Be the brand
I've thought long and hard recently about marketing for writers. I'm subscribed to many publishers' mailinglists, and about 90% of all mail traffic I'm getting from those is spam. Not SPAM spam, but..."marketing". It's writers offering prizes, free books, blasting "GET MY EXCITING SEXY NEW ROMANCE TODAY!" through 15 channels, EVERY FUCKING DAY, spamming not the audience, but fellow writers. Hmmm. The same is is with people blasting "CHECK OUT MY BLOG, I WROTE SOMETHING!" messages through all those channels. Clicking on the blog, it's about as interesting as "I had coffee and I thought coffee is nice. I'm not a fan of hot chocolate. But if you like hot chocolate, I'm sure that's okay." Yawn.
The first things I did was put all the mailinglists on "daily digest". That way, I just scroll through the table of contents and delete the whole thing with one press of a button. Precious time saver. I'm not reading 150+ emails a day of people trying to push their shit into my face.
And that's the problem. It's very often...not the best stuff I've read. Like nonsensical bullshit blog posts that make no point whatsoever. I click on such links once, maybe twice ("last time she might have had a bad day"), then I ignore. The human mind is very adept at filtering information. You get my attention twice, so work with it, honey, or stop wasting my time.
This whole marketing thing is a lot like a colony of screeching birds, one screeching louder than the others. Or trying to. These people make a LOT of noise about... very often not very good writing. I have spent a few joyful evenings reading their excerpts and laughing my head off how crap like that gets published (also tells me what the state of quality control is with those publishers... I'm not submitting to those. Bad quality => bad reputation, and bad rep is not what I want).
Now, I know all these "self-marketing for authors" books and courses and gurus and guidelines and blogs say you should market your little heart out.
Thing is - fellow authors are less likely to get hyped. Secondly - there are two ways to sell books, as we've seen: marketing, and word-of-mouth. Writers that sell with huge marketing campaigns (or sitting on a rock, screeching) have sales that spike, then level off (I assume the fact they screech all the time means they have many mini-spikes). Word-of-mouth are the long-term, sustained build-ups...they just keep growing. They may start small, but they build, and keep going, and may even go viral - exploding sales OUT OF NOWHERE. With NO marketing budget behind it.
The secret to that is - write a good story. Assume you're a book-buyer. A writer has been shouting at you to "buy my sexy new romance" and you go, "oh, I like a romance, I'll give it a go." (result: one sale). The reader reads the story, the story sucks, the reader leaves a review on Amazon/Goodreads/Reader Forum: "Bought this, hated it, stay away." (result, one sale from loud marketing, that's it).
If you have a good product, that same reader will go "Read it, loved it, bought 5 for my friends and family, left a good review on Amazon/Goodreads and my five forums, and blogged about it." (result: at least 6 sales, plus word-of-mouth in full effect, leading to more sales down the line, and a boost in reputation).
So. Yeah, marketing gets the word out - but the real point of it is to gain "credibility" or "reputation". If people rave about how great you entertained them, THAT is the noise you want to hear, rather than the inane screeching of a colony of seabirds. You want to read on every book forum "OMG, this made me laugh and cry and OMG I missed the train because of this book! I can't WAIT to read more. Oh, what an author, I ordered the whole back catalogue." This beats "DON'T MISS MY SEXY NEW ROMANCE NOW!!!111!!!" by a lightyear or so.
How do you get the word out: give your book away. Give it to "multiplicators" or "opinion leaders" - those brave, brave souls who review for free, in exchange for free copies. Team up with writers, exchange books with them, build friendships, and broaden your own reading horizon. If a well-respected, high-quality writer drops a line about "wow, I loved Aleksandr Voinov's new book", that's money in the bank, gives me a warm, warm, glow (and other things), and it's just pure love. It also means I do the same *if* I honestly liked the book, otherwise I won't write anything. Your credibility and reputation are even more important. If I say I loved Erastes' or Alex Beecroft's or Bryl's or Barbara Sheridan's latest book, that is both a honest compliment from one author to the other, it tells you what style/topics I like, and builds that writer network. It's also rewarding good people for hard, honest work, and thanking them for the good time I had with their books.
