I’ve been working in small business since 1988, and I always seem to end up in a marketing role, whether that’s designing brochures, writing ad copy, laying out artwork or knocking up websites. Therefore, treating my own books as a product to be promoted comes naturally to me. In fact, I thrive on the challenge.

I spend a fair bit of money giving away many copies of my books, which I believe is the most effective form of promotion. Sure, posting a book overseas costs as much as a fistful of bookmarks, postcards or other widgets, but what’s the chance someone will just throw a free book away?

As an example, this is what I ended up with:
http://www.spacejock.com.au/HalNotify.html

The other point is that I’m writing a series of books, not standalones, and if I get someone hooked there are other titles in the same series for them to buy & read. (I’m just putting the finishing touches to Hal Spacejock #4 - No Free Lunch - and already have books 5 and 6 planned out.)

If you’re a series author, then promo could be the difference between obscurity and slightly less obscurity. And don’t we all lust for the latter?

Nope, I’ll be writing my next book.

But author promoing directly to readers has a different function. Given that the #2 reason people buy a particular book is friend-recommendation (#1 is that they liked the author’s previous work), what a writer needs is a critical mass of “seed readers”–people willing to try a book by someone they never heard of.

I agree with this. The critical mass of readers, and a degree of name recognition, are what really count. It’s true, of course, that you’re not going to make sales to every person you talk or read to. Maybe only a fraction of them. But if they tell their friends, and if they recognise your name, you’re building an audience.

As to whether a few hundred extra sales makes a difference, well, that depends on how big your print run is. If your print run is 100,000, it doesn’t make a jot of difference. If your print run is 5,000, it certainly does. If it means fewer returns from bookstores, then you’re building your chances for your next book, and so on. And, of course, you want people to read your books, right? That’s why you wrote them? I’m happy every time anyone reads one of my stories.

Of course, if your publisher is promoting you heavily, all you need to do is go along with it. If they’re not, are you really going to just sigh and wait for fate?

There’s also a big difference between three copies of a book on the shelf and ten or twenty copies. Sell-through can never be 100% because (a) the fewer copies of a book on the shelf, the less noticable it is, and (b) readers recognize, at least subliminally, that “popular” books have more copies available. Aggregate is eye-catching.

But author promoing directly to readers has a different function. Given that the #2 reason people buy a particular book is friend-recommendation (#1 is that they liked the author’s previous work), what a writer needs is a critical mass of “seed readers”–people willing to try a book by someone they never heard of. Ideally the readers fall in love with this book and start pressing it on all their friends, reviewing it on their blog, using it as an example in literary discussions. With enough of these people, you get a repeat-echo effect, which works much like the “many copies on the shelf” effect: If we’re seeing it a lot, it must be worth checking out, say readers.

Buzz comes in different flavors. So does success. Sometimes authors hit big on their first novel. More commonly (particularly in the reader-driven genre markets), they build a following over the course of several books. The slow build is usually the result of savvy readers liking the books. When that number gets high enough, the pub house adds their push, in order to find the less-savvy readers who never go further than the “New Books!” display at the front of the store.

In the first six months of my first book I sold an average of 75 copies a day every day. That earned out my advance plus ten percent. This is fabulous and I’m delighted. But in order to have any real impact on sales I’d need to find something that would improve that by a minimum of something like ten books per day every day for a similar period. To have a career that will allow me to survive without a second job or a spouse who is the primary source of income and insurance I would need to sell at least 150 books a day every day for the rest of my life +inflation. To make a decent living I’d need to make that something more like 300 books a day. To crack six figures it’d have to be ~800 books a day.

That’s all mass market paperback. Trade or hardcover is going to change the numbers, but 300 books or even 3,000 is a really small number in comparison to the scale of a writing career.

What if they’re putting it out there and then seeing what happens? How much do *you* want your book to succeed?

The thing I want to know is, do any of the marketing efforts of a lone author make a difference in how the publishing house perceives the book’s success?

I tend to think not. Those individual reaching-out-to-readers moves by authors are going to result in how many more book sales? Hundreds? Is that enough to make a difference? The editor might note the effort and appreciate it, but let’s face it, 300 more books sold is not going to matter that much when we’re talking about the house’s bottom line.

Self promotion seems to me a good way for authors to maintain this illusion that they have control over their writing careers.

There, that’s worms all over the place.

Publishers want to earn back their expenditure, of course, and they’d love you to be an explosive success, but they’re not going to put in the kind of money to each book that would ensure it. It doesn’t make financial success to them.

I think there’s a lot you can do, though, beyond the bookmarks/magnets/postcards thing. If you’re a children’s author, you can go to schools and libraries. If you’re writing adult sff you can go to cons and get involved in online communities. You can do promotion on Youtube and the like. You can think up angles that might get you local news coverage. And so on. None of it will pay for itself directly, but it builds your profile and helps you get that closer to the buzz you need. The chances are no one else will be doing this kind of stuff for you.

Can never have too many bookmarks, they seem to vanish faster than socks or pens. Which might mean not so good for advertising, though.

Is it worth spending time on a website/blog that at a minimum has a bibliography or occasional update? Yeah, that has sold me stuff. You aren’t going to reach lots of us with any of the above. Eric Flint writes about in JBU how obscure the book market is. He is right. This sort of thing absolutely helps.

Blogger etc. is free, so meets the ‘free’ rule mentioned above.