Promotion and Marketing tips.

[*DrDln* (dr.s.dhillon)]

There are many authors who are selling over 1000 books a month.  It will be good idea if they include promotion and marketing tips.  Everyone sharing their marketing tips will help each and everyone. 

Since we are not competing;  our titles are different and there are enough ebook buyers out there.  Wish everyone the very best.

[Jennifer Talty]

I would love to hear what other authors are doing out there. So far, at Who Dares Wins Publishing we have found some success with using our blog as our "hub". We direct a lot of traffic via Twitter and Facebook. Bob Mayer posts a lot of the Craft of Writing, his 20+ years experience in publishing, what he's learned, how he's changed and how he's applying all this to the changes in publishing and distribution. We're currently trying to expand out "marketing and promotion" to other areas. It really is an exciting time to be an author.

[Katie Salidas]

I just recently wrote a blog post on this very subject.

Self-Publishing & Marketing Advice - What I've learned this past year.

It's easy to get overwhelmed. Social Network marketing can become almost a full time job with all of the sites out there you'd need to hit to reach the widest audience.

[*DrDln* (dr.s.dhillon)]

I just recently wrote a blog post on this very subject.
Self-Publishing & Marketing Advice - What I've learned this past year.
It's easy to get overwhelmed. Social Network marketing can become almost a full time job with all of the sites out there you'd need to hit to reach the widest audience.

Thanks Katie. I am a member of almost every social network.  But have no clue of how to use for promotion and marketing. May be I do mention about my books and give occasional link.  But I don't think it is enough.

May be the only way is to observe others and try to learn from them.

It will be nice if high roller authors give links and actually show what they do, for example, with facebook and so on...

[hhheerup]

Marketing has always (and still is) a great mystery to me, so I tend to search out up-to-date information on the web. One of my favorite sources is a blog called A Newbies Guide To Publishing.

[rsullivan9597]

The problem is marketing is too broad and complicated to handle in the "short form" of a forum post or even a blog.  I'll probably do a WritePublish post on this at some point but I need "more space" to give any of it justice.

[Nathan Lowell]

The problem is marketing is too broad and complicated to handle in the "short form" of a forum post or even a blog.  I'll probably do a WritePublish post on this at some point but I need "more space" to give any of it justice.

Not too surprisingly, I agree with this.

Here's a first cut at my high level thinking, for whatever it's worth to you. I realize this is less about "tips" and more about foundations and apologize in advance for what might be an overly pedantic tone.

I have an undergrad degree in business admin with a minor in marketing and, according to what I know from school, much of what I do isn't classic "marketing." The problem is that much of what we "know" about marketing is based on a broadcast model. The typical sales strategy is to get the product in front of as many people as possible and trust that over time you'll work through the stages of adoption -- awareness, persuasion, decision, implementation, confirmation -- with enough of them to get your product sold enough times to make a profit.

This isn't actually marketing either. Marketing is the process of determining which markets a company should participate in, what products or services the company should sell in those markets, and evaluating how well the company participates in those markets. My marketing profs used to get really upset if we weren't clear on that distinction, but that was twenty years ago and things have changed. Now, it seems like the combination of those two activities is combined into "marketing and sales."

For me, these ideas play out in the "traditional or indie" decision. The marketing question is "Which of these two markets should I participate in? Either? Both? Neither?"

I chose Indie after a careful evaluation of my own strengths, weaknesses, and goals. I am watching the traditional market to see if the conditions might change enough, or if some component of the traditional might become appealing, that I might want to enter that market.

The decision to participate is actually deeper and more detailed than that. Deciding to be an author, picking my genre, and deciding on format are all precursors. In truth, my first participation was neither indie nor traditional, but rather podcasting for donations. My goal was to write stories and tell them to people for fun and profit. I knew that the donation model was not a very rich one in terms of potential cash flow, but the desire to write was strong enough to make that reduced expectation viable. It simply meant that I needed to pay attention to cash outlays and try to make sure that what I paid out was offset by revenues.

