Marketing the Old-Fashioned Way

My guest today is Sherrie Hansen, author of Night and Day published by Second Wind Publishing, LLC. Sherri writes:

So you’ve written a wonderful book. Friends and family who’ve read it rave about how good it is.  Now all you have to do is to figure out how to get it into the hands of the hundreds and thousands of other people who you know would enjoy it.

Marketing your book can be far more intimidating than writing it – especially for a writer who is more introvert than extrovert. For me, it is not so much the lack of courage, but lack of time that comes into play.

Whatever your reason for not getting your book out there, conquering a few easy marketing strategies can make the difference between your book being a success and not.

I’m not a marketing expert by any means, but I’ve owned and operated a fairly successful bed and breakfast and tea house for 17 years, and I have learned quite a bit about promoting a product. Here are a few ideas that I’ve come up with for marketing my recent release, Night and Day, that I hope you’ll be able to adapt and use to market your own books. 

(Note:  In this article, I will concentrate on old-fashioned, non-internet marketing ideas. )

1.  A couple of weeks ago, I personally visited several grocery stores and specialty shops in my area with a book in hand to let them know about Night and Day. One shop owner handed me cash right then and there and said they’d call when they needed more books. They’ve already called to order 2 more. Other shop owners seemed more skeptical, and wanted to have the books, but on consignment.

One woman wasn’t there when I stopped by, so I left a book for her to take a look at. When I returned a week later, she had read half of it, and was  saying things like, “What are you doing living in St. Ansgar, Iowa? You should be in New York City writing full time – you have such a knack for this! The book is wonderful! I love it!” and “If I don’t get my Easter ham in the oven, it’s going to be your fault. I can’t put this book down!”

While not everyone is going to react to your book with such enthusiasm, all it takes is one person – in a store, a community, an area, and the word is going to get out. Word of mouth is always the best advertising. Giving away a few books to people you think might be good cheerleaders might really pay off.

2.  I also sent out a letter to a dozen or two shops in areas mentioned in my book. For Night and Day, I targeted Scandinavian specialty shops, quilting shops, and book stores in areas of Minnesota mentioned in the book, as well as areas of Iowa and California with high concentrations of Danish settlers. So far, I have only had one positive response, but it was definitely worth my time. And, once I follow up with a personal visit (I’m planning to head to Red Wing, Welch, Cannon Falls and Blooming Prairie, MN as soon as I have more books, and a free day.)  I hope to land a few more placements for my book. You can find email and mailing addresses online if you visit the chamber of commerce pages for the community you’re targeting.

3.  Offer to do a book signing at the shop’s next sale, open house, or special event. Shop owners are always looking for ways to attract a few more customers. Some shops have wine tastings, or craft demos, or participate in community celebrations. Ask if you can come to their next event and be part of the excitement. Everyone I spoke to reacted enthusiastically to this idea. I’ve even been invited to do a book signing at the Book Loft in Solvang, CA next January when we’re out on the West Coast. It might have something to do with the fact that I offer to bring a plate of Melting Moments (a little Danish butter cookie my family has always made) with me when I come.  A unique slant can catch their attention.

4.  Woman’s groups and clubs, church groups, community groups, most any kind of group enjoy special speakers. I’ve been on several committees, and it’s a constant challenge to find someone to speak at our monthly meetings. Prepare a 10 – 15 minute long talk on some aspect of your experience, and contact libraries, churches, friends, community centers, senior citizen centers, and let them know you’re available. Odds are, they’ll be delighted, and you’ll soon have an opportunity to present your book to a captive audience! I will be speaking to a local writer’s group this Friday at 10 a.m., and another, in the next town over, sometime next month.

5.  Send out press releases to area newspapers, radio and television stations. Include a blurb, a bio, a photo, a list of places your book is available, and hopefully, a slant that makes your story unique. A unique slant might be how you were discovered, how the story ties in with a local legend or current event, or what inspired you to write the book in the first place. Most of them will go in the trash, but if even one picks up the story (who doesn’t love a “local girl or guy done good” story?), it will have been worth your while. I taped my first radio interview yesterday, for a station in Atlantic, Iowa, a large Danish community a couple of hours south of here. Who knows what will come of it?

