Advertisement Theory

[Xeratos]

Hello everyone. I have a bit of a problem, you see. I wrote this book (you might even be able to see the banner advertising it at the top or bottom of this page!), self-published it, and it's not doing terribly well. I always knew advertisement would be my biggest hurdle, but I didn't expect it to be quite this bad. Now, I'm wondering if that's because it's only available in the kindle format right now, and that's cutting out a huge chunk of potential audience. Does anyone have any thoughts on that?

I've been told that a large part of my problem is I have, for lack of a better term, no social presence on the internet. I don't blog, and only rarely add posts to any forums I happen to be browsing. Therefore, no one knows who I am, and no communities have any interest in my work.

I can see where that might be a valid argument, but I wonder if that's really the only way to go about it. Truth be told, I'm not a very social person. I don't have a facebook account, nor a large number of friends, and I feel like I'd be imposing on the few I do have if I were to ask them to promote my work for me.

So I guess this is my half-way compromise. A forum that I do look at somewhat regularly, just to see if this is really the way it has to be to draw attention to it. I was taught growing up that good work stands for itself, but mine (and I don't care if it's egotistical, I DO think it's good work) seems to be standing off in a corner while the world passes it by.

I know I've seen at least a few people on these forums who have books published in the exact same way I do. What are your thoughts on advertising them? Is it really necessary to pimp out your book on every social media site you can? Are they doomed to flounder, no matter how good, if you don't have a 5-digit twitter following?

On another note, I had one person recommend just giving the books away for free to develop a fan-base, and if I were independently wealthy, I would. Unfortunately, I'm not, and I would love to cut out the 9 hours a day I spend on travel and work so I had more time to write. The compromise there seems to be to sell them cheap, in the hopes that 10 people will buy it at a dollar each rather than 1 person at 5.

I realize that it's just a book, not a living thing, but it feels like I'm cheapening it and saying, "No, it's not really worth anything." Maybe I'm overly attached to it, but it's depressing to put something out there and basically have everyone who looks at it decide that it doesn't look interesting enough to shell out a few bucks for it.

Ok, I'm rambling, and completely off-topic now. Back to the original question: is the only way to successfully sell a self-published book to be a social media whore? I would like to think I go for quality instead of quantity in terms of relationships (whether online or not), but it's becoming increasingly obvious that there are far too many people struggling to draw attention to their work to just let it sit quietly and hope that it gets noticed on its own merits.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts and comments,

Dave

P.S. Though the advertisements are up as of the time this is written, that is subject to change as I run out of money, something that I assure you won't take very long to do. Anyone reading this as late as an hour from the time of the posting might very well see a banner advertisement for something completely different.

I originally had a link to the amazon page featuring it, but upon further review of forum rules, I believe that falls under using the forums to advertise a product, so I edited it back out.

[Grinner]

Ok, I'm rambling, and completely off-topic now. Back to the original question: is the only way to successfully sell a self-published book to be a social media whore? I would like to think I go for quality instead of quantity in terms of relationships (whether online or not), but it's becoming increasingly obvious that there are far too many people struggling to draw attention to their work to just let it sit quietly and hope that it gets noticed on its own merits.

I've never attempted to write professionally, but as a consumer, yeah, that seems to be the way to go.

Look at it from my perspective. When I go to purchase a book, I'm looking at the products of hundreds of thousands of authors like yourself. Even when I narrow it down to a specific subgenre, I'm still looking at thousands books.

I also only have so many hours in the day to read, and that time competes with the likes of Minecraft. It takes some time to read any given book, so the purchases I make are quite few in number.

What are the chances that I'll happen across your book on its own? If a reviewer likes it, will I notice his review? Yes, you could give sample pages, but that doesn't attract customers. Instead, it compels already interested buyers to go ahead with the purchase.

Brand recognition is what sells. If I don't know about you, chances are that I won't ever read anything by you.

[Makensha]

I don't have a Kindle or a Nook, so yes, you do immediately cut down your audience when you choose one of those formats over traditional mediums. Of course, traditional mediums are also a huge and dangerous investment, especially if you haven't found a crowd interested in buying your book yet. Might want to consider selling a pdf.

I had a friend publish an independent book. It is here (http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Bloody-Ground-Sowing-Wind/dp/1449079679). Historical fiction is an interested field to sell in. From what I understand, in the first year they sold all two hundred original prints. But they knew who their audience was. They went around to battlegrounds and civil war reenactments for several months. For all the work they put into it, 200 copies in a year of selling. And it was a good book. I personally bought three copies and gave two as gifts to two historians I knew. They both loved it. It is probably one of the best civil war era historical fictions of that year. 200 copies.

