Tuesday, August 20, 2013

Marketing the Independent Novel: Lighting a Spark or Spitting in the Wind?



Marketing is one of the necessary evils of independent publishing. As a writer, I'd prefer to simply spend my days reading, writing, drinking, loving and sleeping. But if I don't tell people about my book, how can I get them to read it, even if it's free? At the same time, if I just run around begging people to buy my book, the only thing I'll accomplish is pissing people off.
I don't have a marketing background, but I am willing to share the marketing I did for Smooth Operator and what I've learned in the process. Hopefully this information will help you reach Fifty Shades sales numbers, even though I'm really far from that right now.

Please note that these tactics came from three books on the subject of independent marketing as well as my own meandering experience in my previous jobs; (Sell Your Book Like Wildfire, Crush It With Kindle and Secret Amazon Hacks)

The Five Principles of Independent Book Marketing
Based on what I've read, people buy books based on five factors. In general:
  1. They buy from authors they know and like
  2. They buy books they've heard about (often several times)
  3. They buy books that offer to do something for them
  4. They buy books that other people buy
  5. They buy books that are easy to buy

I tried to use these concepts to shape my marketing efforts. I broke the process down into five phases to maintain my sanity; social, preparation, announcement, pre-launch, launch and post launch.

Social is where I interact with the potential audience without talking about my book. The goal here is to establish yourself create rapport. I post essays about the business and craft of writing (like this one), book reviews and news articles about subjects related to my books. Hopefully this makes more people familiar with my name without a constant hard sell. At the same time, I've tried to create and increase friend’s lists on various sites and a mailing list that can be used to both keep in touch and spread the word about the book when the time comes. I did this stage for about nine months before the book launch.

In the Preparation phase, I try to set up the framework for the book marketing just prior to release. I found and sent ARC copies, determined the book's Amazon categories, and wrote the cover copy. I did all this about a month before the book launch.

The Announcement phase is two weeks before launch. This is when the cover image (See Judging a Book by its Cover) and promotion copy is posted (See the Smooth Operator Promo Post), the press release is written and mercenary mailing lists are recruited. The goal here is to let people know about the book, without pushing them to buy it. I imagine it works the same way as a movie trailer or a commercial for a new show.

In the Pre-Launch phase, I offer readers something in addition to the new book. I try to add incentives to the process, in the same way other companies offer extra features or gifts for people who buy first or take some other action. Since I didn't have money for an elaborate gift, I offered a prequel story called A Special Request to Smooth Operator to anyone willing to write a review.

When I was ready for the Launch phase, I created launch post on my blog (, sent out a blast on my email list and a social media blast to about 300,000 people (I didn't take bots, duplicates or dead profiles because I have no way to weed that out) during the five day promotional period that comes with Amazon's KDP program. My goal was to get as many downloads as possible in an attempt to raise my ranking on Amazon's sales list.

In the Post Launch phase, I try and let people know how other readers reacted to the book. Reviews from critics, sales figures and list announcements are all used to show that the book has merit in the marketplace. I also purchased three days of ad time on Facebook ads to target about 2.8 million readers in the US, UK, Canada and Mexico. I wanted to try this to see if FB advertising was more effective than a social media blast so I can compare the two methods for my next book.

The Results
Here is what all this marketing did for Smooth Operator during the first two weeks of release:

The Good News
  • There were 900 downloads in the US and more than 300 internationally. And 200 actual sales
  • Smooth Operator was reached #1 on the espionage new release list and #5 on the crime anthology list
  • The book got seven independent reviews with an average rating of 4.6 stars (See What the Critics are Saying about Smooth Operator)
  • Amazon used Smooth Operator as its featured new espionage release email early last week


The Bad News
  • The sales of Smooth Operator dropped 95% after the promotional period was over
  • Smooth Operator dropped off the espionage chart after the promo period and slipped down to #55 in the crime anthology list
  • The overall response rate from all marketing efforts came in at about .003%, or three downloads for every 1,000 people targeted.

Lessons Learned
The obvious takeaway from this exercise is that I am not a marketing genius. There are probably several steps I could have taken to improve my sales. I’m just not sure what those steps are at this point. Maybe I needed to reach three million people instead of three hundred thousand. Maybe I needed a Champion to lead people to Smooth Operator (See Champions, Tastemakers and True Fans). Maybe I shouldn't have squandered the Launch by offering the book for free. Maybe the long tail hasn't kicked in yet and I need to give it more time. I have seven novels planned after Smooth Operator. When it's time to market the new novel in January, I'll try to learn from this experience and create a better result.

What marketing tactics did you use? Were your results better, worse or the same? Leave a comment and let me know.


Have fun.
Gamal

14 comments:

  1. Thanks for letting us struggling self-published authors know about your marketing experiences step-by-step. We are the orphans of the publishing world, but we can't help being tempted by our creative Muse. As George Orwell said: "All writers are vain, selfish, and lazy, and at the very bottom of their motives lies a mystery. Writing a book is a horrible, exhausting struggle, like a long bout of some painful illness. One would never undertake such a thing if one were not driven on by some demon whom one can neither resist nor understand." (Don't agree with his "lazy" comment, being a retired former crime reporter for a daily paper.)--J. M. Roman, author of "Ink in His Blood"

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    1. Thank you. I wanted to be able to write an essay that said "method X worked, method Y didn't work" but I don't think I know enough about the process to provide that insight. Thankfully, I have six or seven more books planned to try out different methods to see what works.

