What Authors Say About Marketing
While writing an early draft of my book,Book Marketing Fundamentals, I contacted a dozen other authors I know and asked them if they would answer a few questions about how they market their books. Most of them agreed and replied to my questions. (I answered the questions also). Their answers are amazing in their diversity. No two of the replies were close to being similar.
Here are the questions:
1: What is your favorite or most successful marketing tactic?
2: What is your least favorite or least successful marketing tactic?
3: If you could recommend one marketing tactic for newbie book marketers, what would it be?
Below are the answers to Question 1: What is your favorite or most successful marketing tactic?
I can’t reduce it to one. I have three or four.
A. Developing an eye-catching cover.
B. Writing a good book description.
C. Using Amazon Marketing Services. I’m an Amazon exclusive writer, and I like AMS because it’s point-of-sale marketing. People who click on Amazon ads are looking for a book to buy.
Conceptually, I also like search engine optimization (SEO), where you use the right combination of words in your book description, title, keywords and categories to rank high in an Amazon search. It’s hard to do, and doesn’t always work, but discoverability on Amazon is key to selling.
My favorite and I feel most-successful marketing tactic is the Goodreads Giveaway. I do the $119 one.
Connecting personally with readers and potential readers (my favorite and most successful).
Difficult. I spent a year as a sales rep, many years ago, and the experience left me with a deep distrust of all sales talk and techniques. I learned how much cheating, lying and exaggeration goes on in the field. As someone who’s always loved honesty and truth, I now find it hard to associate myself with marketing and promotion. However, I want people to read my work, so I take the route of least activity: I list my work on my website, do very occasional tweets and Facebook posts relating quotes from reviews of my books, and have attended the launches of my books, which have usually been at an annual convention run by my publisher. Whilst there, I also work on the book stall to sell other books published by my publisher.
A mix of tactics is crucial — personal appearances, a home state media tour, and online outreach. I n all cases the goal is to get people talking about your book. Word-of-mouth recommendations are the only thing that sells books.
I am genuinely very poor at marketing. However, a few things do work for me in a small way. Every person we meet for the first time, is part of at least one large network of people that does not include us. Sometimes, it can pay to give away a book for free in these circumstances. For example, when my publisher sent me a dozen copies of the Polish translation of one of my books, I made a point of sending one to a colleague in an office in Poland. He may never have read it himself, but soon everybody in that building knew I was a writer with books available in their language.
Similarly, my email signature always contains a reference to my books, so that even a note sent to my bank will work for me as a form of advertising
I’ve found third party newsletters to be useful, relatively inexpensive, and effective.
One of our favorites is marketing to libraries. They have several distinct advantages — libraries don’t return books, they have to replace books as they are worn out which leads to more sales, they introduce readers to new authors, and they are great places for authors to hold events or make appearances.
I don’t know that I can qualify this as my favorite, as it’s also the one that terrifies me the most, but in-person events can be incredibly useful in moving books, especially when you don’t have the type of high-profile book that’s landing on best-of lists or getting reviewed in the biggest publications.
And I don’t mean straight single-author readings. First-time, low-profile authors are going to have a tough time getting people to show up for an event like this if people don’t already know you and/or your work. Think about how you can provide added value to attendees. Show up in conversation with another, higher-profile author or industry professional. Teach a workshop at a literary festival. Give a session at a conference. End up as the main speaker at an event that is somehow connected to the topic of your book. Or maybe even participate in an already-established reading series, where multiple authors are reading. Things like these have built-in audiences.
Much to my surprise, I’ve found that if I can get myself in front of a group of people, I can then win them over with my writing or with my knowledge base or with my boundless charm and then they end up clamoring to buy my book.
My favorite tactic is getting reviews. Another favorite is to sell books at events such as library lectures. The lecture topic may be non-fiction but folks tend to buy the fiction books along with the non-fiction books.
For my budget and time, podcast interviews. Being a guest can be free if you trade your time for finding shows. Or pay someone else/find a service that connects hosts, shows and guests.
It’s as easy as having a conversation with someone who is asking questions about something you already know you, your story and your book. there’s not a lot of prep work involved. Make sure you have the right soft-ware, quiet space to record, your time zones right and you know how to log in to the show. There’s nothing more nerve racking, for you and the host, than to be late.
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Future posts will contain the answers to other questions.
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This material was taken from my Book Marketing Fundamentals. It’s available on Amazon and other book sellers’ web sites.
Visit Hank’s website and his Writers & Authors Resource Center