This ties into the next thing: Don't control the reviews. Don't engage the reviewers. Every time I've given away a book I said to the reviewer something along the lines of: "If you like it, I'd love a review or a remark in public, but don't feel pressured into reviewing it either way. I honestly hope you like it, but I appreciate not everything I write is for all people. Thank you so much for putting the time and work in, whatever the outcome. I trust your personal integrity to tell your opinion honestly and fairly." And very important: mean it. Absolutely mean it. Don't be a glib-tongued manipulative bastard. Be honest. Be generous. Be mature.
Most of all: Be respectful. You want them to respect you, so act, at all times, like a pro. If you build a reputation for being an aggressive control-freak who jumps on people's backs when somebody says they didn't like your opening or ending or one of the characters... you fuck up your reputation. There are no secrets on the internet. Anybody googling you can come across a forum post where you were a passive-aggressive asshole.
There are many writers out there that act like whiny douchebags when reviewed. Whether the review is fair or not, doesn't matter. If you learn to take it on the chin (and gods, that's harder than squaring off against the Klitschkos) and stay gracious ("thank you for reviewing my book. I'm sorry you didn't like it. The stuff you said about the style being a bit rough... that's a good point, I'll edit it harder next time, that was my debut, and I learnt so much. I really hope you'll like the next one, BTW. So, thanks again for your hard work and your honesty.") - if you manage that, you win. You may grind your teeth. Breathe. Try to see the value in the review. They don't hate you. They just didn't like your opening/characters/style. Or maybe you didn't write the best book you could. It happens. Be professional, and you win in respect, reputation, credibility.
Never, ever give that respect away. Ever. It's your future sales. It's your equity, your capital, and that means YOU are your brand. Act like it. Be professional, but honest. Market yourself, but don't be noise, be signal. Human brains filter noise for signal. It's what we do.
Finally - write the best story you can. Every time. Every detail. Every editing pass, every time you research a fact, every time you cross-check stuff *again* will win you a reader who goes "wow, that was really polished, the author did the best they could, I loved the style, the character, the detail, the plot." No quick flips, give each single one of your stories absolutely everything you have.
If you consistently deliver, you'll build a fanbase, you'll become an "auto-buy author" (love the word), you will stand out from 95-99% of writers out there, and you will be more than a screecher in a colony of screechers - you'll be a proper author with a proper career.
The first things I did was put all the mailinglists on "daily digest". That way, I just scroll through the table of contents and delete the whole thing with one press of a button. Precious time saver. I'm not reading 150+ emails a day of people trying to push their shit into my face.
And that's the problem. It's very often...not the best stuff I've read. Like nonsensical bullshit blog posts that make no point whatsoever. I click on such links once, maybe twice ("last time she might have had a bad day"), then I ignore. The human mind is very adept at filtering information. You get my attention twice, so work with it, honey, or stop wasting my time.
This whole marketing thing is a lot like a colony of screeching birds, one screeching louder than the others. Or trying to. These people make a LOT of noise about... very often not very good writing. I have spent a few joyful evenings reading their excerpts and laughing my head off how crap like that gets published (also tells me what the state of quality control is with those publishers... I'm not submitting to those. Bad quality => bad reputation, and bad rep is not what I want).
Now, I know all these "self-marketing for authors" books and courses and gurus and guidelines and blogs say you should market your little heart out.
Thing is - fellow authors are less likely to get hyped. Secondly - there are two ways to sell books, as we've seen: marketing, and word-of-mouth. Writers that sell with huge marketing campaigns (or sitting on a rock, screeching) have sales that spike, then level off (I assume the fact they screech all the time means they have many mini-spikes). Word-of-mouth are the long-term, sustained build-ups...they just keep growing. They may start small, but they build, and keep going, and may even go viral - exploding sales OUT OF NOWHERE. With NO marketing budget behind it.
