Going On and On to Market

The colossal effort continues to surprise me. I'm not complaining, mind you, this IS a lifelong dream. Yet.

Writing a novel is hard.
Making it as good as you can make it, also not easy.
Transforming a .doc file to a pretty object to hold in the hand— exquisitely tough. 
Helping the book get to readers: off the charts difficult.

It's a mountain range of data to climb to understand even a little about how to market and promote a book these days.  Amazon reviews! NetGalley reviews! TikTok! Amazon ads! Blogs! Goodreads reviews! Vlogs! Contests! Pinterest! Reddit! Bookbub promotions! Newsletters! In-person events! Print publications! Instagram! Kobo promotions!

All to the good in my ongoing quest to blaze new neurological pathways, but also, just—Wow. It's a lot.

Wouldn't it be cool if I could describe a coherent, clever strategy I used? Alas, my marketing efforts have been a bit of mad scramble, learning on the fly at the last possible moment.

I started from what I knew: Press releases and e-mails went to my local news outlets and business contacts: an old-school strategy that was frankly useless.

Book reviews used to be the way the word was spread: you'd hear about a book in The New York Times, or your local newspaper, magazines, or on television. Alas, without the backing of a traditional publishing company, none of these traditional media outlets gives non-traditionally published books the time of day.  

​I mean, honestly, even my alumni magazine disses self-published works. ​

Luckily, as the landscape has changed (how many of us subscribes to a local newspaper?!), on-line reviews from peers have become increasingly valuable. Which is why I have and continue to ask (politely but incessantly!) for readers to leave a review, even if they didn't love the book. Reviews on Amazon, StoryGraph, iTunes, Goodreads, are at the core of my advertising. 

On the advice of some YouTube experts, I contacted on-line book bloggers and interviewers and made headway with a couple of mentions/interviews. Results (ie, sales and other actual metrics) were inconclusive, though each mention contributes to the book's online bona fides. Which is ultimately worth SOMEthing.

I visited many local bookstores with books in hand, which was gratifying when it works. And rather deflating when it didn't. I really want to support my independent bookstores, yet some were mystifyingly aloof and unfriendly.  Poor things: they don't know what they're missing.

To focus on the joy: I love my local Barnes&Noble, I adore The Little Bookstore of Clayton, I am smitten by The Gilded Page in Tarpon Springs, I treasure Book+Bottle in St. Petersburg.  Angels and saints walk among us, many sporting tats and selling books. I am grateful, and they get my business when I am buying.

A foray onto TikTok connected me to some really fascinating peers and helped me overcome what little self-consciousness I had been carrying. I do in fact look and sound like that these days. Woosh! 

More importantly for the book marketing efforts, TikTok has made me a more cautious consumer of online opinion.  There are hundreds of earnest book lovers talking about books they love and hate; there are hundreds more who look as if they have passionate opinions but who are side-hustling as advertising shills. It's a performative world out there.

via GIPHY

Other things I've learned from YouTube and the generosity of other writers: a person can leverage content.  This sounds jargonish, but in plain language, this means recycling.

For instance, a blog I wrote ten or 13 years ago (omg!) can be polished and posted on Substack. Bookish content I filmed for TikTok last year can be reposted on Pinterest and YouTube.  

Over and over and over. ​

via GIPHY

When I worked in adult learning, one of the designers had a poster that consisted of 99 thumbnail photos of a person saying "Sit," to the dog standing at her feet, along with a final tiny picture of the dog sitting, and the person saying, "Good dog."

"I am more than that one silly trick."

Granted, that message was a bit toxic and reductive, but also, it was not wrong.  

​So I'll be over here continuing to natter on and on about She Taught Me Everything and the second (ooh! I know what the name's gonna be!) novel.  

Perhaps, I can imagine certain old friends pointing out, I'll natter on and on because I do, yeah yeah, but also because like that 100th tiny photo, Good dog!