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  2. This is a great post. I think it really does boil down to trial and error but also, slow and steady wins the race. I read somewhere (I think it's the Smashwords Ebook Guide) that most books don't sell well, BUT; many authors hit their stride in like their 4th or 5th book (or even later) and at that point, readers go back and read their debut and everything after. So I think the key is to just keep writing, keep building your network, and as long as you're writing quality stuff (like I know we are!) we'll eventually connect with a wide range of readers.

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    1. Thank you Ms. Miller. I read a book about self publishing from Barry Eisler and J.A. Kornath called Be the Monkey. In that book they claimed that the best marketing is persistent writing because each new release builds more of an audience. I'm testing that theory now with the novels I have planned. As long as I enjoy the process of writing, I don't mind learning the marketing part.

      Have fun.
      Gamal

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  3. Hi

    Interesting good and bad news, I have just launched my third book today!. Anyway, I used Bookdaily for my second book but I have been unable to correlate it's email shots with any increase in sales. I used KDP Select for my first book and got to Number 1 (Thriller category) with 3000 free downloads then the book disappeared. now I have had steady sales for book one and two and I am experimenting with price. For book 3 I have again entered KDP Select but I am not sure if I will use free promo

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    1. Congratulations on the new book! What's the title?

      If I might ask, what process did you use to drive traffic for your first book? What did you do differently for the other releases? Do you feel that your new marketing methods contributed to your current sales, or do you feel like your audience is simply growing with each subsequent release?

      Sorry for all the questions, but I'd love to get the opinion of another independent publisher.

      Have fun.
      G

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  4. Gamal, thank you, once again for sharing your journey with us. I agree with Quanie, trial and error, perseverance, social networking and more perseverance. Good things come to those who wait!

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    1. I'd like to wait Pam, but I have too many books to write. ;)

      Thanks for the feedback.

      Have fun.
      G

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  5. Thanks for this post. I've been in sales and marketing (among a host of other things) for a long time but my book Nonofficial Asset was my first foray into publishing. I had some good success at first and as I kept my daily tally always wondered what others were doing and how well it succeeded. My only give-aways were ones from my hand to the readers (paperback) so I never made it to the top of the Amazon list. I'm hearing that being there has some but not spectacular results? I was #1 on Goodreads Best Spy Thriller list but can't tell what effect that had on sales, if any, other than one guy who didn't like my female POTUS character and said the only reason he bought the book was its placement on the list. Bottom line: I agree with Quanie that the best road to success is just being out there.

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    1. Thanks William, based on what I read, getting onto the Amazon charts is the equivalent to getting on top of the search listings at Google. I do think the free giveaways made an impact on my exposure, I'm just not sure how many of those readers would have downloaded my book even if it wasn't free.

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  6. Well, I just got some interesting stats for myself on penetration into the market. Being the sales guy I always wanted to know how effective a campaign is. The rule of thumb when you send out post cards inviting people to this or that is "a 1% response is pretty good." So, my publicist sent out 1,000,000 (yes, a million) emails to the reader and retailer crowd and we tracked what happened. 56,800 people actually opened the email. Of those, 904 actually clicked on the link to learn more. So those who were attracted to find out more made up .09% of the email recipients and 1.6% of those who actually looked at the email. The final stat is a pretty good result at better than 1% but you really have to look at the .09% as the response from the pool. What we don't know is how many actually bought the book. I'm not quitting my day job but I am finishing my next book before I start on the third one. :)

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    1. I heard the 1% response rate theory from my advertising friends too. I think the response rate to my email was around 3%, but I was using a much smaller list (about 3,000 names). It was the lack of response across social media and advertising that dragged my response ratio down to .003%. The good news is that FB advertising has made me more money than I spent on it, so I might put more dollars in to that next time and skip the social marketing piece.

      Did your million emails go out to people just in the US or did you include other countries? I only ask because I seem to have twice as many actual sales in the UK than I do in the US and I can't seem to figure out why...

      Thanks for the feedback.

      Have fun.
      Gamal

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  7. Hi,
    Thanks for giving us the benefit of your experiences, everyone! Having just not got a response at all from legacy publishers I have released seven novels on Kindle within a few weeks. I did improve as I went; the seventh is unquestionably the best.
    The first five are crime - the Mensa Mystery Series.
    Then I wrote a short romance with e-book in mind and that has an element of crime and detection towards the end; Silks And Sins. This proves that we can cross genres and bring valuable experience.
    I wrote romance because one in four books sold in America is a romance. Also it was an excuse to write about horse racing.
    Then before I even had time to revise that one I was into an SF book which is about journalism in a future London - and I mean real, working journalism, with local news items, cranky editors and research, as well as people from other planets opening ethnic restaurants. Dining Out Around The Solar System. This book brings elements of the other two genres; there's a photo of a London bobby with the Big Ben clock tower on the cover, indicating that there is in fact a lot of crime. Well, why should London change?
    My main marketing strategy has been to include a list of all my titles in each book; books sell books is the one lesson I've learned over the last couple of years looking at e-books.
    I have not paid for anything but I also don't trust spam and don't want to add to it.
    I review books constantly and have quite a high net profile for reviews.
    The books started selling immediately and I am tracking which sells in which country; it's quite interesting. I am not in the KDP programme as I decided to get established first, maybe with a few nice Amazon reviews up if I get lucky. I am keeping it in mind, but from the above reading I don't see much benefit in 3,000 free downloads if nobody then buys a copy.

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    1. Thanks Claire.

      The main benefit I've seen with KDP and the promotional program is the impact that it had on my placement in the hot new releases list. I reached the top of the search standings for a short period of time and in hindsight, I should have switched my book back to the paid version to take advantage of the increased traffic. If I get the same results in February when my next book comes out, I'll try that and see what happens.

      Have fun.
      Gamal

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