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.

The Beast that is Promotion

Promotion is a challenging thing for a writer to get right.  You want to get word that your book is out there (or in my case, that it's available for pre-order), but you don't want to be that person who's just "BUY MY BOOK!"  Because that person is obnoxious.

Seriously, that person isn't just hypothetical.  There are people out there like that, and they are obnoxious.  I once knew someone whose twitter feed would auto-tweet one of ten different "BUY MY BOOK HERE'S THE LINK" messages every few hours, like clockwork.

I never bought that book.

But you have to do something, of course, else no one knows the book is out there.  The trick is getting the word out there without annoying the people you want to be enticing.  Of course, the best way to do that is for someone else to be the one talking about your book.  That way it's not you doing obnoxious self-promotion.  It's someone who's genuinely excited about your work and wants to talk about it!

And sometimes you get blessed with a bit of serendipity.  In my case, it tied to Book Country.  See, I was one of the initial beta-testers of the writing-critiquing community, which was designed and owned by Penguin.  Thorn of Dentonhill was one of the first books available on the site for critique-- at least, its first few chapters.  So when Thorn was bought by DAW-- part of the Penguin group-- the folks at Book Country were eager to talk it up. 

Of course, I'll still be talking it up plenty in the months to come.  Have no doubt about that. 

All right, off to the word mines.  See you all down there.

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.