Having made the decision -- write (activity) science fiction (product) and podcast it (market) -- the operational decisions of how and when to produce the works fall out of the marketing equation but deciding where and how to position my work in the market is the thrust. I needed to decide whether to distribute on my own, in a catalog, both, or neither. For a variety of reasons I chose Podiobooks.com (a catalog) because it was free, provided a ready audience, and handled distribution (bandwidth requirements).

All these things went into laying the foundation for my marketing. For many of you, you've skipped the interim step of podcasting and gone directly to the print -- or more accurately, text -- market. It's a perfectly valid decision and one I considered - and rejected - back in 2007 when I started.

Since we're talking about the text market here, I'll skip over the details of what I did to build my audience for the podcast, but the strategic thinking is key to whatever modest successes I've had here in the text market.

Going back to the adoption process, the goal is to convince a customer to buy your product and, ideally, recommend it to others. By going with the Podiobooks catalog, I entered into an existing pool of awareness. The people there were already aware of the technology and were looking for products like mine -- podcast fiction that they could get for free. The persuasion step in that market is very easy in that the product is free, the barrier to adoption is low (they already know how to get the product delivered to them), and the recommendation process (the top ten charts) is clear and straightforward. The whole front end process of awareness, persuasion, decision, and implementation is compressed. Getting known by the people who like science fiction in the podiobooks community became my only goal because once they knew, getting them to implement (download and listen) was almost automatic.

Note: I'm glossing over the "sampling" process whereby the audience could listen to the first chapter on a web-based player before deciding. Operationally, that meant I needed to have an additional skill set beyond writing a good story. I also needed to be able to tell it well so that the listening experience did not push the decision to "no." This is what we do when we format and layout our books. There's also the reality that producing a podcast novel is a grueling process of reading your book aloud, recording it, editing it into shape, creating the podcast shell to go around it, and rendering it with the proper and appropriate meta-data. The production is akin to what we do for text distribution.

All this stuff is the *beginning* of my marketing process. I don't know if it's helpful to make explicit the thinking that went into the process or not, but I believe these are the processes that have allowed me to gain whatever success I have here some four years after I first sat down to write. So far, none of what I've written so far strays from classical marketing practice and theory. Where it goes next - into the social media space - is where I break with classical promotion and sales.

I'll continue this if anybody's interested but right now it's 2am at my house and I need to see if I can sleep a little.

[NickSpalding]

Marketing – in and of itself – is actually a piece of cake to understand and goes like this:

Sell more of your product than the competition does.

Easy, eh?

People can blather on about B2B, B2C, median reports and re-sales potentials all they like, but it’s all marketing hogwash when you get right down to it.

The problem with marketing is that it’s essentially bulls***ing for a living. Nothing more, nothing less. And the problem with that is the bulls*** can end up pervading every aspect of the industry – including any training or advice you might get about it. The trick is to dodge all the flowery terminology that marketers come out with to make their jobs sound more impressive and concentrate on the meat and potatoes, rather than the gravy.

As for effective ebook marketing:

First of all, you’re talking about marketing intellectual property which is a whole different kettle of badgers from selling a ‘product’ like washing powder or ketchup. Marketers love statistics (anyone in Britain knows the marketing phrase ‘eight out of ten cats prefer it’ used to flog cat food back in the 80s) and will use them gleefully when trying to persuade you their ketchup is at least TWENTY TIMES BETTER TASTING! than the nearest rival. Can’t do that with book though, eh? Coz of that horrible word subjectivity.

Your best marketing tool as an indie author is by far and away word of mouth – so write a very, very good book that’s better than everybody else’s and you’re laughing. Easy, peasy.

Cr*p doesn’t sell. Neither does the decidedly average (at least not for long). If you’re average you might score a couple of thousand sales before people get wise and your book dribbles back off into obscurity. If you write professional quality books with great, original stories, and accurate grammar & spelling you won’t need to spend hours on Twitter or Facebook as the word of mouth will do the job for you.

