Do What I Say, Not What I Do

 Q: We all have to promote our work if we want to succeed, but there’s a lot of ground between hiding one’s light under a bushel and being that pushy author people hide from at events. What are your best promo ideas and what’s the most egregious hard-selling you’ve come across?

 

From Susan

 

I’m a mid-mid-list author with great professional reviews, a tiny cohort of Amazon individual reviewers, friends and readers who show up at my launch events and buy many books at the store. The bookstore likes that and always gives me a launch event. Every now and then, I get a reader’s email praising something about a book or asking me to revisit an earlier book and talk more about a detail I can’t recall, or asking when the next one in that series is coming out. Writers at conventions and conferences seem to think the advice I give (only when asked) is useful. This month, two published writers I spent time with at Left Coast Crime told me it was my suggestion that tipped their WIP to the right conclusion. Someone I worked with recently got the agent I offered to introduce them to. 

 

I’m on Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram but not really effective at any of those social media platforms if responses are any judge. I have an Amazon profile. I spent a large sum on a social media marketing platform this year that, alas, has done little or nothing for sales. In fact, on that platform, authors are advised to not only offer free books but to add gift cards, so that what we’re really doing is bribing people to accept a free book. Supposedly they will review it on Amazon, but in spite of my nice note inside the book, they rarely bother.

 

Obviously, I don’t have a lot of sparkling marketing success stories to share. Sorry. I just have well written, “witty” (reviewer) “fast-paced” (reviewer), “cleverly plotted” (reviewer) books featuring characters that blurbers and reviewers love but that are swimming in a sea of similarly good books and many not so good but cheaper books.

 

The hardest sell I was ever victim of was at a Bouchercon when I was a newcomer and was thrilled to have a best-selling novelist talk with me. That male author, who was sitting behind a table ready to sign his latest hard cover thriller, got up, walked me to the bookseller, stayed at my side, handed me his book and waved me to the cashier. I had no particular interest in it but dragged out my credit card. He then walked me back to his seat and graciously offered to sign it for me! It sits unread to this day, but I don’t get rid of it because it reminds me of what I never want to do to sell a book.

 

Lots of people make better money than I do. Most work very hard for that success. I might be more financially successful if I studied them and followed their examples completely. Maybe that’s the advice: Follow authors whose work you like and copy what they do beyond writing good books and being liked by their peers!