Thursday, September 5, 2013

Marketing the New Book

I'm not exactly the best marketer in the world. Matter of fact, I hate marketing. Just the thought of hawking my book makes me cringe. I feel like becoming an ostrich and hiding my head in the sand. You know, and it's not because I couldn't come up with a campaign. It's because I just don't want to bother anyone.

So what do we do? How much of a pain in the ass to our friends and followers do we really want to be?

I, for one, despise blog tours. I won't do one, and with over 12 tomes out in the last two years, you may wonder how I ever got noticed. (Yeah, I'm not really sure of that myself.)

Guest posts? Not so much. I can't write anything unless I'm given a topic. Not big on personal essays, unless you count blog posts, but that's different. I remember when I did a guest post for Tara when I first released Remembering You. I had to rewrite it 3 times, at her urging.

Twitter campaign? Nah. Did one of those for one of the  books and the bit.ly markers drove me over the edge. However, the thing that kills me, every time I turn around, there's some multi- million dollar author says that's how he made all his money.

Free doesn't work anymore. There's so many books still out for free, I'm hearing they're only producing a couple of hundred takers at best, with no reviews, whereas 3 years ago, you'd get 10,000 downloads and at least 100 reviews. My how times have changed. But free doesn't work anymore anyway.

So what else is there to do?  I announced I wrote a book. I have buy links on all the blogs, I made 1 (one) announcement on Twitter (through LinkedIn -- killed 2 birds with one stone there) and now, even though I feel like I should be doing something, I'm not.

But this is a different kind of book. (Yes, I'm speaking of my recently released Regency -- the "school story" project). It's not my typical Regency. It was written for a specific clientele, so I guess I'm going to market to them, in person. I'm going to have to push the paperback version because it's a fundraiser after all. That should be fun.

And you know, I think really, the best way to market is to have a couple of reviews in place when you first publish the book. I keep forgetting to do that. But how many of my friends really want to read one of my books and then leave a review, especially if they don't like it. I know how I feel when one of my friends asks me to write a review. (And I've gotten stuck with a couple of really shitty books so I know exactly how they feel. I never wrote the review.)

I guess the only thing to do really is just to write the next book. I believe in this atmosphere if you're not seen every 3 months or so, people forget you. At least that's what's happening to me. But that's a story for another day.

Tell me -- Do you have any marketing or promotion tips other than the above mentioned? Keeping in mind I hate marketing. lol

Robynne Rand (c) 2013

2 comments:

Roland D. Yeomans said...

I know what you mean: I can't even give THE RIVAL away. I promoted that I would give THE RIVAl away to anyone willing to give a review.

One taker. Ouch!! I even gave it a new cover. Still nothing.

I am doing audiobooks and drawing for prizes from the first 10 reviews, ranging from a Stephen King autographed copy of ROSE MADDER to a CAST-SIGNED photo of THE AVENGERS! Those two prizes have gotten me purchases of those audiobooks but so far no reviews.

It is frustrating. Perhaps it is just a matter of luck and stumbling into the right timing of your book's release.

I wish I had the answers. :-(

Robynne Rand said...

I think it just takes one really good book and then hope word of mouth takes it from there. At least that's what I tell myself. But then, obviously I haven't written a good enough book yet.
:(

I've been thinking about changing covers, but that's so much work. But if I did, I could change the back matter as well, which I think is key.

Someday, Roland, someday we'll be laughing all the way to the bank.