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| Even Bones gets in on the Twitter/selfie action |
After Sharon’s revolutionary post last week in
which she vowed to opt out of the social media book promotion rat race, it
seems the topic of book promo—how to, how much, if and when and whether—has captured
everyone’s attention.
Including network television’s. I howled at
an episode of Fox Network’s BONES this week in which forensic
anthropologist/ mystery novelist Temperance “Bones” Brennan (Emily Deschanel) is
forced by her publisher to join Twitter to connect with her readers. Of course,
the socially awkward Bones is initially a complete failure at social media,
tweeting links to articles about the family hierarchies of obscure native
tribes. But at partner Seeley Booth’s (David Boreanaz) suggestion, Bones asks her
young intern for advice, and is soon tweeting selfies with her arm around the
shoulders of the lab skeleton. She goes from 10 followers to 3000 in the course
of days, and, you guessed it, begins to ignore everything and everyone around
her. Finally, fellow “squint” Angela (Michaela Conlin) pulls the intern aside
and lets her know she’s creating a monster. Time to back off. At the end of the
episode, things don’t exactly go back to the way they were, but Bones has found
some kind of balance.
I don’t tweet. I had to make a choice a few
years back of which of the many evils I would consider the lesser and went with
Facebook. Zuckerburg’s baby had other advantages for me besides just as a
promotional platform, and I figured I could control how much time I spent
interacting with FB better than with Twitter, which is in your face all the
time. Of course, now the evil Facebook gnomes with their indecipherable
algorithms try to limit my “reach” to the people who have legitimately Liked my
Page in hopes of hearing from me. But Ha!
I have discovered a way around that, at least for now. (I won’t tell you here.
They may be watching. Email me. Or better yet, meet me in a public place in broad
daylight where they won’t dare do anything to us.)
The problem with either of these platforms
and with blogs like this one, too, really, is that we too often preach to the
choir. We have our writers’ groups and special interest/fan groups and, yes,
writers and fans read, but they too
often have their own books or projects to sell. So we end up in this infernal
loop selling to each other. I could spend the next two years doing nothing but
just reading the books of people I’ve met in these groups. Maybe that would be
good and maybe not, but it certainly wouldn’t be productive for me as a writer.
This post by Delilah Dawson stirred some strong reactions when Spacefreighters
co-blogger Greta van der Rol shared it on Facebook recently: Please
Shut Up: Why Self-Promotion as an Author Doesn’t Work. But I have to say I
can relate to a few of the things Delilah said.
I can’t get over the feeling that I should be
moving beyond the writers’ communities to actually reach readers. There I have to admit my own market behavior as a reader
is no help whatsoever. I’m a complete dinosaur when it comes to finding new
reading material. I rely on word-of-mouth, the bookstore shelves, my favorite
authors’ new stuff and, believe it or not, newspaper reviews. Yeah. Ancient.
But RWA® surveys have shown that
word-of-mouth is still the Number One method by which readers find books. How
that works is a complete mystery. Reviews are an important source, too, on
Amazon, Goodreads, RT magazine and elsewhere. So even though it is risky to put
your book out for review, it is a necessary means of gaining an audience. (Some
people will even say a bad review is good, since there’s no such thing as bad
publicity. I find that one hard to swallow, though.)
Your “presence” on Amazon or other online
retailers is the equivalent of the bookstore shelf, so it pays to polish that
presentation. A recent article in Romance
Writers Report®, the official magazine of RWA® (“Managing Metadata:
Mastering Mountains of Minutiae”) recommends playing up the book description as
much as possible. I just added a “lead line” (a one-liner tagging the book) and
endorsement quote to my naked blurb on Amazon in hopes of snagging more
readers.
Finally, I may be wrong about this, but I
doubt there is any substitute for physical interaction with the reading public.
I can’t believe I’m saying this, because I’m an introvert and “public speaking”
used to be the bane of my existence, but I’m looking forward to getting out
there and buttonholing a few folks about my book.
This
summer holds a couple of huge reader events for me—the RT Booksellers
Convention in Dallas in May and the Shore Leave STAR TREK con in Towson,
Maryland in August. I’ll tell you more about those as we get closer to the
dates. In the meantime I’ll be warming up with some smaller events closer to
home. Saturdays in May and June I’ll be signing Unchained Memory at my local library branches. Selling books at a
library, where people can check out the book for free, may be a hard job. But I’m
planning to have bookmarks—and candy! And you never know who you might meet if
you put yourself out there.
Guess that’s the point of all this promotion
in the first place, isn’t it?
Cheers, Donna
