I recently came across the article Ten Deadly Marketing Mistakes Almost Every Author Makes, written by book marketing guru Penny Sansevieri. Full of great, hard-earned advice, every author should read it.
About 5 years ago I started my e-partnership consulting business helping creatives, particularly authors, with setting up the digital elements of their business because I could see that these folks really needed help—not just an hour-long webinar or a 5-page how-to flier from their publishers, but hands-on help, training, and maintenance.
The best of my clients understand what they’re getting into and meet me more than halfway, helping me help them (shades of Jerry Maguire). The others? Penny’s article reminded me that I’d written up this article of “memorable quotes” from some of those clients (who shall remain nameless), complete with my rather tart responses (most of which I didn’t say in real life). So here goes:
“Forget all this social media stuff. I just want you to tell me how I can sell a million books,” he said impatiently.
Yes, someone actually said that to me. My first response was “A bestseller these days is something that sells 30,000 copies. So a million might be a little difficult.” My second response? “If you meet someone who says they have a ‘program’ that will sell a million books for you, run the other way.” Third response: “Let’s talk about who really is your target audience. You can’t honestly expect your book to appeal to millions of people.” What I should have said: If you’re writing a book in order to become a millionaire, you’re better off filling out a lottery ticket.
“If I set up a website, won’t I have to spend all my time responding to my readers? I’d rather be writing,” she said anxiously.
Authors, if you are reading this, I urge you to have an up-to-date website under your own name—but if you are reluctant to have a website, don’t let fear of “too many fans” be the reason. It’s very unlikely that you’ll have to spend “all your time” responding to your readers. And if you do become a rich and successful author with fans clamoring at your digital gates, you’ll be able to afford someone to help you wrangle them.
“My publisher has lots of plans for marketing my book so I may not need to do that much myself,” he said hopefully.
Unless you have a huge following or a super-hot topic, the dirty little secret is there’s not that much your publisher can really do marketing-wise for your book. They’ll send it out for reviews, put out a few press releases, and post a page about your book on their website (you’re usually on your own for building your own website or social profiles). Maybe you’ll get a few tweets from your publisher, too. In an infuriating chicken-or-egg situation, publishers often wait to see how your book performs in early days before really throwing marketing money at it. Also, whether you like it or not, publishers are juggling many books at a time and so the average writer/book is realistically not going to get that much sustained attention from them, even if you’re a squeaky wheel (but that can help). Depending on your performance needs for your book (and your budget), a typical recourse these days seems to be hiring an outside publicist with a great rolodex—but even that’s no guarantee of results.
“My book comes out next month. Can you help me set up my social media?” she asked tardily.
Sure, I can help you set up your various social profiles, but I can’t help you time travel back two years back to when you really should have started building up your platform. You need a committed tribe of followers to help spread the word about your book publication, and you can only get them by a long, committed investment in relationship building. Just like real life.
“I’m blogging once a week but no one is leaving comments. How can I get people to leave comments?” he asked forlornly.
First, are you sure there’s even people reading your blog posts? When I asked one author this he was speechless, having simply assumed that if you put it out there, people are reading it. Unless you’re blogging about something super special and popular with such amazing headlines that the whole internet sits up, you need be networking, guest posting, and adding valuable comments on other blogs for people to even notice you and your blog. And then use Google Analytics to see what people are really clicking on and reading on your website.
“Legacy publishing seems to suck. Am I better off just self-publishing?” she asked resignedly.
The big problem in book publishing today is discoverability—there are so many more books than before and so many fewer major reviewing and promotional outlets. If you have some very special topic/genre or super connections or are a celebrity or a businessman who can write off the cost of buying a book onto the bestseller list, then sure, consider self-publishing. But if you decide to go the indie publishing route and don’t have the key to discoverability or a lot of money to buy good publicity, I’m not sure I can say you’d be “better off” self-publishing. Plus be prepared to hire someone to do all the editing, design, and formatting, while handling all the other back end mechanics yourself.
“I absolutely hate how authors are being forced to prostitute themselves all over the Internet these days. I don’t want to participate in that,” he said loftily.
This quote inadvertently brought to my mind those over-the-hill women standing in the red-light district windows in Amsterdam giving you the eye as you walk by—which was funny considering that it was a gentleman of a certain age saying it to me. I’ve learned that bookselling, marketing, talking about “author branding” or “platforms” or any sort of self-promotion is anathema to a lot of writers. And I get it—I’m the furthest thing from a salesperson myself. But the rules of the game have changed, and if authors are not careful they’ll find themselves permanently outside the game, writing books for their loved ones and few others. I tell these reluctant players to look up those admirable authors who seem to embracing the whole thing, such as Margaret Atwood and Neil Gaiman, and see if they bring themselves to get over their aversion a bit. If not, I can’t really help them.
I’m always impressed by your wisdom~