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How do you feel about authors promoting their books on message boards?

A place to debate issues or to rant about what's on your mind. In addition to discussions about historical fiction, books, the publishing industry, and history, discussions about current political, social, and religious issues and other topics are allowed, so those who are easily offended by certain topics may want to avoid such threads. Members are expected to keep the discussions friendly and polite and to avoid personal attacks on other members. The moderators reserve the right to shut down a thread without warning if they believe it necessary.
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Divia
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Post by Divia » Tue October 21st, 2008, 1:38 am

Oh, that sounds like an interesting interview. Please make sure you post a link to it.
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michellemoran
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Post by michellemoran » Tue October 21st, 2008, 1:46 am

Certainly, Divia! As an author yourself, hopefully it will be useful to you. It's about marketing and publicity and what authors can do to help their publishing houses build their careers. There will be inevitable grumbling over some of it, mainly because it involves so much hard work :D
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Misfit
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Post by Misfit » Tue October 21st, 2008, 1:47 am

I have a guest post on Nathan Bransford's blog tomorrow and Wednesday, and the Wednesday section talks about how authors damage their own careers by doing things like that - or worse, getting into online fights over bad reviews.
Do you have a link to that? I'd like to read it. And yes, they don't do themselves any favors. Some of the things I've seen...... (although this author did buck up and apologize on another review comment on another snarky comment he'd made).
Last edited by Misfit on Tue October 21st, 2008, 1:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

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Post by michellemoran » Tue October 21st, 2008, 1:59 am

HA! And don't you love how he got in a plug for his next book while bashing the reviewer?! As you pointed out, not everyone likes every book, but that's what makes the world go 'round. Otherwise we'd all be automatons reading the same 3 books.

He really should have just deleted all his comments.
Do you have a link to that? I'd like to read it.
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Post by donroc » Tue October 21st, 2008, 11:47 am

Regarding book covers, the classic story from the past has to do with Steinbeck's Cannery Row. The first paperback cover had men in the foreground of an alley with a woman in a shiftlike dress in the far background. Sales were not good. The publisher ( or some marketing genius) reversed the scene with the young woman in the foreground, and paperback sales increased significantly.
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Leyland
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Post by Leyland » Tue October 21st, 2008, 1:46 pm

Marketing and psychological targeting go hand in hand to a large degree and it seems to me to be best undertaken by professionals based on their research the majority of the time. Bad promotions can really go wrong and sometimes can't be salvaged, so I'd rather not see an author and friends get in too deep on message boards. Proper marketing should appeal to the target's emotions, but getting directly emotionally involved doesn't have a place when insults and bashing begin volleying around online.

Book signings and author readings are great ways to promote on a very personal basis while keeping a sense of professionalism in place. I don't mind an author's online 'plug' that makes me aware of a new book's existence so that I'll then look it up and read third party reviews to make a decision to read or not.

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xiaotien
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Post by xiaotien » Tue October 21st, 2008, 7:31 pm

recently, i actually had someone EMAIL me
and promote themselves. i was sort of flabbergasted!

on the one hand, i am sympathetic to their
plight. as a unknown debut author myself.
on the other hand, it's going about it the wrong way.

i have no issues with contributing members
of a community sharing their good news / promoting
themselves in that way. we cheer them on.
but spammers who just poke their nose in to
say BUY MY BOOK? not only does it NOT work,
it's really annoying.

oh well.

there is no etiquette on such things, alas.
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Divia
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Post by Divia » Tue October 21st, 2008, 8:35 pm

ohh, thats happened to me a few times. I've had random emails to my blog site telling me to "buy my book." Or worse yet I get spamed on Amazon cause I am YA librarian so anyone with a young adult book to sell is all like"read my book."
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cw gortner
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Post by cw gortner » Tue October 21st, 2008, 11:12 pm

I know how challenging it is for self and/or independently published authors; after all, I've been one myself, first with THE SECRET LION and then with the first version of THE LAST QUEEN. The media ignores you; bookstores sniff as if you've passed gas and say they haven't any extra shelf space; the big four in the review world (PW, Kirkus, BookList and Library Journal) won't touch you - it sucks, excuse the expression. Your only viable outlet is online, with amazon.com being your lodestone because of the site's accessibility and the reader interaction via reviews and amazon forums. You feel desperate: you've written a book and you so want it to be successful, and no one seems to be paying any bloody attention. :eek:

However, as I promoted, I always kept in the forefront of my mind how I personally discover and buy books. It's not through direct frontal assaults or hyped-out, exclamation-ridden descriptions: it's through the subject matter and word-of-mouth. Marketing is an art; it must be direct enough to engage the consumer but not so much that it turns them off. It must entice to a certain extent, and intrigue enough to prompt the consumer to think, Hmmm. That looks good. After that, it's up to the consumer and of course the product itself, which must hold up to repeated scrutiny - or in the case of books, to repeated readings.

An independent author must be patient in these cases. Unlike the big house-published writer, with co-op at stores running out and X amount of copies that must sell by X date before the book is returned or remaindered, independent authors can afford to build their readership slowly. It takes time, but for example - and not that I'm a gold standard by any means - I ended up selling over 8,000 copies of THE SECRET LION, almost all of these via the online retailers like amazon. Readers liked it, so they told other readers; I got some online reviews. Word-of-mouth spread. It took nearly four years but it ended up being a minor success for me - and one of the reasons my current agent found and contacted me.

What so many of these independent authors don't seem to understand is that their very pushiness achieves the exact opposite of what they want: to sell a product. It sends the message: I'm not confident in my work, so I have to force it down your throat. Think perfume. How often have you bought a scent because some overzealous store employee sprayed it on you as you strolled past? While that Vanity Fair ad with the semi-nude man in his unbuttoned tuxedo shirt and beckoning woman with the disheveled hair sells perfume by the millions. The ad itself isn't so much mild as suggestive of the tantalizing possibility of glamour (and sex) if you wear the perfume. And it works, more often than not. Of course, having a celebrity hawk it works even better - but even those celebrities are suggesting you, too, can be like them.

Like I said, I understand the reasons driving these writers. But it's absolutely the worst way to market books, or frankly, anything you want a consumer to consider.
Last edited by cw gortner on Tue October 21st, 2008, 11:36 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Ash
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Post by Ash » Wed October 22nd, 2008, 12:21 am

[quote=""xiaotien""]recently, i actually had someone EMAIL me
and promote themselves. i was sort of flabbergasted!.[/quote]

The worst was someone who I knew online. We always rubbed each other the wrong way and I tried to not have any contact with her online. Well, I get an email from her, saying that she's sorry that we don't see eye to eye, but that she thinks I'd like her book, and if I do, would I review it on Amazon?

I ignored the email. I had another like that on the same forum, someone emails me asking me to read it and review it on Amazon. Why do these authors assume that I am going to give a positive review?

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