Book Promotion: What’s Hot, What’s Not
By Sophie Masson | September 10, 2018 |
Flickr Creative Commons: Thad Zajowicz
These days there are so many ways of promoting a book—yet also so many chances of that book not being noticed at all in the flood of promotion that washes over people daily. So as an author, what do you do? In this post I’m listing a few things that have worked—and not worked—for me. These are very personal observations of course; you may have had a totally different experience.
What’s hot:
Cover reveals on social media—accompanied by an intriguing ‘tag.’ These can start a buzz well before publication.
What’s not:
Book trailers on You Tube or similar channels. Heaps of fun to make but in terms of effects on sales, pretty much nil. You don’t get half as many people looking at them, compared to cover reveals. However, as long as they don’t cost you heaps of money and time to make, there’s no reason to not do it as it can be a nice adjunct.
What’s hot:
Interviews with local radio stations—a brilliant promotion, in my experience, although that may be because at our local radio station there are at least two presenters interested in books and publishing. They and their producers are very keen on local publishing/literary news stories. I have had many people over the years say they went to their local bookshop to find a book I’d spoken about on radio. If you have a similarly engaged presenter on local radio, cultivate them; it’s really worth it.
And by the way in my experience local TV can be good but is hard to get on board.
Book launch for ‘Jules Verne’s Mikhail Strogoff’. Photo by Sophie Masson
What’s not:
Blog tours. Great for the bloggers but a fairly large amount of work and time-consuming for the author doing the tour—as either you have to write separate guest posts or answer interview questions over the whole tour. And you can’t just recycle the same guest post, of course, or insist on the same interview questions. My experience is that the payoff in book recognition isn’t necessarily there, especially given the amount of work you have to do.
However, interviews/posts on blogs often work really well. I just think it’s better, for an author, to restrict them to one or two blogs at a time for any one book.
What’s hot:
In-person visits to schools and libraries. These small, single-author events often work much better, in my experience, than being included along with a whole lot of other authors in a festival program. Poets have long known that performance poetry events are a great place to sell books: it’s the same for authors in other genres. I like to get in touch with the local bookshop in the place I’m visiting, to see if they want to come along to the event and sell books: this is a good way of not only avoiding having to cart large numbers of books with you, but also the bookshop will continue selling them afterwards, as they have had the personal contact with you.
What’s not:
Facebook and Twitter ads. You might get thousands of ‘likes’ but not a single sale out of them; ‘organic’ or unpaid-for posts are much better, especially if you angle them less like ads and more human interest—with good photos! Instagram is a good option too, but only around photos and just a few intriguing words—not too promotey-sounding either.
What’s hot:
Reviews in good print and online journals, magazines and blogs. And good early reviews can be used as part of promotion for the book.
What’s not:
Don’t expect too much from local newspaper pieces about your new book. Unlike with radio interviews, for some reason, though people will often say they saw it in the paper, it doesn’t seem to unleash a ‘get thee to a bookshop’ type of reaction. Perhaps, as far as traditional media is concerned, the radio interview more closely resembles the ‘word of mouth’ or ‘viral’ effect that is the Holy Grail of promotion. However don’t let that put you off doing newspaper interviews—they are fun and are good to have on hand if you are putting together a promotions scrapbook.
What’s hot:
In-person book launches. They are still a lovely way to celebrate the book with your family and friends—worth organising for yourself: even if your publisher isn’t doing one, they can usually help with posters, flyers etc, electronic or print. You can also have a virtual launch of course but I’ve never organised one or found them satisfactory to attend. You may well have a different experience of course.
What’s not:
Book signings, unconnected with a launch—you rarely get enough people coming, unless it’s for an event.
What’s hot:
Posts on your own blog, if you have one, about the story behind the book—readers like to know not only about the inspiration but the process. I have found that making sure my blog has a mix of stuff about my own books and other people’s, and interviews not only with creators but also publishing professionals, brings in a lot of readers. Doing that makes the blog feel a lot less like self-promotion and more about being involved in the wider literary/publishing landscape. And that’s a lot more fun!
What’s not:
Flooding your social media networks—Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, whatever—with promotional posts about your books. People stop looking after a while.
