How many Tweets, Facebook Updates, Google+ entries, blog posts, spam emails have you gotten that say, “How to promote your ebook”? After 30 years in sales and marketing, and watching the independent publishing movement for two years, I can tell you that we’ve now come full circle. A year ago John Locke wrote “How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months” and everyone jumped on the well written instructions. He was absolutely right. In June of 2011, that was how you could sell a million books on Amazon.
No longer.
Have you noticed that Twitter has more writers than living humans exist on the planet? Every writer must have a hundred accounts. And everyone is shouting: buy my book. Damn few of them even bother to tell you what it’s about or why it’s different. I followed one guy who tweeted fifty times a day “Read ___” with nothing else on it. Huh. I checked out his website and his Facebook entries. No information, no rationale, just the command, “Read”. Guess he was using the old Jedi Mind Trick. (‘These are not the droids you’re looking for’ becomes ‘This is the book you’re looking for’?).
So how does an independent/Traditional author promote a book?
The old fashioned way: work.
Here are my five suggestions (just suggestions … your mileage may vary) for book promotion:
- Give a damn about your customer. The reader is your customer (see #4 for details). Any and all literate people are potentially your readers. Don’t piss them off with noise and chest thumping. I live in the USA and speak English (sorta) which means I have 416 million potential customers right out of the box (USA=314, Canada=34, UK=62, Ireland=6). That is your potential audience. Don’t laugh. JK Rowling sold 450 million books. You can’t please all of them, and you are going to piss off some of them (because some people are unhappy, not your problem) but you should avoid doing anything that you know will piss off a lot of them. Like Tweeting Amazon links indiscriminately. Unless you are a Hollywood celebrity, Tweeting receives the same respect as automated-phone solicitations. You will piss off more people than you will win.
- Free ebooks devalue your brand. I’ve been flamed on blogs for commenting about this, but the numbers prove the case. One author (who will remain nameless because she was pretty steamed last time I talked to her) claimed to have given away 200,000 ebooks that led to 100,000 sales of new books. I pointed out that Darcie Chan sold 600,000 copies of one title and attributes her success to advertising. These two authors are of similar quality . Their numbers should be the same. I recommend selling your ‘freebie’ for $0.99 and using the royalties for advertising. Mine is a VERY unpopular opinion because we really want things to be cheap and easy. Well, guess what? Yeah. If advertising doesn’t work, why is it on the side of freaking busses? People equate “free samples” from Tide to giving away a free book. NOT THE SAME. A free first chapter makes sense. A free short story makes sense. A whole free book tells me you couldn’t sell it to anyone else. Tide does not give you the whole box. They give you a SAMPLE. Think about it.
- Review authors you like. Blog them, Goodreads, Amazon, wherever you want. You don’t need stars or numbers to evaluate them. Don’t review authors you don’t like. Reciprocal reviews are nice but the world never works in a straight line. Review any author great or small. I dug into the Indie movement and found several authors who had enthusiasm, loved their topic, and tried to bring something new and refreshing to the world. Amy Rogers and Joanna Penn are fine examples. I’ve also reviewed super stars like Zoe Sharp, Preston & Child, and James Rollins. I don’t care if they review my novel when it comes out. I’ve contributed my feelings and impressions to the writing community. Not for the hope of reciprocation but for something more cathartic in nature. Reviewing others helps me understand what I like, and, hopefully, what my potential readers might like. I want to write things they will like.
- What community? What tribe? A community is a group of people who live together or work together or worship together or educate together or read together. Communities are people who come together to accomplish something specific. Don’t kid yourself. Your readers are not your community. They are consumers of your work. They are not here to help you accomplish your desire to get rich. They want you to entertain them. If you produce less-than-the-best, they will leave your ‘community’ in a New York nanosecond. The reader is your CUSTOMER and needs to be treated as such. Just as you want to be treated respectfully when you go to the theater, out for dinner, to the dentist’s office (you’ll feel a tickling sensation), they deserve the respect you expect as a consumer. They want to feel certain things from you:
- Welcome.
- Appreciated.
- That you’re committed to writing the next book with the same passion you wrote the one which drew them to you.
- That you can entertain them with something more interesting than C-SPAN, NPR or Madge’s gossip. (Don’t laugh, did you hear what Madge said about…)
- Make sure your work is worthy. I used to love reading a popular author, for the sake of this post, let’s call him … James Patterson. The first five books I read of his were great. Well written, exciting, easy to read and hard to put down. But they followed a certain formula. By book six, I could predict what was written on the next page. I stopped buying them. He’s still a great writer. His sales are still astronomical. Then he started producing books with other writers. The formula remained, but the quality became questionable. If you have one reader, put the best work you can create in front of that reader. And only the best work. If you’re an independent, hire a professional editor. Your best friend, wife, husband, dog, is not a professional editor. A professional editor does this for a living. I highly recommend The Editorial Department. Not just for general editing, but full editing and proof reading. Readers are fairly unforgiving of recurring typos no matter how much they love the story. Every great novelist has acknowledged the contributions of his/her editor. Don’t try it alone. And don’t forget the must-read blogger The Passive Voice, a prime example of someone practicing the above principles, for your intellectual property and contract concerns.
I could very well be wrong about all of this. That’s why we have a comments section. Tell me all about it and why. Don’t worry, I can take it–I’ve been married nearly twenty years.
NOTE: I do not sell ‘how to’ books; do not want to be a professional book marketer; am not profiting from these ideas. My intent is to help authors, who are generally marketing shy, get some traction and spend their efforts, time and money on things that might be more effective.
Peace, Seeley James