Just have patience with it. There’s a lot of cr*p out there that people have to sift through and it might take a while for the ball to start rolling – but once it does all that cr*p will actually help you as you’ll stand out like a shining beacon of all that is good and decent in the universe… and sell lots of books.

Oh… and if you really want to get into the mindset of a marketer and do it properly, then you’d better start believing that you’re in competition with other writers, because you most definitely ARE. Especially the ones in your genre. There’s only a finite amount of readers with a finite amount of time and money out there and if you want them to be reading your book and not the next romantic paranormal comedy along, you have to treat your marketing like a business and your book like a product.

[Nathan Lowell]

Marketing – in and of itself – is actually a piece of cake to understand and goes like this:

Sell more of your product than the competition does.

I'd agree with this in a zero sum game. If there are only a finite number of sales possible and the number is less than the combined capacity of the suppliers operating in the marketplace, sure. In an expanding market (like ebooks), where demand is growing faster than the capacity of the suppliers to provide, I don't know that I agree.

What you need to do is sell enough of your product to cover your costs and provide a profit. Realistically costs need to include the costs of expansion so that you can gain a larger piece of the pie.

Easy, eh?

People can blather on about B2B, B2C, median reports and re-sales potentials all they like, but it’s all marketing hogwash when you get right down to it.

The problem with marketing is that it’s essentially bulls***ing for a living. Nothing more, nothing less. And the problem with that is the bulls*** can end up pervading every aspect of the industry – including any training or advice you might get about it. The trick is to dodge all the flowery terminology that marketers come out with to make their jobs sound more impressive and concentrate on the meat and potatoes, rather than the gravy.

I'd agree with your assessment of what passes for marketing these days, but I would argue that most of the people who play buzzword bingo aren't doing anybody any favors and also aren't doing marketing. I think that's what you're saying, too.

As for effective ebook marketing:

First of all, you’re talking about marketing intellectual property which is a whole different kettle of badgers from selling a ‘product’ like washing powder or ketchup. Marketers love statistics (anyone in Britain knows the marketing phrase ‘eight out of ten cats prefer it’ used to flog cat food back in the 80s) and will use them gleefully when trying to persuade you their ketchup is at least TWENTY TIMES BETTER TASTING! than the nearest rival. Can’t do that with book though, eh? Coz of that horrible word subjectivity.

Your best marketing tool as an indie author is by far and away word of mouth – so write a very, very good book that’s better than everybody else’s and you’re laughing. Easy, peasy.

Cr*p doesn’t sell. Neither does the decidedly average (at least not for long). If you’re average you might score a couple of thousand sales before people get wise and your book dribbles back off into obscurity. If you write professional quality books with great, original stories, and accurate grammar & spelling you won’t need to spend hours on Twitter or Facebook as the word of mouth will do the job for you.

Just have patience with it. There’s a lot of cr*p out there that people have to sift through and it might take a while for the ball to start rolling – but once it does all that cr*p will actually help you as you’ll stand out like a shining beacon of all that is good and decent in the universe… and sell lots of books.

Oh… and if you really want to get into the mindset of a marketer and do it properly, then you’d better start believing that you’re in competition with other writers, because you most definitely ARE. Especially the ones in your genre. There’s only a finite amount of readers with a finite amount of time and money out there and if you want them to be reading your book and not the next romantic paranormal comedy along, you have to treat your marketing like a business and your book like a product.

I agree with most of this. A book isn't catfood, although many of the same principles apply. Word-of-mouth is the gold standard for promotion and word-of-mouth from people with high levels of authority and influence is best of all. Patience is also required.

I'm not sure I agree with the competition statement for the reasons I gave earlier. At any given point in time, you're right, the number of readers is finite. We can argue over whether or not the number of suppliers can actually cover that need (You apparently think "yes." I think "no."), but the reality is that the number of readers today is a subset of the number of readers there will be tomorrow and the next day and the next.

