What you do to generate "Buzz"?

[Robert E. Parkin]

Frankly, I'm getting to the point where I'm starting to run out of ideas in regards to generating awareness for my work that won't cost me money. I operate on a very limited budget and been trying to spread news of my work through social media mainly. I don't have the means to print my book up yet as it costs too much money for me right now, so I was wondering what everyone else does.

What has worked for you?

What failed miserably?

Lets share, I will start:

I found that promoting a video on Youtube is the biggest waste of time. 17K views later, not one share, or even a comment. The same can also be said with FB pages and promoting those. Even if you get a lot of likes, most of the people who have liked your page will seldom see your posts, much less share them.

Twitter has worked a little, but I can't seem to get followers beyond 70. Weird.

What have other people tried?

(If this isn't the right place for this topic, could the MODs move it respectively. Sorry for any trouble)

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Firstly, I think it's a very slow build and social media in particular takes time to have an impact. I get about ten people a week follow me and tweet about their book and nothing, or little, else. I check their last five or so tweets and if they do nothing other than self-promote I don't follow. So I think part of it is the perception of why you're using social media (and I haven't looked at your account and have no idea.)

However, take something like the Chrons here. I'm not self-pubbing, but when my book comes out I still have to get the word out and most of my following (tiny as it is) came from here or built from here. I've been here for four years - pretty much constantly, to build any sort of following (which is the wrong word: to have the fantastic writing mates I have is more accurate.) A couple of things spring to mind:

People here know my writing. They know it through the challenges here, and through shorts I've had published, through secret santas and the odd freebie. If they like my style, they're more likely to take the gamble on the book.

Most of my activity here and on all social media is in response to others' questions. I ask plenty of my own, yes, and I tweet and post the odd bits and pieces, but most of my activity is around engaging with others. For instance, I've put a lot of time - and thought - into responding to your threads here. I think that's important - it builds engagement but, crucially, people don't like thinking someone is centred only on their own questions, or their own work, but that they give something back (because we all have books to sell and promote, frankly. I'd like to know you might support me back....)

So, respond to others' threads, as you have been. Give crits, or suggestions for names, or help with the bit they're stuck on. On twitter retweet others' cover reveals and blog links, that sort of thing.

Oh and blogging is good but it needs to be regular (guilty look, I'm a blog behind, must have inspiration before Friday...) and you need to promote it - there's a thread here for that and on Absolute Write. Also, are you following the Chronners on Twitter. Or the #sffchrons - some of us self-promote under that?

In short, after a long, rambling post I think I'm saying it's a slow build, people don't like the perception of being used and not supported back, and that people support the person first and the book second.

 

[Robert E. Parkin]

Very insightful. I'm still new here but I have noticed a handful of people who are quite active here and always respond and show that they spent a good deal of time formulating their responses. I like this community, which is why I've been posting topics to generate creative and useless conversation among the members here, while answering my questions, but also hopefully bringing insight to those who may have had similar questions. I've liked the turnout. Guess I should start looking into those "challenges" you mentioned. Could be fun. ^^

 

[Brian G Turner]

Social media should be treated as a communications channel, not a marketing channel. I say that as someone in marketing.

Social media can be manipulated, but it's hard work, and not guaranteed. Ultimately, buzz comes from doing something unusual or extraordinary.

In publishing terms it's much more likely to be a slow build over a few years - even JK Rowling did not become an overnight success.

As springs says, networking and getting your face known - and being seen to be friendly and polite - is probably the best anybody can do at first, but it still remains a long haul process.

 

[Boneman]

Is there an angle you can use to promote 'you' to the local or national press, and hence your book? Local papers are always in need of good human interest stories - I see you're from New York, so it would be worth dreaming up anything that might get you noticed - author offers tuckerisation in next book, author donates profits of book to charity, author slanders Catholic Church in new book (that'll generate a lot of publicity!!) Descendant of George Washington writes book - literally, anything that might catch a reader's eye. Find an interesting factor about how you came to write the book (you were depressed because the NICS (nicks?) lost the playoffs, and thought: what can I do to cheer myself up? you lost your notepad in a central park snowstorm, but someone found it in the spring and returned it to you; you were fined for not having a ticket on the subway and liked the transport policewoman so much you wanted to write a book about her; you had to babysit for a month to pay off a debt and took your notepad with you; etc etc) Do you have a High School/College alumni magazine? Find a factor that stands out and push that one, whatever it is as a starting point. Get the buzz about you, and people will want to see what the book's about. It'll grow from there, and if your writing's good the rest will all follow. And good luck!

