No matter how you publish, promotion and the
obsessive behaviors that come with it (tracking sales, worrying over social
media numbers, comparing with other authors, etc.) can suck a whole lot of your
time, energy, and even cash. Don’t let that happen. You’ve got a life, and you
may even have other books to write.
You’ve perhaps heard of the 80/20 rule: that in
any given market, it’s the top 20 percent of the players doing 80 percent of
the business. I’ve seen that applied to book marketing in a way that pushes all
my buttons—“experts” who say that to sell books, an author needs to spend 80
percent of her time on promotion and 20 percent actually making the books.
Call me contrary, but I’m in this because I love writing and
telling a good story, and I’m convinced the best way for me to enjoy the
creative life and build a readership is by doing exactly the opposite—80
percent of my time spent creating books that leave readers begging for more, and 20
percent of my time building my fan base. So I devote the best and largest portion of my writing time to actually writing—not emails, not Facebook posts,
not tweets, but my next book.
With those proportions in mind, I make a
promotional plan for each book. Components vary, depending on whether I’m
partnering with a traditional publisher and/or publicist (you can hire your own
publicist, and lots of authors do, even if they’re working with traditional
publishers who also have publicists, but expect to pay big bucks for their
services—as in thousands of dollars). When you formulate your plan, don’t try to
do everything. Be flexible, adjusting as you discover what works for you and
your book. Budget your time and money in proportion to what you can
realistically expect to net from sales of your book, and don’t be afraid to innovate.
Think of promotion as happening in phrases:
pre-launch, launch, post-launch and ongoing. Ongoing promotion includes efforts
like your e-newsletter and social networking; these build relationships and
keep you visible while (hopefully) growing your fan base. The other phases are
associated with each title as it meets the world. The pre-launch phase revolves
primarily around ARCs—advance reading copies provided to reviewers, including
authors and other high-profile people who will endorse (or blurb) your book;
there may also be some pre-launch buzz, if the book warrants it. If you're self-publishing
or with a small publisher, the pre-launch phase also includes a soft launch
period in which books are available but not heavily promoted, allowing for
online reviews to be posted as social proof for the launch.
The launch is a brief period (a few weeks,
normally) in which you (and your publisher) celebrate the official release of
the book—much anticipated, in the case of big-name authors. In traditional
publishing, the launch is a lot like fireworks set off to draw attention to the
book: boom, boom, boom, and then nothing, unless the book has gotten enough
traction in the marketplace to warrant the publisher’s continuing investment.
When you’re traditionally published, the success of your book and, in large
part, your future in publishing, boils down to how each book received at the
launch, though much of that depends on how much effort and cash the publisher
and the author have expended to build buzz and generate pre-orders in advance
of the launch.
A huge source of frustration for authors is that with
traditional publishers, it’s hard to know how a book does at launch. Royalty
statements reflecting pre-orders won’t come in for six months at best, maybe a
year. You’ll (sometimes) get copies of reviews, but unless your book hits a
big, bonafide bestseller list, expect a quiet lull when you most want to know
how your book’s doing.
A few weeks after launch, and you may feel as if your traditional publisher has lost interest. That’s not exactly true—of course
they hope your book keeps on selling, so they can recoup their investment—but
if it’s not gotten off to a stellar start, don’t expect them to expend much in
the way of effort or money to change that. Traditional publishing is
launch-centric. If a book doesn’t prove up in pre-orders and launch-related
buzz, your publisher is going to move on to promoting the next author’s title.
There are things you as an author can do in the post-launch period to help more
readers discover your book, but expect to feel a bit like the lone ranger as
you pursue them.
When you publish independently, you can take a
more long-tailed approach to promoting your book. The launch itself is a nice
opportunity to let the world know that a great new title’s available, but your
future as an author isn’t going to hinge on how many copies were pre-ordered by
bookstores or whether sales projections indicate that you’ll earn out your
advance. You can be the tortoise to the hare that is traditional publishing:
slow and steady can win the race, if your book is worthy and you’re committed
to reaching readers.
To see what happens when a publisher and author work together on marketing a book, check out Cold Spell, a novel recently released in a joint effort between the University of Alaska Press and my own Running Fox Books (They've got the English language softcover rights; I've got the rest.)