The nature of this indie-driven, ebook market is that there are millions of readers and that number grows every day. In actual practice an author in Mainstream Land is lucky to move more than 10,000 units in a lifetime of sales for a single book. I'll be generous and say 15,000. Subdivide the pool of - say 10million readers -- by genre. It's still a big number. How much of that do you need to survive and expand? 12,000 sales a year per title is doable. Your pricing decisions will have a significant bearing on sustainability and profitability there. The key is in constantly providing new content. 

Going back to your earlier point about books not being cat food, I think that's a critical piece to keep in mind. Taking your 'sell more than the competition' idea to the logical (if extreme) conclusion, your goal is to sell every book to every reader in the market. In catfood, this is a reasonable goal - even if the probability of it happening is slim. It's because cat food is a commodity and interchangeable. When applied to books, it's not viable because books are not interchangeable. People who like David Weber's books may or may not like mine. We're both in the same genre, both writing to the same pool. The comparison becomes even more straightforward if I bring in Lee and Miller whose work is even more similar to mine than Weber's. The idea that I need to sell more than them in order to be successful is not a compelling argument to me. No one of us has enough books to satisfy even one reader unless that reader is VERY slow and only reads a few books a year.

While I agree there's a certain amount of competition for attention -- the initial hurdle in marketing is "awareness" after all -- as you pointed out, word-of-mouth is an important avenue. I maintain that social media provides an unprecedented opportunity to harness word of mouth in order to sell enough books to be profitable and expand.

Marketing in this space is not like a ball game where the "winning" condition is "score the most points." I would suggest that "winning" is less about scoring all the points as much as it is about scoring enough points to stay in the game. As for me, I don't really want to sell all the books to every reader. I'd be very happy with a small but dedicated fan base of 100,000 readers who like my stuff enough to buy it when it becomes available. There is a condition here where "enough" points constitutes a "win."

[P.A. Woodburn]

Katie, I read and bookmarked your succinct and well written blog. Congratulations on the number of sales You have accomplished in such a short time.
Nathan, I would be interested in hearing more of your marketing advice.
Ann

[kcmay]

We've discussed marketing and promo a number of times. Here are some links that may help:

Some ideas I've been using: http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,37002.msg664330.html#msg664330

Ed Patterson made this list: http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,12647.msg245272.html#msg245272

Excellent Kindle primer:
http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,42600.0.html

My blog posts:
http://fantasyauthor.blogspot.com/2010/10/book-marketing-tip-1.html
http://fantasyauthor.blogspot.com/2010/11/book-marketing-tip-2.html

Preparing for a new book launch:
http://www.kindleboards.com/index.php/topic,33813.0.html

[NickSpalding]

I'm not sure I agree with the competition statement for the reasons I gave earlier. At any given point in time, you're right, the number of readers is finite.

While I agree there's a certain amount of competition for attention -- the initial hurdle in marketing is "awareness" after all -- as you pointed out, word-of-mouth is an important avenue. I maintain that social media provides an unprecedented opportunity to harness word of mouth in order to sell enough books to be profitable and expand.

Yep, point taken. I included that statement for those who really want to get into the nuts and bolts of marketing effectively to an audience and seeing a return. Marketing is a highly competitive industry and authors need to accept that if they want to shift decent volume and build a proper platform. If on the other hand, a writer just wants a smaller piece of the pie and writing is more of a hobby to them, then they certainly don't need to have this mentality.

You're right about social media. You'd be amazed (or maybe you wouldn't) at the amount of money that's been sent down the toilet by companies desperate to understand the social networking phenomenon and how they can maximise its sales potential. But, you can never falsify word of mouth, which makes it the purest and most effective form of promotion there is. Amanda Hocking hasn’t sold half a million books because she spent hours on Twitter, it’s because she wrote books good enough to get that positive word of mouth spreading throughout the reading community in a genre that was popular and well established.

[Nathan Lowell]

I just recently wrote a blog post on this very subject.

Self-Publishing & Marketing Advice - What I've learned this past year.

It's easy to get overwhelmed. Social Network marketing can become almost a full time job with all of the sites out there you'd need to hit to reach the widest audience.

This is a nice summary, Katie!