 

[Mouse]

The 'local' thing never worked for me. None of my local papers/book shops gave a stuff who I was or what I was doing.

 

[chopper]

seconding what springs & brian both said. i've seen independent authors on other sites do what i call "drive-by shoutings" and wonder why nobody is buying their book - it's because they haven't made any effort to join the community or (on twitter especially) be somebody people will want to follow.

it is definitely a slow build. the US has a lot of conventions, i note, so you may find you can network more effectively at one or two of them and then link back to people you have met.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Get on good forums (like this one). Be interesting. Have a very distinctive photo and use it everywhere.

 

[Boneman]

The 'local' thing never worked for me. None of my local papers/book shops gave a stuff who I was or what I was doing.

That's just mean... my local papers do a half-page spread on writers who are self-publishing! Have you tried contacting BBC local Radio? Or independent local radio, for that matter?

 

[Robert E. Parkin]

That's just mean... my local papers do a half-page spread on writers who are self-publishing! Have you tried contacting BBC local Radio? Or independent local radio, for that matter?

Does it cost anything to get on? Never tried Radio before.

 

[Brian G Turner]

It helps if you actually have a story - ie, a writer had their work edited, self-published, and now sells thousands of copies each week around the world. That would help interest local media.

 

[Robert E. Parkin]

It helps if you actually have a story - ie, a writer had their work edited, self-published, and now sells thousands of copies each week around the world. That would help interest local media.

Still working on that "sells thousands of copies" part. =_=

 

[Boneman]

Does it cost anything to get on? Never tried Radio before.

Not in England it doesn't... but there has to be something interesting about you or the book.

 

[chrispenycate]

Unfortunately a number of the more effective ways of drawing attention to yourself, like dowsing in petrol and self immolating in the high street on Black Friday severely limit your enjoyment of said attention.

Have you any particular talents? Can you read your book out loud well? I noticed that a number of authors weren't capable of a riveting performance (or if they were competent were concealing this fact remarkably well), while a number of established, high-sale authors were quite good at making their own works sound good, and wondered if the one might be related to the other. However, my sample size was not suficient to draw any worthwhile conclusions.

 

[Overread]

A few thoughts:

1) Any form of social networking as a form of communication/marketing can't be half done. In fact to do it badly is more likely to cause harm to you then any good. A few examples;

a) Dead blogs - yep blogs are cheap and easy to start up; but if you've no focus other than "buy my book" then chances are you'll wind up running out of steam pretty quick. From there you'll post less often, the few followers you do have will get bored and move on and the blog will just die. Blogs are quite a commitment so it helps to have a general level of content you can put out not just promotion/discussion about your own activities (unless you're very active of course; even still chances aer that would be a fan blog not one designed to generate interest to start with). So if you blog have an idea of content long term - a focus and also a commitment to posting regularly.
Keep it alive and if all your efforts fail then its time to redirect the followers into another avenue of communication (can be a website) and then close the blog down fully. Ending on a positive note and also closing it formally.

b) Drive by advertising - we've all seen those people who spend an evening or two jumping into every social group and forum they can and dropping "hey come read my book" posts and then vanishing. Most of the time they are ignored, and in many cases their posts are deleted by mods. You gain nothing save the title of a spambot and you've just cut all potential formal association with a core online community segment. Bad move.
If you must do this at the very least contact site admin/mods after registering but before posting to clear the way. Might be they don't care - might be they give ideas - might be you never get a reply (hint try another mod/admin if not move on - a site with dead staff is normally a dead site anyway).