6.  Offer your book as an auction item or special prize for your favorite charity, a church bazaar, or a local contest. Most places will also let you leave a stack of business cards or book marks to maximize your exposure.

I’m sure there are many other ideas that you can use to market your books, but hopefully, this short list will jog your creative impulses and help you get started. If not, make a list of what kind of people you think would enjoy your book (who is your target customer?) and where you are most likely to reach them.  Then, make a list of each place, area, craft, hobby, or profession mentioned (hopefully in a positive light) in your book, and start thinking about how you can market to those niches.

You HAVE written a wonderful book. Now it’s time to tell the world!

One Introvert’s Guide to Reading at Book Signings

My guest today is Mairead Walpole, a somewhat introverted project manager who has 20+ years of business and technical writing under her belt. In her spare time, Mairead reviews books for Crystal Reviews and writes paranormal romance. Her first novel, A Love Out of Time is available through Second Wind Publishing. Mairead writes:

When Mike at Second Wind Publishing asked me to attend a book signing over Valentine’s Day Weekend, my initial thought after the “how cool is this?” was “oh [bleep] – that means I have to speak in public.”

The whole concept of self-promotion is a difficult one for me because it requires a certain amount of extroversion and I am not the most outgoing of individuals. Contrary to what people who know me in my professional life may think, I am not a natural extrovert – it is a learned behavior. I tend to avoid being front and center so the thought of public speaking is right up there with having an un-anesthetized root canal, or swimsuit shopping. Ironically, much as my introverted soul hates it, I am told that I am quite good at it. The profession of “my alter ego” (project management) requires the ability to speak in front of groups at all levels of a corporation, so I have learned to mask my absolute terror fairly well. 

In an effort to help my fellow introverts, the following are some tips and tricks that I adapted from the corporate world to apply to book signings. 

1.  Choose your book excerpts carefully.

Pick out several short excerpts from your novel that will not require a great deal of preliminary set-up for your audience. Make sure that the excerpt has enough of a hook or “punch” to it to leave your audience wanting more. The goal is to make them want to buy the book to see what happens next. 

2.  Practice reading the sections aloud prior to the event.

Practicing will increase your awareness of any editing errors, or tricky phrasing, that could trip you up during the reading. It will also help you gauge how long the reading will take. Recent research has indicated that the average attention span for a literate adult is around 12 minutes and maxes out at 20 minutes. Continuous attention span is significantly lower, coming in around 30 seconds. Use my personal definition of the K.I.S.S. principle: Keep It Short & Sizzling. 

3.  Read slowly.

Speaking quickly will not get you back in your seat any faster. You will be more likely to trip over words and feel the need to stop and re-read sections. You will also lose your audience because their focus will shift from your story to trying to keep up. 

4.  Breathe.

Sounds silly, but one of the main causes of a “shaky voice” is from shallow breathing. Reading at a slow pace will give you a chance to breathe. Take a breath at the natural breaks – commas, semi-colons, colons, periods and prepositional phrases. Your voice will be stronger, you will have time to use your voice to emphasize points, and your audience will have a chance to absorb your words. 

5.  Eye Contact. If looking at your audience is going to render you mute, don’t.

I know this sounds contrary to what most public speaking training will tell you, but a book reading is a bit different. People expect you to be reading to them. When you are done reading, make sure that you look directly at your audience letting your eyes rest on each quadrant of the room, smile, then thank them for their time. 

If you can look at your audience from time to time on the natural breaks or page turns, try to do so because it does help you connect to them. A trick for making eye contact is to direct your gaze at a point just above the eyebrows of a person in each quadrant of the room. You will appear to be making personal eye contact with anyone in that quadrant but minimize the risk of losing your rhythm by being “eye-locked” with someone. 

Public speaking is like most things in life, the more you do it the better and more comfortable you will become. Good luck and have fun!

What Are You Doing to Promote Yourself? How Are You Creating Name Recognition?

This article was written by marketing consultant Sia McKye.