It takes a long time to build up a reputation as an author, especially if your are going it alone. Yes, you need aggressive online involvement to make a book sell well. Find your audience and engage them. Make them care about your book because they care about you. But even then, make sure you are enjoying yourself, because you likely will never do well enough to make writing more than a side project.

Sorry I'm such a downer, but selling a book isn't easy, especially in a market as saturated as Fantasy. Best of luck.

[TheWombatOfDoom]

I know one thing that generally is also a problem is a lot of readers don't have e-readers/prefer having a hard copy to read. I have trouble reading on my own computer, because there are other things to compete with my attentions. If I had a hard copy, I could go off to a corner away from distraction and read. So if your book is only in digital form, that takes away some of you audience.

I'll be honest, I saw the ad, and as soon as I saw kindle, I moved on. I'd actually love to read it, but don't have an e-reader. :smallfrown:

[Yora]

I would say kindle-only really is the greatest obstacle. Even if people buy and read it and like it a lot, they are unlikely to comment on it or recommend it to others, because most of the people they are reaching won't have a kindle either.
It's a bit like releasing an indy game that is Linux-only. If I had a gaming site and recommend games I found, I probably wouldn't do a piece that ends with "oh yes, it runs only on Linux, so 95% of you can forget I ever mentioned it."

Another thing is, that it's a buyers market. It's not that people look at you and want your work. As it is now, you are asking not only for peoples money but also their attention. If I had a kindle, you would to have tell me why I should give you my time. If under contract with a publisher, the publisher is taking care of that part with his resources, connections, and experience. With advertisement he is telling us why we should care.
Which is why personally, I think non-proffesional artists who work for the fun of it, should always share their work free of charge. Just the process of paying is an effort of time and a form of commitment that is a barrier for the audience. Not so much with kindle, but if you have to make an account to download a free work of any type, that already is an obstacle that many people won't be inclined to put up with if they are not already commited that they really want to have it.
If you think "I wonder what this is? I want to have a look.", you need to be able to get access within 30 seconds. If it takes longer than that people might no longer be curious enough to give it any more thought. In your case, what might help is to make a good chunk of the book available as a free pdf download. Say the first 20 to 30%. If people read the sample and have it finished in 15 minutes, it will easily be forgotten again, even if it was good, because there's no emmotional attachment to the story yet. But after an hour or two, people should have become more invested into it, which raises the desire to purchase the rest. Also, the lure of "if you make the efford of finding the link, downloading it, and sitting down to read, you get at least 2 hours of entertainment out of it, if you like it" would likely be much stronger than "I let you take a short glimpse and even if you enjoy it, the fun will be over after 15 minutes and then you have to pay". Two hours of good reading is something of value that people might care for. 15 minutes of entertainment are not worth paying it any attention.

I think easy access is probably the single most important thing for starting artists to get any attention. If you can provide that, you need only to get a foot into the door by reaching a small handful of people who make their oppinions known to larger numbers of people and then it will spread from there. But with "I know something great, but I can't show it to you", the pace will always stall and never really get to grow.

[Mando Knight]

Ok, I'm rambling, and completely off-topic now. Back to the original question: is the only way to successfully sell a self-published book to be a social media whore? I would like to think I go for quality instead of quantity in terms of relationships (whether online or not), but it's becoming increasingly obvious that there are far too many people struggling to draw attention to their work to just let it sit quietly and hope that it gets noticed on its own merits.

If you're limiting yourself to just yourself, then yes. If you want to sell your product, you need to be extremely socially active to get your product sold. That's what getting a publisher and advertisers is for: covering the aspects of production and distribution that you yourself aren't able to.

[Chen]

Well for an ebook getting a good Thumbnail for it is certainly one thing. If I'm looking for a new book to read and have no particular author in mind, I'm going to sort by ones that look interesting first, and then ones that have an interesting title. If its your first book the lower the price the more hits you're going to get. If people like your writing style they'll maybe buy subsequent ones. I'd suggest no higher than $2.99 for your first book. If you could drop it to the $0.99 mark it might be even better. Once you have the luxury of a fanbase you can raise the price so its more in line with other books. A Facebook page for you as an Author is certainly going to help advertising. Even if you keep it strictly business like and only announce new titles and such it will help for little cost. I'm not really familiar with book blogs or websites, but finding one with lots of traffic and perhaps contacting them about a review or news post or something could work, especially if they like the work. The only analogy I can think of is an indie game publisher getting a mention on the Penny-Arcade homepage.

[Jothki]

Books are probably particularly hard in that they're a huge investment on the part of the reader. You're already at impulse buy price, but 287 pages worth of reading is a hell of a lot to ask from a prospective buyer. You need some way to convince people that you're not wasting their time.

