Promotion Tips for Novelists
I don’t generally give advice to other novelists about book promotion since so many authors are better at selling books than I am, but if I had to, I’d tell other novelists to have patience, stamina, and willingness to give up part of their writing time for promotion.
Unless a writer has the benefit of a major publisher’s publicity department, and sometimes even then, he/she will have to spend time promoting their book. It’s not enough to have a blog dedicated to self-promotion or to add thousands of friends on Facebook.
Writing articles and commenting
You have to give people something to get something — write interesting articles, comment on articles other people write, and get to know your Facebook connections. And most important of all, check out Book Marketing Floozy. It’s an indexed blog with how-to articles on every facet of promotion.
Here are some responses from other authors about the advice they would give to other novelists about book promotion:
From an interview with Debra Purdy Kong, Author of “The Opposite of Dark”
I’d advise writers to use patience and not expect too much right away. Promotion means engaging with others and building a rapport with potential readers. It means building a solid, long-term platform through social networking, blogging, and designing your website. It can seem daunting, but if you limit your time each day, then you won’t risk burnout. And burnout is a big factor for writers who are also actively promoting!
From an interview with Joylene Nowell Butler, Author of “Broken but not Dead”
If you’ve gone through all the trouble of writing and revising and querying, why not market? Why not spend hours blogging and visiting other blogs and establishing a connection with like-minded writers? I’m still astonished when authors tell me they don’t have time to blog, and they certainly don’t have time to visit other blogs.
They just want to fill your inbox with news about their book and why it’s important for you to buy it. They’re targeting the wrong people. Writers write, and readers buy books. Yet how many emails do you receive in a week telling you why you should buy their book?
Online Presence
Promotion is about creating a presence online. But it’s also about getting out and doing readings, signing copies, writing-related articles, doing online, radio, and newspaper interviews, and joining evening events where the opportunity to read arises. It’s about fairs, bazaars, contests, giveaways, and anything else you think will put you and your book in the public eye.
What about you? What advice would you give other novelists about book promotion?
I agree that marketing is an important part of any writer’s life these days. It is a hard slog, and hard to see results. If sales do eventuate, it can be hard to know what it was that worked. Maybe a little bit of everything? As you say, it is all about creating a presence.
What a lot of people don’t understand is the difference between marketing (getting you and your books known to the right audience) and selling (saying ‘buy, buy, buy’). There is a lot in the commercial arena that covers the difference, not specifically related to writing, that applies just as well to apples or cars as it does to books. It is this difference that people need to understand before they embark on their promotion adventure.
Use marketing as an opportunity for research, or fun – if you live in a city, get out into the country to small towns. They are often keen for an excuse for an event. Small newspapers are great too, always looking for a new story.
So don’t think of it as a chore. See it as an excuse for doing something new.