Marketing for self-publishers - does this idea work

Yesterday I came across a blog post entitled: The Fool-Proof Twitter Book Marketing Strategy You Need to be Using. My first reaction was, Yes, this is what I've been looking for, but having considered overnight some of the things the author is saying, I'm having second thoughts. 

One thing I do agree with is that merely announcing on Twitter that you've written and published a book will probably not add a single sale to your sales chart. I get tweets like this all the time from different authors, and most of the time I switch off, or just flick straight past them. Once in a blue moon I will actually consider buying the book on the strength of the tweet, and occasionally (perhaps five or six times in nearly a decade of being on Twitter) I've actually bought a book. 

So it's not a total loss, but it certainly won't bring big sales - unless you're already very well known as an author. Even then it's only part of the overall marketing strategy. 

Another thing the writer, Derek Murphy, says is that interaction with other readers - not other authors - is necessary. And again don't hammer them with the sales pitches: befriend them as people, and respond to their tweets and talk about mutual areas of interest. 

Neither of these things were news to me. 

However, Murphy starts off his article by encouraging us to add 100 tweeters per day, ones who are interested in the genre in which we write and who are likely to read the sort of book you've published. In three months you'll have 5000 targeted followers, he claims. 

This is where things start to fall down, for me. Finding and following even an additional 100 people a day is quite a commitment, even when you only take a quick squiz at their tweets. Furthermore many of these tweeters will not necessarily just tweet about writing and books and such. They, like me, have other interests. 

But the bigger problem is that just because you follow these particular 100-5000 people doesn't mean they will follow you in return. Some will, many won't. So in fact you won't necessarily have 5000 targeted followers after three months. In fact, it's unlikely. 

You might argue that some of these people will retweet your tweets to their friends and, if those friends are book-focused people, they may follow you. You'll get people on board you hadn't originally followed. Yes, this is true. 

But there's no way you'll have time to have twitter conversations with even a small number of these people. 

Murphy goes on to say that you also need to be writing blog posts about writing and your genre, and cross-referencing other people's posts, and thus building up your profile. Furthermore you need to be following up on hashtags that relate to your genre and area of interest. 

Here's another problem: doing all this work will severely curtail your available time for writing books. From experience I know that as soon as I start to work on marketing, hours flit by, often with very little to show for it. 

I'm beginning to think that there are a number of writers out there who don't actually write very much in the way of books, but spend vast amounts of time writing about how to market. Which means, for me, that their real focus isn't writing, but marketing. 

Some time ago I followed a bloke - his name now escapes me, but no doubt others will know him - who, having written a series of books, basically said that he wasn't really interested in writing any more books but in marketing the ones he'd written. And that was certainly his focus. His aim was to make as much money out of these few books as possible. 

I understand the frustration that self-publishing writers have in terms of marketing. It tears the writer in two. It's no wonder publishers take on the marketing role in the normal way of publishing; writers just don't have the time. 

I'm not sure what the solution for self-publishers is - throwing heaps of money at marketing, maybe - but I know that trying to write and market just doesn't work for me, however enthusiastic I may be about such posts as Mr Murphy's...at first. 

Coupons here and there

When we were in the USA earlier in the year (for my son's wedding) we came across stores that we'd heard of but never had the chance to visit: Barnes and Noble, for instance.   Being a bookaholic, this was one place I wanted to at least step inside, even if I didn't buy anything.  (I didn't, but that wasn't B&N's fault.)   The shop had all those sorts of things that I used to dream about doing when I was running a bookshop - though my shop could have been squeezed in one of the smallest corners of the B&N - a place for people to stop and have coffee, an internet bar, trolleys for wheeling large boxes of books around, and staff who knew what they were doing!

That's the advantage of being part of a huge organisation (although some of the things I'm reading about B&N in the news don't make for good reading, in terms of its battles with Amazon and various publishers.  But that's a different story for another day.)

While I was visiting B&N my wife was off with my son's new mother-in-law visiting other well-known places, like Target.   We weren't in the States long enough to collect any coupons from Target but I'm sure if we'd stayed there a few weeks longer she would have managed to have picked some up...and use them!

Coupon collecting isn't so popular in New Zealand - perhaps it's because coupons aren't so readily available here, or because we just approach the whole idea from a different angle.  But it seems, from my understanding of it, that some people spend half their lifetimes collecting coupons and doing very well out  of it.

Of course we collect things like Fly Buys and Airpoints (on the rare occasions when we fly) and make use of the discounts that the New World or Pak N Save supermarkets give on petrol.   I guess these are similar to the coupon system, but are basically taking a slightly different approach.

Some internet sites in New Zealand have tried to get the coupon idea up and running more successfully - I'm not aware of them really taking off.  Perhaps you just have to be really keen to go to the effort of printing out coupons and cutting them out and so on.  And of course, the coupons have to be worth your while - if they're for stuff you'd never buy in a hundred years, they're just a waste of time, and will cause you not to visit the site.   It's rather like what's happened with the Automobile Association here: they're now offering discount on petrol if you buy stuff at various motor-related outlets - plus some other places.  The problem is that most of these places are ones I'd never visit; I'm just not that into automobile outlets.   My grandson might be able to name the model of any car that we see on the road (and he's only eight) but I can hardly tell one car model from another.  It's just not my interest.

For me then (and by the sound of it, a lot of other motorists) the new approach the Automobile Association has taken to discounts is a bit of a fizzer.  In the past, whenever you bought petrol you could have you AA card swiped and that would go towards a discount on your annual fees.   Now you're never sure whether swiping the card is going to be of any value: it's very much up to the AA's random system of discounting.  Some days you'll get something, other days you won't, and I think this is a huge marketing miscalculation.   The AA has lost a good deal of its kudos in the process.

So it looks as though our approach to coupons is pretty minimal compared to the US approach - it's like the size of my former bookstore compared with Barnes and Noble in total.  Minuscule!

Prince Harry

In yesterday’s Otago Daily Times (Dunedin’s only major daily newspaper), there was a very neat letter to the editor, written by one Keith Clifford.
It went as follows:

If Prince Harry goes to Iraq and becomes the Mother of all Targets, it will at least give him some respite from being the Target of all Mothers back in the UK.

I’d love to write something as nifty as that!