Is there any way to get your book more formally reviewed? I'm not familar with the indie bookwriting industry at all, unfortunately.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Well, it sorta works like this...

As has been mentioned, a book is an investment. Therefore, you want to be assured that it'll be good. The easiest way to be assured of that is if it comes from a name that you know and respect. The Dresden Files were highly recommended to me by friends whom I respect, and because I now know and respect Jim Butcher's writing, I'm very likely to look into the Codex Alera [sp?] series.

The purpose of social networking is to make sure that there's people out there who know your name, who already know that you're solid. Instead of "hey, there's this stranger who wrote a book", it's "oh, there's X, who posts here, and they wrote a book!"

And you're actually on target with the "quality over quantity" thing. The best option is to have social media relationships of reasonable quality, then try and expand their quantity. With enough of a base, though, your initial audience can chain-recommend outwards to their networks, and the whole thing goes exponential.

In a hypothetical way.

[Kitten Champion]

When I'm looking for a new book to read or critique I typically search Goodreads.com now. If I see a synopsis which peaks my interest I investigate further. There are very few authors I trust enough to buy on their name alone, and I think like most people I'm going to want some assurance especially for independent or self-published works. For that, I need well read and literate critics capable and willing to write in some detail about it. Bad or good reviews it doesn't matter, utter indifference is more telling. Fortunately, people -- especially critics -- like to "discover" authors, it's part of the whole appeal. So they tend to put the effort into their commentary.

I don't really use social media, and I don't really care if writers are popular or not. I forget most writers names if I don't have their book in front of me. All I truly want is some idea of what I'm getting into, preferably by someone who knows how to spell.

[Xeratos]

Well, that's certainly a lot of feedback, and it definitely gives me some things to think about. I know that I'm terrible at social networking, but I'll be looking into goodreads.com. Thanks for that suggestion! I've also been told of a website called Smash Words, which I haven't had time to get to yet, and it's been recommended that I create an account on Word Press to post samples of my work and hopefully develop something approaching a fan base.

Looking at some of the responses, I want to explain a bit about my experience with publishing on the Kindle. When you publish on Amazon, they offer membership to a program they call KDP Select (KDP stands for Kindle Direct Publishing). When you agree to this, you state that you will not offer your book in any digital format through anybody but Amazon for 90 days, renewable every 90 days unless you opt out of it, and also that you will not sell your book for less than $2.99 or more than $9.99. The return on this agreement is that Amazon agrees to pay you 70% of the sale in royalties instead of 35%, and some stuff about it being offered in foreign countries as well.

This sounds very tempting, but I'll be honest, I've regretted signing up for it. I know several people who've asked me multiple times if it was out for the nook yet, and all I can say is, "No, my hands are still tied." Soon, however, they will not be, and I will be able to release it for the nook or I suppose theoretically sell it as a pdf file (I have no idea how I would do that). About that same time, I should be getting in the proof for a paperback copy.

So, thanks again for the feedback. I'm so far out of my comfort zone with all of this, I honestly don't have a lot of idea where to go and what to do. I understand completely now why it is that publishers take such a huge share of the profits from their authors. The standard royalty rate for a traditional publishing arrangements nets the authors a mere 5-8% of the list price, though I would expect established big-name authors probably do better. I guess they earn it though with all the marketing and advertising.

[kitep]

If the book is "Mask of the Forest Keeper", the ad is indeed at the top of my page. However, I have no way of knowing that "Xeratos" is the author (other than you put "Dave" at the end of your first post"), so even if I knew of you from your posting here, I wouldn't make the connection.

FWIW, the only thing that attracts me to the book is the popup text "Scotch, guns, and giant man-eating bugs". Since most people won't bother putting the mouse over the ad to see pop-up text, you may want to consider working that text into the ad. The name of the book and the author's name (sorry) do nothing for me. You might even try different ads.

I suggest putting it into your signature tag. Even if it's under a spoiler tag. I think there are free programs that let you read kindle stuff on a PC, so put links to those in a tag as well -- at least one for the PC and one for a Mac. In fact you should put a book promo and ereader links in tags for all the forums you visit, if it's allowed.

Send a free copy to Rich Burlew (creator of OOTS) and other web people that have a following. If they like it, they might post a recommendation which would do wonders for you. Don't be insulted if they don't read it though, as turning down unsolited stuff is probably pretty common for these folks.

Good luck!

Edit: you should also make the rounds of gaming conventions. And if you're not comfortable hyping your book, find someone to do it for you.

[grimbold]

I'm a music critic and help a lot of bands promote their album
now, i've only really promoted 2 books in my time, and those were about music but i still think i can give advice

the 2 things that will help you most are
1. being a social media whore
2. setting the book up on a pay what you want factor

at least that works for the bands i help :)

hope i was of service!