Marketing Requires Thinking Outside Of The Box

I want to start with two observations:

1. Authors are always complaining about a lack of sales and all the marketing they are doing does not seem to be effective.
2. Authors are always marketing in closed systems

These two are very much interrelated. Over the last week, I have seen a lot of authors really trying to promote their books. This IS a good thing and I certainly commend them for the efforts. But here is the thing. I only knew of these authors promoting their books because I was "following" these authors. I was already aware of these authors through social media. And that is the bind. They are simply promoting in a closed system.

Let me explain it another way. One group I follow on social media is the Harlequin Historical authors. These authors are incredible with their promotions, the blog posts, their chats and so forth. Literally, everyday, I see something about their latest book, or specials or something. But why do I hear about these people. Because I found out about their loop from one of my authors who stumbled upon it. So, who are they promoting their books to? People who were already in the know.

The same goes for promotions on Twitter or Instagram (and I am sure their are others as well). I would only know about your latest book or giveaway IF I was following you and knew about you.

Now, I know what many of you are saying...well we could but their are no bookstores anymore and right now, with the Covid-19 thing, even if we had a bookstore, how would we get that promotion out there. I would say three things here. Bookstores have been on the decline since 2008 so this is nothing new. Secondly, were people even going into those remaining bookstores and how do we know they stumbled across your book? Finally, yes the Covid-19 thing is stopping people from going into bookstores, but again, how many people would be going into those bookstores and how do we know they stumbled across your book?

So, we can talk about getting reviews for your books and getting the word out that way. OK, that sounds great, but in reality, how many people follow those random book reviewers. There are thousands out there and AGAIN, unless you know about these people and follow their individual blogs, you would not know. Those that do, probably already knew about your book release.

This becomes a huge issues for new authors who have no following, or those of you who have tried to be self-published and just toss those books out there on Amazon. 

I am not going to sit here and tell you of magic cures for that great promotion. Why? Because I do not think there is a single way of doing things. But, to become recognized, you have to be creative. You have to think outside of the box. Doing what you have always done is not going to get you anything new. For example (and by the way, I do not know what the success was here), I remember leaving my daughter's college in upstate New York and heading back to the airport. I passed a farmers market, it was huge! But what caught my eye was one stand, among the fruits and vegetables, of an author with a huge sign that said Romance Author - Book Signing. The author found a crowd and thought outside of the box. 

Your challenge this week is to do just that. What new ways can you get your name out there?