Book Promoting -- Part 1 -- Are You Wasting Your Time and Money with Useless Promotions?

You've written a book and gotten it published. Now, you've been told you have to promote, but you're not sure how to do it. In particular, you'd like to learn what works and, more importantly, what doesn't.

I would like to think of myself as a decent promoter when it comes to my books. Having somewhere around 31 books to my name makes me think that I can speak with some authority. Not all the ideas I have are exceptional, but they are my personal observations. There are plenty of pitfalls when it comes to promotion and I'll cover some of them here.

Here are some things I don't think generate all that many sales:

1. Book signings/Book Tours. You're probably going to gasp when I say this, but overall the book signing/book tour thing is vastly overrated. I've gotten book signings, being a big enough author, and overall found them not to be successful -- even with the most successful signings. Why? Well, the reasons are varied, but basically signing books probably touches the least number of people.

Think of it. Even if you have some sort of newspaper publicity, unless you're a BIG NAME, people generally don't flock to book signings of authors who aren't famous. In fact, if you have a book signing, I would suggest you have all your friends come out for the signing.because otherwise you're likely to be sitting in a corner alone. But let's say you do have a book signing at a big box store. What usually happens is you may see 50 to 100 or so people in the two to three hours you're there. At a really good signing, you might sell 10 books an hour (let's say). A book generally makes between 50 cents to a dollar of royalty. So, you've earned $5-$10 an hour.

Now, I don't know about you, but that's really not worth my time or effort when there are more cost effective ways to do this. The problem with book signings is that people are usually in the big box stores to buy books of various topics or even go to the Starbucks to have a mocha latte. Whatever you're peddling, I'll guarantee that they don't want it. (It's a Murphy's law thingy). So, you're there but you aren't necessarily approaching your market. You're more or less out 2-3 hours for maybe $15-$30 worth of sales to you. Ugh. Not good.

As a general rule, I won't turn down a book signing, especially if it's linked with a group who is in line with my market (catwriters, dogwriters, cons, etc). But I don't expect miracles. If I'm at a science fiction convention (con), I usually do a book signing because you never know. Usually I end up selling a book or two at the end of an hour and spend my time chatting with fans or the other author who is hanging out with me.

2. Direct Mailers. Any good marketing person will tell you that direct mailers (postcards, ads, etc) get acted upon by maybe 1/2% to maybe 2% of those who receive them. The 2% is a targeted list. That means, if you mail out 1000 postcards, you might get at the most 5 to 20 people who might buy your book. When you consider that you will be paying $240 to mail those suckers out in postage only, you're wasting your time and money. There are much better ways to target your intended audience and direct mail isn't one of them, even if you pay for bulk shipping rates. It's not worth it. Really.

3. Spam. Okay, this should be a no-brainer, but nobody wants to hear about your book on dollhouses on a dog email list. Nobody on a writers' job group cares that you just self-published your life history -- if you don't have some sort of history with that email group. Just as you don't open email from people who want to sell you drugs from foreign countries, if the person doesn't know you, they don't care about your book. I'm sorry. Don't spam. Period.

Things that work slowly, but don't necessarily have a huge payoff upfront:

Now, in the realm of doesn't pay for itself in the short run but may pay for itself in the long run comes these two things, both, of which, I do:

1. Ads in Magazines. This is a "it might work" type of marketing. The good news is you probably will have an ad directed to your potential buyers. The bad news is that the payoff is usually not as good as one would like. Usually the ads provide name recognition and branding, but seldom generate sales. I would say if the ads are cheap or if you exchange work for advertising, that's okay. But I wouldn't bank on the ads making money right off the bat.

2. Cons. "What?" you say. "How could you say that SFF cons don't generate sales?" Actually, they do, but the amount of money you spend going to a con or book convention won't be realized in actual sales in the short run. You go to the con to slowly build a fan base and obtain name recognition. I've never made enough sales to consider cons a big money maker. I do them because I think they're a long-term marketing strategy. And you meet a lot of neat people.

If you don't have a lot of money, you can limit your cons or book conventions to your local ones at first but eventually you'll probably have to expand outward and go to several within a region. I find cons to be very useful and enjoyable, but I'm not fooling myself. They aren't a huge moneymaker for me. And by the way, if you invite me to your con, I will probably accept, assuming I don't have a sick dog or suddenly went broke.

In Part 2: 5 Useful and Inexpensive Things You Can Do To Promote Your Books.