and type during the down times in today's proceedings.

Finding In-Person Ways to Interact with Readers

I do most of my promo online.

Cause that's how I roll. I live out in the country, remote from my neighbors. I work from home for both the day job and for the writing. I love my online community - both for the interconnectedness that it provides, that I wouldn't otherwise have, and for the ability it affords me to walk away when I'm tired of it.

For an introvert - even a reasonably social one like me - this is a great thing.

This weekend, though, I'm reminded of the larger world of in-person interaction. My guy is graduating from acupuncture college today and my stepdaughter and grandkids (above) have been here since Friday. Lots of other family arrived yesterday. We're in a social whirlwind.

So, I'm sitting here thinking about this week's theme of "Promotion Resolutions: What I Don't Do Now that I Should Be Doing." And, though I go to conferences, I'm realizing I don't do as much in person as I could.

Now, I'm a big fan of doing exactly the kind of promo you like to do - or it comes off wrong. If someone tells me they hate Twitter, then I say, fine, don't do it. The only thing worse than not doing Twitter is doing it badly. Twitter works for me. Facebook less so, but I definitely like my profile page better than my author page - and I'm sure it shows. I do Goodreads, in a low-key way, and I blog - here and on the personal site (http://jeffekennedy.com/category/blog/).

It's difficult, with primarily digital books, to set up real life events. Bookstores want to to sell books. They can't really sell eBooks. So the whole thing piffles right there. But, back when I had a physical book to sell, the bookstore signings were never terribly well-attended.

On the other hand, the numbers show that the sci fi/fantasy crowd are slow to adopt eBooks, so meeting with them physically is likely the way to go.

So, that's my resolution - finding new and different ways to interact in person with readers. More than just conferences, different than the staid book signings of the past.

All ideas welcome!

Swag the Dog

by Allison Pang

Unlike some of my fellow word-whores, I'm not at RWA this year...but that doesn't mean I don't have some cons coming up.

And cons mean swag - both the giving and the getting.

 Books. Pens. Stickers. Trading Cards. Rubber boobies. Handcuffs. Condoms. You name it, I've probably seen it given away either on author tables or goody bags or publisher parties.

At a convention, you've only got a few seconds of time to try to catch a reader's eye  - and you're competing with everyone else's chip clips, magnets, candy and bookplates.

You get the picture.

So I guess the real question is, does swag do anything for making books more visible to the readers? 

And the answer is? I don't know. Most of us try to balance our swag between what we can afford vs what will reach the most number of people. I like bookmarks and flat things, simply because they're easy to send in an envelope, but the truth of it is that there's probably no correlation between what I spend on swag and magazine ads and my book sales. It's already a given that I'll most likely never make that money back in sales.

Add that to the fact that some conventions are actually banning the use of paper swag and the picture starts to get a bit more convoluted. (My understanding is that a lot of the paper stuff gets thrown away - convention peeps are tired of  dealing with tables of left overs - so they only want "high quality" swag these days.)

But to be honest - I've never bought a book off of swag. Ever.

Most of what I get a con is dumped in the trash or given to my kids, never to be seen again. (Unless it's something really clever.)

So for my own swag items, I tend to stick with fewer types, but hopefully higher quality stuff - my trading cards, for example. They're all hand-drawn by Darchala (who does nearly all my website graphics. And additional artwork --> the snowflake design is going to be this year's Xmas cards, for example)

The downside to this is that it costs me a *lot* more than just printing costs. I can easily drop about $200 for a good piece of artwork alone (and part of that is for the rights to print it up). But it's worth it to me, because  I adore Dar's art.

On the other hand? I don't just leave my trading cards in piles on tables at cons, either. They are exclusively given away during my signings, from me personally, or if people want, they can send me a SASE.

This is partially because it's really too expensive for me to just waste them by tossing them on a table (street teams are an exception here - I do have a few people that I send swag to and they are awesome and hand it out or put it on shelves at the local bookstores.). But it's also because things have value when we treat them as *having* value. I'm not saying my trading cards are collectibles, per se...but by making them a little harder to get, hopefully readers will weigh their value a little more. If I can get readers to fall in love with the characters in this fashion, maybe that translates into book sales.

I realize I'm probably doing the swag thing wrong. After all, the idea is to get your books noticed and out there, and I seem to be doing the opposite of that. (Though I certainly hand out bookmarks as much as I can.)

But honestly? I just like illustrative art -  so I make swag based off of it.

GETTING THE WORD TO BE HEARD

I am a fairly new author. My first novel hit the shelves back in February and book two will come out in 2 short weeks. I also have a few short stories and two novellas that have already hit. Even with that I don't have a huge body of work to draw readers in.

So when I have a new book about to be dropped into the world I still have that need to get the word out. I need people to know that the newest James R. Tuck story is available and they need to buy it.

I have found that the best thing for this is a two-pronged attack.

One- Book Bloggers.
Now I LOVE book bloggers. I read book blogs. I am a bibliophile. (James, how many books have you bought in the last 48 hours? Ummmmm, 8) So when you give me a blog written by someone who loves books too then I am hooked like a mackerel and will spend a ton of time enjoying their opinions. That's as a reader.
As a writer I also see how important book bloggers are for my career. They are the CNN and FOX News of the publishing world. They get the word to the people. I mean really, if you are a reader and not an author do you read Kirkus or Publishers Weekly or any of the other publications that the industry cares about? Normally, no you don't. But I bet you have a favorite book blog you check out. Even if it's a weird, conglomerate blog like Goodreads it's still a book blog. That's because, like Jeffe said yesterday, we are all interconnected and we are all hand selling books now. We like to hear about new books from someone who loves books, not from a cold dispassionate news source. We want that person who is telling us about a new author, a new series, a new book to be trustworthy because of their love for stories.
This is why I will work my ass off for a book blog. If a book blog asks me for an interview, a guest review, a guest post I will kill myself on an overdose of caffeine to make it happen. I appreciate what they do, almost always without pay and never enough thanks from the publishing "industry".

Two- Conventions
Being a guest at conventions is one of the major highlights to being a published author. It's a lot of work, but it is a lot of FUN work. I love it. I am a social person, not shy, and really, really enjoy being around other authors and most of all, fans of books. Conventions are where I get to meet and mingle with the folks I write for. And the people I write for, they love books just like I do, so it's not a blah-blah lovefest for my writing, it's a group of like minded, interesting people in a group dynamic that is energizing as hell.
People love to meet authors, especially if they are real. I have sold a ton of books just by being on panels and doing my damnedest to entertain the folks there. I also know that at a convention I am there for the readers. I am always willing to talk about anything they want, not just my books.

So those are the ways I get the word out about my books. They are the two most effective ways I have found and, coincidentally, the two avenues I enjoy working the most.

Keep checking back all week though, I can't wait to see what killer advice comes out on this topic from my awesome co-bloggers here!