Promotion Is A Necessary Evil

In today's publishing world, promotion is more important than ever. There are two major reasons for this one. First, the market is beyond flooded with authors, and unfortunately, it is flooded by a lot of "wanna be" authors who have just dumped their books out there to "be published." The result of this is the simple fact that finding your book online, among all of the other authors is really difficult. To add to this, with the lack of bookstores out there, authors are simply not going to be "discovered" like they did in the past.

The second reason is that the current reader out there is pretty darn lazy. Unless it shows up when they log into Amazon or a similar site and are told, "Others who bought this book also bought" they will not go out in search of the new projects. This is also seen when you see what people are reading. If Oprah posted the book on her list, everyone went out and read it. In other words, unless you are a major seller, the readers will not find you.

So, it is up to you to find ways to get your book and your name out there.

Let me say first, you need to expect that your writing time will be cut into with this promotion work. This is not something you can just slap together and hope for the best. It does take time.

Let me also say there is no one perfect way to get the word out about your book. Some will say social media, some will say book talks, some will say signings. Guess what? These are all correct approaches.

One of the biggest ways is to simply tell everyone you know that you are a writer and to pay attention for your next book. It is amazing how that simple word of mouth thing works. Let me give you a great example of this one.

Just this last week, I was featured as an agent looking for women's fiction. My inbox was immediately flooded with new projects. One carefully placed mention and BAM! We have promotion. Of course, on a side note, many of these projects are for things other than women's fiction, or for that matter, anything I represent, but we still have promotion.

The point is, promotion is being proactive on your part as an author. You cannot expect readers to come running to you. It is up to you to make them aware of you!

Now get out there and start promoting!

On Promotion - From a question here on the blog

I ran a quick internet search of some definitions and came up with this on in terms of the idea of promotion:

One Definition of Promotion

Promotion keeps the product in the minds of the customer and helps stimulate demand for the product. Promotion involves ongoing advertising and publicity (mention in the press). The ongoing activities of advertising, sales and public relations are often considered aspects of promotions. (Source of Information)

I wasn't going to go for a clinical definition of the concept, but simply something basic. I do think there is a lot to be said with this defintion.

As it points out, the central idea is to keep the product in the minds of the customer. I think the biggest issue many new writers face is that readers will simply stumble across their writing. They slap a website up there, the information shows up on those online bookstores such as Barnes and Noble or Amazon and the readers will just find them. Sure, that does happen every now and then, but with the huge influx of the self-publishing opportunities out there, this becomes an even bigger challenge.

I think Leah Hultenshmidt of Source Books said it well at a conference I attended with her. She noted that marketing was really trying to bring your book through all of the muck out there. You have to claw your way to the top.

Now, when it comes to ways to promote, there really is not one single way to do so. I should also note that promotion of your book also depends on the genre. In other words, if you are pitching a non-fiction book, you will take the story one place, and if it is a historical story, it will go somewhere else.

With that said, there are a lot of small things you as an author can do.

• guest blogging
• personal blogging
• speaking at conferences
• teaching workshops
• give-a-ways
• personal websites with give-a-ways
• talking and chatting to EVERYONE
• book signings

What you should note is that you have to be the person who is proactive. When you go to a conference, you talk your book up. No one walks away from a conversation with you without hearing about your latest book. Everytime you have a book come out, you get out there and volunteer to guest blog on any place that will take you.

Give-a-ways are fantastic but the prizes have to be worth it. A signed copy of an unknown author will simply not cut it. People WANT prizes.

When it comes time for contests, you make sure to volunteer to help out and provide feedback. Do not remain anonymous and make sure you let people know who you are.

What you will often find (and any of you published authors can chime in here) is that you will devote a great deal of your "once private" writing time to promotion.

It should be important top note, however, that promotion is not an over-night activity. It takes a long time to build a following and yes, you have to have something worthwhile to share. If your writing isn't good, then all the promotion in the world will not save you.

I would love some additional ideas here. Tell us some of your secrets when it comes to promotion.

Scott

Marketing Your Books - Who Listens

Yesterday as I was trying to get work done and, like usual, spent more time following Twitter conversations, it suddenly hit me as to how many people were highlighting upcoming book releases. As I watched book trailers and read reviews from all of these critique sites (I'm not talking the NYT List here), I started to wonder. Who pays attention to these?

In fact, the last time I went to the book store, I didn't see anyone walking around with their copies of Romantic Times and picking books based on the reviews.

Maybe it is a lack of coffee this morning but I wanted to toss this out to all of you. Other than writers, editors and agents, how many of the regular, everyday readers pay attention to reviews and book trailers? How many of those regular, everyday readers pay attention to the book markers, or for that matter, any of those small tokens we use for book promotion, that we leave at the book store? Do these items REALLY get them to buy those books?

Off to the stables this morning then back to work.

Scott