Note - forum membeship can be a big and very useful tool; but most times it will only work if you're an honest engaging member of the community itself. So like the blogs its committing yourself to a social group and activity not just darting in and out.

c) Self critiques on Amazon/Goodreads or paid for or family. These tend to stand out like a sore thumb and, again , cause more harm than good. Yes it can take time to get reviews, but don't try to jump the gun. Let the reviews come in on their own, but by all means do promotional events to encourage them (but never ever say anything other than wanting honest feedback - as soon as you say "write me a positive review for....." and you'll lose all credibility).

So in summary if you're going to do it do you have to think long term; because this kind of marketing is only going to work slow, progressive and long term. It has the bonus that it can be very strong, but you've got to be honest with yourself and keep at it (honest in the case that if no-one is paying attention you've got to review what you're doing to get people paying attention - people who do this on the cheap do so by saying outrageous things - Books are bad lets burn books - in the thread title -bound to generate interest, but likely not the kind you want).

2) Promotional events:
a) Interviews and QA sessions on media sites. You can use a big site like GoodReads (who already do things like that) along with contacting key and popular bloggers and websites. Watch what you say and try to avoid getting drawn aside into things like debates on equality - religion - politics etc... You don't want to be thrown to the lions for your views on a subject which has no bearing on your book.

b) Sales Discount - I assume you're selling through digital means so if you've got a price consider a sale. I'd always say price yourself at a sensible price akin to normal publications; just because its digital and your first doesn't mean you should slash your normal price (first time author charging £0 tells the buyer they value their work at £0 which means it's not all that good - plus you will get many "its ok for the price" reviews, which is again saying its not really that good).
That aside a short term sale can (if combined with social events/networking to promote it) work well for a short spurt of sales to generate interest. You might also network with other authors and do a group promotional event "this weekend only save up to 50% on the newest works in Steam Punk from a collection of authors". It's fantastic if you can do that with a "big" name in the group (even if its just one established author).

3) Short publications. Consider things like the science fiction magazines and such. Here you're putting up short stories (either separate works or you can use a snippet of part of your main story - or a bit of prologue or background) into the community. You're maybe not earning much if anything; but what you are doing is attaching your name to a respected publication and then using that to distribute your work and thus promote yourself. From there interested parties can follow back to your main publications. (here's a nice idea - discount period the week or so of publication of your short story in the magazine!)

4) Discount/free first book. Something that can work well once you're off the starting block is to discount heavily the first book of your series (series can be complete or ongoing but must have a least two or ideally more books already published). This is designed to draw in lots of new readers who will gobble up the freebie/discount and then keep following through the series. It's not a first step element because you need to already have several bits of work already out so they can jump one to the next; and also generally favourable reviews upon those works also (encourages them to think - ok this was good and look at those good reviews on the next work its going to be better - I must have that).



Marketing for free is hard.
You can have a huge runaway success, but chances are you won't. You'll have to build things up slow - build them up well and invest long term resources into them in order to make them work. If you treat it short term and don't have an overall plan of action chances are you'll get a very tiny spark of interest and then your work will fall into the sea of thousands of others doing the same thing; also who got bored of marketing fast.

 

[Wo7f]

This is something I'm looking to do as well. I'm going to try Facebook, which you said didn't work, but I'll be using it as a starter page so folks can find info about me if interested. I've also made an iMovie. It's a free app and free for commercial use as long as it's for promotional uses only. Not allowed to sell the iMovie you made. And I've recently found out about Thuderclap. Still need to learn more about it though.

I totally agree with joining forums to help with promoting, but get involved with the community as others have suggested. For me, I love getting to know new and exciting people who have different opinions and helping them with writing where I'm able.

Good Luck!

 

[tinkerdan]

A few thoughts that coincide with those being tossed around.

First marketing--it's not cheap--it's hard work.

If you had money to pay for marketing you would probably hurt yourself later when you had no more money. The first thing I noticed with the Promotional Agencies is the disclaimer that they can advertise the heck out of your book but all the advertising in the world will not make the book any better than it is and so it may not work out well for you. Oddly they have no compunction about taking your money and it usually amounts to a lot of money.