Over to you: What’s your experience of book promotion, and do you have any other tips for what’s hot and what’s not?
Born in Indonesia of French parents, and brought up in France and Australia, Sophie Masson is the award-winning author of over 70 books for children, young adults and adults. Her latest books include Sydney under Attack (children’s historical novel, Scholastic Australia, 2022) A Hundred Words for Butterfly (adult novella, ES-Press, 2022) and Cock-a-doodle-doo (children’s picture book, (illustrated by Kathy Creamer, little Pink Dog Books, 2022). In 2019, Sophie received an AM (Member, General Division) award in the Order of Australia honours list.
Great info! Thank you!!
Sophie, thanks for sharing your wisdom and experience. This post is a keeper.
Thanks for sharing and being brave enough to say a lot of “current” marketing advice to authors doesn’t work.
I do question the in-person visits to libraries as beneficial, but that could be a geographic difference. It only seems to work for the “huge” authors.
I don’t agree that Facebook ads don’t work. They can be very effective when done well.
Sophie, wonderful tips. Thank you. I am just now beginning to learn about book promotion. I’ve not done much in the past besides a couple of local school visits and readings/signings at book-shops, but now that I have a self-published title, I’m discovering that it’s a lot more difficult to arrange these.
Anytime you have a speaking engagement, book sales are brisk.
I agree, Sophie, that your own blog is one of the best ways to attract readers. I get sales from my short story blog where visitors can read a short story by a famous author and also discover my published short stories and novels with links to Amazon. As far as Facebook and Twitter ads, I don’t know, but I do see substantial sales from my Amazon ads for my novels. If you are going to spend money on ads, Amazon is the #1 online shopping site to target your readers (by genre especially) and it has the most traffic of readers browsing to buy books.
Thanks for a great summary, Sophie.
About library and bookseller visits: Another mystery writer in my area and I have found that shared events work better than solo events, especially now that we’ve each got several books out and some of the local excitement has diminished, even as sales across the country grow. We bring in more people and get quite a few cross-over sales to each other’s readers.
In my subgenre, cozy mystery, the blog tour is still popular with some publishers, but like you, I’ve come to question its value, and will likely limit it significantly for the next release. Also in mystery, the group blog — such as Mystery Lovers’ Kitchen or Jungle Red Writers — remains a strong draw for readers.
Thank you so much for your post, Sophie. I love articles that are specific and down to earth. There is so much buzz about marketing and platform, etc. that it’s very helpful to get a glimpse of the true effectiveness of these tactics.
Great post! Good tips! Thank you!
Very interesting and hot post! :)
Great post and spot-on. I did a blog tour and didn’t think it worthwhile, as well as some self-organized readings; 2 of which were in libraries by the way and only had 3 people show up. My focus now is on events like fall fairs/Christmas Craft shows, etc. These events are always great because I’m usually the only author and people are there to shop – even when they don’t actually buy, they love to stop and chat and take away my card (and later I’ve seen ebook sales)
Good summary, and very much in line with what we’ve experienced. So nice to read about the experiences of others and realize we’re not outliers, LOL!
In the same arena as radio interviews are podcast interviews. They yield decent results and writers can often find a podcast that is niche-specific or genre-specific.
Book launches that work best are book launches that celebrate themes. For instance, someone mentioned doing events with a mystery writer, so a book launch for one of those writers could be a whodunit dinner party, which would be fun for the guests and could attract more people than a “buy my book” party.
I just spoke to an author who says that Amazon ads work better than Facebook and Twitter ads. She swears by them. Does anyone here second that? I’ve never created Amazon ads so I really can’t say yay or nay on this one.
I’m happy to see that Library visits and school visits are still in the “hot” category LOL. 4 years ago I wrote bilingual children’s books. I hosted storytime had a few libraries, and put together short language-learning workshops. Parents responding well to me and we’re interested in my books. The library was interested in my books as well and purchased copies.
School visits were also pretty great. Authors should remember to give something to the kids they can take home, like a bookmark, anything a child can give to their parents, or anything that will allow an older kid ( high school) to purchase an ebook from their phone.
Thank you for the great list. Some of which I found in my experiences as well and some I never tried.
Thank you, Sophie! So many promotional ideas are a time suck, so your insight is valuable!