I just replied to an e-mail from someone who follows DIY Book, and, I have to say, has really run with the idea. I’m touched, kinda proud, and am impressed with what he’s making. (He’s got a shop on Etsy.)
He asked me about promotion — an issue that’s standing right in the middle of the road in front of me. After a wonderful visit with my folks, I’m trying to gather my energies and figure out what’s next, and that all came out in my reply to him — which I’m sharing here, ’cause the letter finally gave me a chance to articulate this for myself:
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Marketing is my great bugbear. Oh yeah, I can make the stuff available and present it well — I’m happy about those skills. But communicating about it, having conversations in which I close the sale, doing successful promotion on the web — that’s where I suck.
I’m actually in a space, though, where I’m going headlong into this stuff ’cause I want to beat it. No, not “beat”, transform. There’s no enemy out there or anyone holding me back; it’s about 87% just stuff in my head that holds me back. I don’t want to be gross, I don’t want to pretend that my work is for everyone ’cause it’s got some gay in it, and it’s all imaginative and stuff, and they’re not serious. (Just sent a tweet out asking people if they actually care about that.)
So I’ve bought an online course about “non-icky promotion” and another one about writing articles, and I’m really going into this question, trying to figure out what my approach is — and, on a deeper level, figure out exactly what I’m doing in writing fiction and being creative in the first place, what my intention is. (Though I suspect that it’s because it’s in my DNA, my constitution, so it’s not like it’s a choice.)
In the meantime, I created a tiny catalogue with order/contact information that I can leave with people when we have The Conversation (“Oh, what kind of books do you write?”) That way they get a taste of what I do, and I get to dodge the gross sales stuff. (Though I do understand the value of actually putting the question to someone and asking them to buy — closing the sale — because without that they will happily drift off without buying anything in most cases.)
So that’s one idea for the book you’re talking about, creating a small, throwaway promotional thing, ’cause experience has taught me that review copies are a waste of time and energy. Even indie people, friends of friends who said they’d read it and write something, people who know you made it yourself, still don’t ever get around to reading them. Magazines, newspapers, agent — same thing. Total waste. Better to focus on readers.
The other piece of advice, albeit bog-standard advice, would be — if the book has a specific angle to it, something a particular group of people are interested or involved in — to target them online, at meetings about that subject, and so on.
Oh, and a third thing: Readings and in-person events are where I’ve sold the most stuff. There’s something about the force of someone’s presence that gets past the hesitation to buy. On the next step down are situations where people can actually handle the book, and the bottom is online, where they’re trying to make a decision based on a JPEG and some copy.
So that’s what I know now.
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