The biggest thing is self promotion and I think that some people do that through the various Cons that are held throughout the year. Just keep in mind that that has the same caveat as paid advertisement.

The best thing would be if you are not hungry and can work on your writing while working the other job and keeping yourself fed that way then you can just keep producing; because as you progress you get better and sometimes a larger form of advertisement is that the author has a half dozen books or more [this especially so if you are doing a trilogy and it is actually finished for the reader to pickup in a quick uninterrupted cycle of reading].

The web and social media are hard work and you need to maintain it somehow and have something unique to offer or you will end up falling back on just trying to keep it going weekly and then weakly and then maybe not. [Or maybe just not.]

Giveaways [refer back to are you hungry] you can give away a lot and get back nothing or at least what looks like nothing if no one leaves comments or reviews.

There are some moderately successful self-publishers around here who might have some better ideas as to how they succeeded and what worked for them and what didn't. But not everyone has the same experience; so it's best to get a good sampling before running off doing all those various things.

Ultimately the best thing is getting the book into the hands of someone who will gush about it night and day to all their friends who will by some stroke of luck also be gushers who have lots of friends. And yes this is a pyramid scheme.

Outside of that if you want to cut back on the personal sweating and need to eat, then the traditional route looks more appealing every day; though it definitely means a lot of work with honing your writing skills. The upside is that the work is not anything that you shouldn't be doing right now anyway. The big thing to remember is that your first book might not do all that well in any of the various venue and; since it's out there you should just work on getting the rest out there to add to the stack. Your writing time is valuable and you could regret putting too much thought and energy into possibly spinning your wheels.

 

[FibonacciEddie]

Firstly, I had no idea that we (Chronicles) had an Twitter account/hashtag

Springs - just followed you - I promise that I am not all about self-promotion... I just haven't quite got my content laid out yet ... that's what Xmas is for

I would echo everyone here... it is not at all easy to self-promote... there are no quick wins... I very quickly "unfollow" Self-Promote Spammers on Twitter -- that said you do have to be brave in some respects (i.e. walk into your local book shop and speak to them about local author support)

... I have found the following useful advice... useful but not proven...
Search on "Brian Jud Book Promotion" - he offers a free pdf with a massive list of "Have you tried this...." there is zero explanation about how to do any of them... but again it may jog an idea.

www.theguardian.com/books/2012/jun/06/become-an-ebook-superstar
(this guy, Ben, is open/friendly and has loads of experience)

And here is my Marketing Checklist ---- Note: I am only doing half of them - but I have consciously rejected the other half (rather than simply not bothered to consider them).

- Communicating with your email list
- Connecting with fans on your Facebook fan page
- Notifying your LinkedIn connections
- Buying ad space on high-traffic blogs
- Connecting with book bloggers
- Entering your book in competitions
- Posting articles to your author blog
- Establishing a community on Good reads
- Sending out press releases
- Provide "Guest Blog"
- Holding a book signing at a local store
- Running contests on your blog or through social media
- Sending notes and specials through your Twitter account
- Contributing articles to offline periodicals
- Doing a review mailing
- Going on a virtual blog tour
- Sending out paid press releases for better distribution
- Using targeted traffic from pay per click
- Writing guest posts for other blogs

good luck

 

[Denise Tanaka]

Frankly, I'm getting to the point where I'm starting to run out of ideas in regards to generating awareness for my work that won't cost me money. I operate on a very limited budget and been trying to spread news of my work through social media mainly. I don't have the means to print my book up yet as it costs too much money for me right now, so I was wondering what everyone else does.

What has worked for you?

What failed miserably?

Lets share, I will start:

I found that promoting a video on Youtube is the biggest waste of time. 17K views later, not one share, or even a comment. The same can also be said with FB pages and promoting those. Even if you get a lot of likes, most of the people who have liked your page will seldom see your posts, much less share them.

Twitter has worked a little, but I can't seem to get followers beyond 70. Weird.

What have other people tried?