[Jennifer Talty]

Thanks Katie. I am a member of almost every social network.  But have no clue of how to use for promotion and marketing. May be I do mention about my books and give occasional link.  But I don't think it is enough.

May be the only way is to observe others and try to learn from them.

It will be nice if high roller authors give links and actually show what they do, for example, with facebook and so on...

Try a book titled We Are Not Alone The Writer's Guide to Social media by Kristen Lamb. She also blogs about social media. Tuesday she calls Twitter Tips Tuesday. Here is the link: http://warriorwriters.wordpress.com

I find twitter useful for finding information and driving traffic website and blog. My facebook page has started to get more activity, but I'm posting more, and not just writing stuff and links. Talking to other writers, getting involved, etc. With everything, consistency is key. I try to do a half hour in the morning, then half hour bursts in the afternoon and evening. When I'm writing or working on Who Dares Wins Publishing, I really have to shut down the internet or i'd never get anything done.

[Jennifer Talty]

The problem with marketing is that it’s essentially bulls***ing for a living. Nothing more, nothing less. And the problem with that is the bulls*** can end up pervading every aspect of the industry – including any training or advice you might get about it. The trick is to dodge all the flowery terminology that marketers come out with to make their jobs sound more impressive and concentrate on the meat and potatoes, rather than the gravy.

This made me smile. Whenever someone has to read my bio a loud and they get to his part I laugh "She received a BS Degree in Business with a Concentration in Marketing Sales."

It's very difficult to "market" fiction. There isn't an author out there that I know who isn't trying to figure this out. Some of us have been more successful than others, but as you pointed out in your post....word of mouth....

Here is where the Marketer in me gets excited. I'm no salesman and marketing and sales are very different beasts. I liken it to Marketing people open and Sales people Close.

The key is to create "word of mouth". Get your readers talking about your book and recommending it to the world. How do we do that? That is the million dollar question. This is where I think social media can really help the writer. I've talked before about using a blog as the hub of your authorship. I learned this from a marketing blog expert and it makes sense. As authors, in today's publishing climate, we have to promote. Balance between promo of your book and discussions with real people is a start, but it doesn't necessarily sell books.

I was at a conference where some authors were discussing unique ways they have promoted their books. One particular author had a series where the main character was a chief. She blogged about recipes in the book and came up with products like aprons. This won't work for everyone, and it's time consuming, but we all have to find what works for us and will create that word of mouth in our target audience.

[Jennifer Talty]

You're right about social media. You'd be amazed (or maybe you wouldn't) at the amount of money that's been sent down the toilet by companies desperate to understand the social networking phenomenon and how they can maximise its sales potential. But, you can never falsify word of mouth, which makes it the purest and most effective form of promotion there is. Amanda Hocking hasn’t sold half a million books because she spent hours on Twitter, it’s because she wrote books good enough to get that positive word of mouth spreading throughout the reading community in a genre that was popular and well established.

Social Media is a tool and it can be an effective tool in helping to create and build your author brand. I think some products and services are better suited for success on Social Media, but it doesn't work as a direct sales line when it comes to books. Twitter and facebook are great ways to exchange information, drive traffic to website, blog, etc., and make social/professional connections. It is one way to start building word of mouth.

[NickSpalding]

The key is to create "word of mouth". Get your readers talking about your book and recommending it to the world. How do we do that? That is the million dollar question.

Back the crux of the matter:

You have to write a very good book. Nothing else will provoke positive word of mouth. This is what every indie author should remember. It doesn't matter how much you promote your novel, if it's nothing special you're not going to do high numbers. And if you are promoting like a banshee for months and you haven't sold a lot of copies, maybe it's time to look at the quality of work you're putting out there.

Essentially there's no miracle formula, and there never will be. No marketing strategy will sell a product that isn't worth it. You HAVE to write a great book to sell in this industry.

[Nathan Lowell]

Back the crux of the matter:

You have to write a very good book. Nothing else will provoke positive word of mouth. This is what every indie author should remember. It doesn't matter how much you promote your novel, if it's nothing special you're not going to do high numbers. And if you are promoting like a banshee for months and you haven't sold a lot of copies, maybe it's time to look at the quality of work you're putting out there.