Your book is published, either by a traditional publisher, or a POD publisher, now what?  How do we build a reader base?  How do we get our name out there?  Even if you don’t have a book published yet, what can you do to get your name out there before hand? 

Promotion is a bit different than publicity.  Publicity is largely free.  Most of what I mention here is publicity.  Promotion/Marketing is something you usually have to put out money for-sometimes you will get some funds from your publisher for that, other times it’s out of your advance from the publisher.  Some authors pay a fees for certain industry website Ads, or a Bookseller’s list.  Taking an Ad out in Regional and National papers, or in a magazine.  Doing a tour of book signings. 

I have friends that have been published, both non-fiction and fiction.  Dr. Sy Garte, author of, Where We Stand: A Surprising Look at the Real State of Our Planet, made an interesting observation,  “I have gone through this with a non fiction book. Here is what I learned. Most [publishing] houses have a dozen or so books coming out at once. The publicity department is always overwhelmed. If you are a new author, they might not invest the same time as they do for an established author…don’t expect too much marketing investment for a first book, but try to push for as much as you can.” 

Dr. Garte’s book is non-fiction, and much of what he says is from his experience as a published author within that arena, but the information, from what I’m hearing from published fiction authors, is true for both fiction and non-fiction markets.  Bottom line here is that as a new author you will be spending a great deal of time doing both publicity and marketing for your book.  This will be almost full-time on your part for at least the month before and two to three months after release. The more contacts you have the better.  

Building a reader base, and getting name recognition is a must.  Blogging, industry website presence, personal author websites, and to a certain extent, social networks are a good start.  This is where an unpublished author can start building name recognition.  Do you have a book trailer?  Where can a reader see it?  On your personal website?  YouTube?  

Networking also includes, local libraries-get your books in the general area Public libraries.  This can be done by donation.  High School libraries are the same although some are extensions of the public library.  Look at your local newspapers can you ask for a review of your book.  Gina Robinson, author of Spy Candy, mentioned Book Reading Groups.  Getting the lists for those would be advantageous.  Ms. Robinson told me she also signed up on booktour.com to promote her various book signings.  She’s also sent out hundreds of post cards listing Spy Candy’s release and for upcoming scheduled book signings, to every contact she can think of.  Judi Fennell, author of In Over Her Head, uses RWA conferences and functions to get her face and name known, she has entered numerous contests and done very well-in addition to her website and blog. 

Don’t discount friends and family in your networking.  Many of them are proud of your accomplishments and would be willing to pass out your bookmarks-which should have the cover picture, a blurb, author website address, and your publisher website.  An important piece of information to include is where readers’ can purchase your book.  Are you on Amazon, Borders, and Barnes and Noble?  Bookmarks should be colorful to catch the eye.  If you get promotion books from your publisher, which most authors do, whether they are published traditionally or POD, send them out to your personal network to promote for you-especially, if they live in another part of the country. 

There are even small community papers that allow a person to write an article.  Authors should use their writing abilities here too.  Then there are the local radio stations that give free spots for community people and talk shows that will give locals some time for interviews and plugging of our books. Authors need to be aware of these venues. 

Local bookstores can be approached with books in hand and your bookmarks.  Are there other local authors in your area?  Could you approach a bookstore with the idea of a local author’s book signing?  Once we get our foot in the door, it will snowball. 

So what are you doing to get your name recognized?  What successes are you seeing?

The Most Important Word in Book Marketing

A small town near where I live does a big spread in the county newspaper every December with ads from all the stores under the headline, “Shop Locally.” A nice sentiment, but that’s all it is. Why? There is no “because.” The merchants give no one a reason to shop locally. If they said the prices were lower, the merchandise unique, the stores specially decorated, or even that the clerks were friendly, people would be more willing to spend their Christmas dollars in those places, but as it is, all the merchants are saying is “shop here” and nothing more.

“Because” is the most important word in marketing, and that goes for books, too. You tell your friend, “You have to read this book because . . .” Without a because, the plea to read is just that, an empty plea.