(If this isn't the right place for this topic, could the MODs move it respectively. Sorry for any trouble)

Hi,

I'm so glad to see this question! This subject has caused me a huge amount of stress recently. I've made my first novel sale to a start-up, small press (e-book/POD) publisher. My previous attempt at self-publishing had poor sales because I'm a writer not a salesperson! One big reason why I signed the contract with Assent Publishing is that they also provide a virtual academy in how to market and promote books. Their program runs through social media, how to write a press release, how to make personal appearances, etc. These are all skills that I have never developed in my life, and so this academy seemed like a very attractive idea. Well, I've been through their program and I feel just as confused and daunted as I did on the first day. The numbers in my social media fan base are not so great after a year of banging away at it. My publisher has delayed the editing and release of my novel because of my sluggish progress in creating advance "buzz."

I'm posting here in search of a reality check. Is there something about this whole social media thing that I'm missing? Am I just incredibly thick in the head? Am I too stupid or stubborn or whiny to be able to market my own wonderful book?

My biggest mental stumbling block, in regards to my publisher's marketing methodology, is the idea of using a plot's tropes or a main character's quirks as hooks for reaching out to potential fans. This is the cornerstone of their entire program. The list of your manuscript's hooks is the basis for everything from which social media groups to join, what subjects of blogs to write, what to tweet, and where to make personal appearances. For example, if you have a detective novel where your main character drives classic automobiles from the 1950s, then put your marketing efforts into finding classic car lovers. Or, if you have a romance with characters who ride motorcycles, then market to motorcycle riders.

My problem is that I write high epic fantasy. I am at an utter loss for promotional ideas because my novel is set in a wholly original universe that I have spent 15+ years world building from scratch. I don't have any of the familiar things like vampires, zombies, werewolves, elves, fairies, dragons, etc. I have my own unique cosmology and magic system. So, how do I reach out to ordinary readers in the ordinary world? Okay, my main character smokes a pipe (a'la Gandalf) so do I reach out to pipe smoker groups?

 

[tinkerdan]

It's great to be original and have original content::

Hi,

My problem is that I write high epic fantasy. I am at an utter loss for promotional ideas because my novel is set in a wholly original universe that I have spent 15+ years world building from scratch. I don't have any of the familiar things like vampires, zombies, werewolves, elves, fairies, dragons, etc. I have my own unique cosmology and magic system. So, how do I reach out to ordinary readers in the ordinary world? Okay, my main character smokes a pipe (a'la Gandalf) so do I reach out to pipe smoker groups?

::Unfortunately it's a bit backwards to do all that without first looking at the genre and finding out what is selling right now. Perhaps in a few years your will be selling or maybe it will take off like wildfire. But the best way would be to start with what does sell, which accounts for the advertising department leaning heavily in that direction.

I used Xlibris and though I was happy with most of what they do for you I paid for them to do the press release and a few other minor advertising parts before committing to any real advertisement from them and I'm glad I did. For the press release they had a questionnaire about many of the aspects of the story and I answered those as honestly and close to the genre as I could. Much of what they came up with for the press release was almost direct quotes from my answers and then some pretentious description to lead into the whole thing that rang just a bit false to both my writing and the story and even possibly the genre.

For the press release they did a very large fax campaign from which numbers I gleaned that they were mostly treated like fax spam and ignored.

So to be honest If your book is edited well and formatted properly I would not invest in having the POD people do much more than the cursory press release and book stubs and such and work on my own campaign.

As to the internet presence that parts a mystery to me because you either have something that catches a lot of peoples attention or you just have a lot of time spent talking mostly to the air. Sometimes it takes a few months or years to get a following. But I don't do an excessive amount of self promotion of things like facebook and twitter and that might make a difference[I wouldn't know.] Then again there are people who have thousands of reviews for their books and I don't have that either.

Oddly some of my favorite traditional authors have indicated that when they first started they had to do a lot of self promotion that to them seemed like spinning their wheels but at least the three people that bought their first book are still great fans. They still find they have to do a lot of self promotion.

I don't think it's wrong for them to ask you to have a presence on the internet.

But having a presence and being a presence are two different things and it takes some work to be a presence on the internet.