Essentially there's no miracle formula, and there never will be. No marketing strategy will sell a product that isn't worth it. You HAVE to write a great book to sell in this industry.

Yes! That.

[Nathan Lowell]

Here's a quickie:

Wanna know how your website measures up? Try WebsiteGrader and if you want a view of just your blog try BlogGrader

A lot of this search engine optimization advice is geared toward broadcast, old media marketing, but it can't really hurt.

[destill]

What drives me crazy (crazier? ) is that I never know which efforts produced my sales. How can I know sales resulted from a Facebook post? Or maybe a free article I wrote four years ago that someone just found and posted on his or her website? Or a forum post that a reader discovered and shared with her book club? Or a banner ad that coincided with one of these events? I can't be sure. So I do a little of this and a little of that and wait for something to "catch."

Patience has paid off. I first published Driving on the Wrong Side of the Road in 2006. The paperback sold fewer than 2,000 copies, and I felt like a failure. I'd run all over the country, doing book signings, guest radio spots, and even a few TV appearances to generate those sales. The PR firm I'd hired and others had made money, but I'd been left with zero profits.

Last summer, I published Driving in eBook format on Kindle and Smashwords. I did nothing more to promote this title because I felt I'd already exhausted my promotional budget for this book. Instead, I focused my efforts on my other two titles (one of which I'd just written and released in December 2010). I bought a few sponsorships and banner ads on KB and KND. But to my surprise, sales of Driving took off and pulled away from the other two eBooks. What caused this? I have no idea.

I DID see nice sales bumps for my other two titles when I advertised on KND. In January 2011 I advertised Driving on the KND site. That was the first paid advertising I'd done for this title since I'd published it in eBook format.

[Mel Comley]

Great idea for a thread but like Robin said there is so many different ways you can market your books Too many to mention.

Just make sure you vary what you do and don't get stuck trying one method.

Good luck   

[tawnytaylor]

Great article, Katie! I Pinged it to my twitter, blogger and facebook pages. Thanks for sharing!

I just recently wrote a blog post on this very subject.

Self-Publishing & Marketing Advice - What I've learned this past year.

It's easy to get overwhelmed. Social Network marketing can become almost a full time job with all of the sites out there you'd need to hit to reach the widest audience.

[Randy Kadish]

Great stuff, but let's not overlook the importance of hiring a good proofreader before we do any marketing.
Randy

[Ruth Ann Nordin]

These are things I found to be the most useful marketing tactics out of everything I tried so far.

1. First draft blog.  I put my Facebook badge to the left side, and this is how I've been able to use Facebook effectively as a promotional tool.  The first draft blog also allows people to check out my work and comment on it, so it's not only increased exposure more than anything else I've tried, but it's also opened the door to feedback from my readers who let me know what is and what isn't working as I write the book.

2.  Free reads.  This has been a huge help as well.  I offer some of my books for free on Smashwords (who then uploads the free books to B&N and Sony; I'm not sure about Kobo, Diesel or Apple).  I also put my free books on my website and obooko.com.

3.  Changing covers.  I was surprised by this one, but it worked great.

4.  I recently did ads on genre specific sites like Night Owl Reviews and Coffee Time Romance.  For my pen name whose first book came out this month, I've sold 11 Kindle books and 18 Smashwords books (half of which were free with the coupon I offered).  That was more than I accomplished when I first published with my real name (Ruth).  With my real name, the ad I started on Feb. 15 has already boosted book sales so that it's my best selling book in Kindle (where it links).  So having built a platform will make ads more effective.  Facebook ads seem to be a waste, however,

5.  Book trailers yield minimal interest, but I enjoy making them so I do them anyway.

6.  Being featured on someone's blog helps for a short period of time.

Hope that helps someone. 

[Jennifer Talty]

3.  Changing covers.  I was surprised by this one, but it worked great.

Hope that helps someone. 

I've heard this a lot.