Nonfiction is easy. “You have to read this book because it tells you how you can get rid of that big lump on your neck without cutting off your head.” (Okay, a silly example, but you get the point.) Fiction is harder. Saying, “buy my book because it’s a romance like every other romance you’ve ever read only different,” might work. But what if you don’t have a romance?

Two of my novels are being released next month by Second Wind Publishing, and I’ve been trying to figure out the becauses.

Buy More Deaths Than One because . . .

Buy A Spark of Heavenly Fire because . . .

And that’s as far as I got. My books don’t easily fit into a genre, which is the type of book I like, but when it comes to selling them, it’s a drawback. So I have to look to the story to find the because.

More Deaths Than One: Bob Stark returns home after 18 years in Southeast Asia to discover that the mother he buried before he left is dead again. He attends her funeral and sees himself married to his college girlfriend. Is his other self a hoaxer or a doppelganger, or is something more sinister going on? Even worse, two men who appear to be government agents are hunting him for no reason that he can fathom. With the help of a Kerry Casillas, a baffling young woman Bob meets in a coffee shop, he uncovers the unimaginable truth.

A Spark of Heavenly Fire: In quarantined Colorado, where hundreds of thousands of people are dying from an unstoppable disease called the red death, insomniac Kate Cummings struggles to find the courage to live and to love. Her new love, investigative reporter Greg Pullman, is determined to discover the truth behind the red death at all costs, until the cost – Kate’s safety – becomes more than he can pay.

The because is in there somewhere. I just have to find it.

The End of the Book Business As We Know It?

The New York Magazine published an article that began: the book business as we know it will not be living happily ever after. With sales stagnating, CEO heads rolling, big-name authors playing musical chairs, and Amazon looming as the new boogeyman, publishing might have to look for its future outside the corporate world. It is a very long article, but well worth reading if you are interested in the book business. What might be bad for big publishing might be good for independent publishers. Click here to read the article.

Claire Collins, author of Images of Betrayal and Fate & Destiny, both published by newcomer Second Wind Publishing, has this to say about the article (Collins’ remarks are in bold, excerpts from the magazine are in Italics):

Great article. Very long but good. The main points I got from it are as follows: 

A new imprint mentioned on the first page says they will “Have fewer authors and sell more books.” They will be publishing 2 books a month, with 25 authors signed up. And one of the “authors” is 50 Cent? and the other is a cookbook? This is what they think people want to read? 50 Cent is already out of date and do people really care what a dirty rapper has to say? The people who do care . . . can’t read. And isn’t the market already totally full of cookbooks? Any time I want a recipe, I look online. I don’t see this as being the future of book publishing.

The article says :

The astonishing success of Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain led to a bidding war for his second book, which Grove/Atlantic editor Morgan Entrekin lost with great regret to Ann Godoff at Random House’s eponymous imprint (known as Little Random). Lucky him. The price tag, more than $8 million, might well have sunk Grove, one of the few biggish independent houses left, because Frazier’s follow-up, Thirteen Moons, sold less than 500,000 copies, according to BookScan. Ann Godoff was fired not long after the deal was made. “It is possible they broke Little Random’s neck,” says one agent. “Frazier’s wife will not have the luxury to buy another racehorse.”

This is why the rest of us get rejected.

He wrote ONE book that sold . . . ONE.

And the second one was a flop

All of these publishers are thinking they’re getting the next Harry Potter series and it’s not up to them. It’s up to the buyers and the public. When they get an author who does well once, they jump all over them thinking the author can do it every time. The expectations keep rising beyond what can be achieved.

The article says:

Why weren’t publishers elated? What’s wrong with a company that returns only 10 percent of the books it buys and might eventually eliminate the cost of print production? Well, it doesn’t help that Amazon, which has been on an intense buying spree (print-on-demanders BookSurge; book networking site Shelfari), lists publishers as its competitors in SEC filings. Editors and retailers alike fear that it’s bent on building a vertical publishing business-from acquisition to your doorstep-with not a single middleman in sight. No HarperCollins, no Borders, no printing press. Amazon has begun to do end runs around bookstores with small presses. Two new bios from Lyons Press, about Michelle Obama and Cindy McCain, are going straight-to-Kindle long before publication.

