Marketing Success and Failure

Source

I’m not a marketing genius. I’ll be the first to admit it. If I could, I'd lock myself up in my writing space and do just that…write. Forget the promotions, the marketing, and the business end of things. In hindsight, I’m thinking I should have forgone the Communications minor in undergraduate school and taken up Marketing instead, but there’s that whole 20/20 stuff for ya.

Life as an Indie writer requires a little…how do I say this?...business savvy. Like many other authors, the whole marketing thing is like conducting a chemistry experiment (by someone who knows little about chemicals, or science in general).

Here’s What’s Worked (and to date, it’s not much)

Free ebooks: I know there’s the controversy over why an author would work so hard, so diligently, just to give his or her work away. And I get that. I don't want to give books away that I poured years of my life into. But…it’s worked for me. For reviews and for sales. Without the free, I wouldn’t have reached some of the readership I have.

Word of Mouth: Don’t be afraid to tell people you write. Believe me, I’m shy. I hate drawing attention to myself. But receiving attention is what we need as authors. I have author (with links to my blog and my books) in my email signature, which has alerted people in my town and in cyber space that I do more than work in a school. “Hey, you write?” People I know are excited about this. They buy my books. They spread the word. And they talk about me as author. They may also talk about me in other capacities, but that’s not where I’m going with this.

Hasn’t Worked

Free paperbacks: On Goodreads the number of people who’ve added my books has been noteworthy. But most of those people have something like—I don’t know—2,345 books already on their TBR lists. I don’t think mine is necessarily at the top.

Blog Tours: Only worked for my debut novel. Now it’s cliché. Old. I know I, as a reader, do not put much merit in other authors’ blog tours anymore. It’s overdone. My twenty-first century attention span (which is somewhere in the realm of two minutes) cannot tolerate the blog tours anymore.

KDP Select: A waste of 90 days. It truly is the relationship that looks all gorgeous and amazing on the outside. But it doesn’t return your phone calls and eventually looks at other women (ones who are more endowed—with sales potential, that is). Don’t waste your time.

Social Media: Especially FB and Twitter. Useless for anything other than social interactions. I don’t want to have your book crammed down my throat when I’m trying to find out what my friend from Racine, WI is doing in her life. I know you don’t want to see mine over and over again in your news feed either.

So that’s where my experimentation stands right now. I have a few new ideas happening right now. Marketing and writing experiments, which I plan to try out soon. Once I know whether they worked (or not), I will let you know.

Anything that’s worked well or been a total failure in marketing for you?