The secret to that is - write a good story. Assume you're a book-buyer. A writer has been shouting at you to "buy my sexy new romance" and you go, "oh, I like a romance, I'll give it a go." (result: one sale). The reader reads the story, the story sucks, the reader leaves a review on Amazon/Goodreads/Reader Forum: "Bought this, hated it, stay away." (result, one sale from loud marketing, that's it).
If you have a good product, that same reader will go "Read it, loved it, bought 5 for my friends and family, left a good review on Amazon/Goodreads and my five forums, and blogged about it." (result: at least 6 sales, plus word-of-mouth in full effect, leading to more sales down the line, and a boost in reputation).
So. Yeah, marketing gets the word out - but the real point of it is to gain "credibility" or "reputation". If people rave about how great you entertained them, THAT is the noise you want to hear, rather than the inane screeching of a colony of seabirds. You want to read on every book forum "OMG, this made me laugh and cry and OMG I missed the train because of this book! I can't WAIT to read more. Oh, what an author, I ordered the whole back catalogue." This beats "DON'T MISS MY SEXY NEW ROMANCE NOW!!!111!!!" by a lightyear or so.
How do you get the word out: give your book away. Give it to "multiplicators" or "opinion leaders" - those brave, brave souls who review for free, in exchange for free copies. Team up with writers, exchange books with them, build friendships, and broaden your own reading horizon. If a well-respected, high-quality writer drops a line about "wow, I loved Aleksandr Voinov's new book", that's money in the bank, gives me a warm, warm, glow (and other things), and it's just pure love. It also means I do the same *if* I honestly liked the book, otherwise I won't write anything. Your credibility and reputation are even more important. If I say I loved Erastes' or Alex Beecroft's or Bryl's or Barbara Sheridan's latest book, that is both a honest compliment from one author to the other, it tells you what style/topics I like, and builds that writer network. It's also rewarding good people for hard, honest work, and thanking them for the good time I had with their books.
This ties into the next thing: Don't control the reviews. Don't engage the reviewers. Every time I've given away a book I said to the reviewer something along the lines of: "If you like it, I'd love a review or a remark in public, but don't feel pressured into reviewing it either way. I honestly hope you like it, but I appreciate not everything I write is for all people. Thank you so much for putting the time and work in, whatever the outcome. I trust your personal integrity to tell your opinion honestly and fairly." And very important: mean it. Absolutely mean it. Don't be a glib-tongued manipulative bastard. Be honest. Be generous. Be mature.
Most of all: Be respectful. You want them to respect you, so act, at all times, like a pro. If you build a reputation for being an aggressive control-freak who jumps on people's backs when somebody says they didn't like your opening or ending or one of the characters... you fuck up your reputation. There are no secrets on the internet. Anybody googling you can come across a forum post where you were a passive-aggressive asshole.
There are many writers out there that act like whiny douchebags when reviewed. Whether the review is fair or not, doesn't matter. If you learn to take it on the chin (and gods, that's harder than squaring off against the Klitschkos) and stay gracious ("thank you for reviewing my book. I'm sorry you didn't like it. The stuff you said about the style being a bit rough... that's a good point, I'll edit it harder next time, that was my debut, and I learnt so much. I really hope you'll like the next one, BTW. So, thanks again for your hard work and your honesty.") - if you manage that, you win. You may grind your teeth. Breathe. Try to see the value in the review. They don't hate you. They just didn't like your opening/characters/style. Or maybe you didn't write the best book you could. It happens. Be professional, and you win in respect, reputation, credibility.
Never, ever give that respect away. Ever. It's your future sales. It's your equity, your capital, and that means YOU are your brand. Act like it. Be professional, but honest. Market yourself, but don't be noise, be signal. Human brains filter noise for signal. It's what we do.
Finally - write the best story you can. Every time. Every detail. Every editing pass, every time you research a fact, every time you cross-check stuff *again* will win you a reader who goes "wow, that was really polished, the author did the best they could, I loved the style, the character, the detail, the plot." No quick flips, give each single one of your stories absolutely everything you have.
If you consistently deliver, you'll build a fanbase, you'll become an "auto-buy author" (love the word), you will stand out from 95-99% of writers out there, and you will be more than a screecher in a colony of screechers - you'll be a proper author with a proper career.