This means the big corporate publishers won’t survive because their overhead is too high, and it’s too high because they pay their lead staff outrageous sums just like they pay in some of their advances. You can’t survive like that. The small publishers, POD, and self-publishing will thrive. From the printer to the buyers doorstep. That’s exactly what we are doing now. Now it would really help if the cost of printing could come down.

In regards to the Kindle:

But Amazon may be offering a sweet deal now in order to undercut publishers later. If their low, low prices succeed in making e-books the dominant medium, they can pay publishers whatever they want. “The concern is they want to corner the market,” explains one books executive, and then force publishers to accept a genuine 50 percent discount. “If they took over as little as 10 to 20 percent of the market,” says an agent, “publishers simply would not be able to exist.”

 Of course they are. Amazon wants a $400 Kindle in every hand, and that price will lower over time. They want to be to the book world what Ipod is to the music world. 

What does the article say about the future of publishing?

Miller has worked out separate contracts, co-op and all, with booksellers and authors-capping advances at $100,000 and reducing returns. Their list now includes not just 50 Cent but Michael Eisner, his former boss at Hyperion; John Lithgow (a memoir); and Isabella Rossellini adapting her short-film series on bug sex. All these authors will contribute to their own pre-publication marketing.

Miller doesn’t wait for agent submissions, instead accosting writers at conferences, telling them how much more a writer can make under 50-50 profit sharing. He’s even throwing in something literary, 22 previously unpublished stories by Mark Twain, who, Miller points out, ran a profit-sharing publisher that made a killing on Ulysses S. Grant’s memoirs. “If he were alive, this is exactly the deal he’d want,” Miller says brightly.

Profit sharing may very well be an option for Second Wind Publishing once it gets past the start up phase. When it gets rolling, our future can be wide open since we aren’t funding the fat wallets of stockholders and CEO’s. Just the publisher, at least for now.

Other industry folk, while supportive, note that precious few writers-except those with trust funds-would forgo advances, and that it generally works best for those who have a pre-existing fan base that will gobble up their books. As for Miller’s other key ingredients, profit-sharing is not a new concept, and online marketing is catching on everywhere.

Yet again, this is what those of us who are published by small presses do. This is the whole key that the industry doesn’t understand, and this is why they are going to fail. Writers WILL forgo advances except for when they know that the publisher paid the last author that million dollar advance. Then, they ALL want that. But if we look at how many people not only forgo advances but PAY to have their books published, then it refutes the claims of the “industry folk”. They are completely out of touch with the public. Who decided that we care what 50 Cent thinks or that we need another cookbook? The same people who think writers won’t produce good books without six figure advances.

One indie publisher has been pitching an imprint around town that would go beyond what Miller’s doing-expanding into print-on-demand, online subscriptions, maybe even a “salon” for loyal readers. He envisions a transitional period of print-on-demand, then an era in which most books will be produced electronically for next to nothing, while high-priced, creatively designed hardcovers become “the limited-edition vinyl of the future.” “I think they know it’s right,” the publisher says of the executives he’s wooing, “but they don’t want to disrupt the internal equilibrium. I’m like the guy all the girls want to be friends with but won’t hop into bed with.”

Of course the big publishers don’t want to hear what this guy is saying. They’re all on the verge of not existing and they know it’s true.

But going back in time isn’t an option. A hundred Bennett Cerfs wouldn’t save the current publishing model-not without a hundred Bob Millers puzzling out the way forward, unhampered by fear or complacency. The kind of targeted, curated lists editors would love to publish will work even better in an electronic, niche-driven world, if only the innovators can get them there. Those owners who are genuinely interested in the industry’s long-term survival would do well to hire scrappy entrepreneurs at every level, people who think like underdogs.

This is us again. We’re the underdogs. We don’t have the product placement advertising and we can’t pay to have our books dropped by the front door of Borders.

And think about how hard we are all working at writing and getting our books out there. The authors who are getting the huge advances and selling books no matter what they do aren’t working at it as hard anymore. Because people will buy their books just because of whose name is on it. But readers will only get burned so often before they do stop buying them.