Self-Promotion: the crude and unappealing practice of marketing one’s own work; in British slang, often called “flogging.”
I’ve only met one writer who actually enjoys flogging his books. He travels up and down the coast, reading excerpts, glad-handing, meeting people, building an impressive network. For every other writer I’ve met, mention the word “promotion” and watch them wince.
We hate promoting our books. HateitHateitHateit. Some writers hate it so much, they don’t do it at all.
But according to ND Author Services (aka NDAS, run by bestselling authors Barb and J.C. Hendee, who–believe me–know what they’re talking about), there’s some good news. As with everything else in the publishing industry, self-promotion–the very nature of it–is changing.
I recommend you check out their multi-part post on the topic (start here, with Part 1), because there’s a lot of good advice packed in those pages.
The upshot, however, is this: If you’re not part of the top tier, that 1% who bring in the huge advances, the old way of promoting books is gone.
Marketing budgets have shrunk or disappeared entirely. Publisher-organized and -funded book tours are a thing of the past. More and more (and in many cases, all) of the responsibility for raising awareness of a new title is left up to the author. Books are no longer marketed; authors are marketed, packaged and sold like cereal.
Sounds grim, I know, but here’s where the good news steps in. In this age of e-books and electronic retailing, when fewer and fewer people actually go to a physical bookstore, it makes less sense to spend money and time traveling around flogging books. The people we want to reach are too few and too spread-out to make face-to-face marketing economically feasible. My writer friend who spends thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours flogging his books will likely see only a small fraction of that money return in the form of increased sales and royalties. In their posts on the topic, NDAS discuss the inefficiency of this old practice, outline strategies we can use, and (more importantly) give us the best order in which to use them.
One piece of promotional advice they discuss is a domain name. You can get one cheaply, if not for free. You don’t have to register YourName.com in order to drive traffic your way; when properly implemented, a subdomain name, or something like YourName.wordpress.com works just as well.
The last time I met with the folks at NDAS, we discussed this topic. At the time, I didn’t think I needed a MyName.com domain; I was pretty sure that SeattleAuthor.com was adequate for my promotional purposes. After all, this blog has developed a greater following than any other medium I’ve used. But eventually, they convinced me that I was mistaken, and that there were benefits to be gained for a very low investment of money and time.
So, I created KRAG Actual (KurtGiambastiani.com), a portal to my works, and a way to drive more search traffic to my books and this blog. It’s too new to see if there is any benefit to this, but at the annual cost of $18 to register the domain, I can afford to run the portal for a while.
I’ll report on any quantifiable results, but in the meantime, go check out the posts at NDAS. Good stuff.
k
[…] to my earlier post on self-promotion, I want to share what happened to me yesterday: a prime example of what NOT to […]
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The NDAS articles about promotion left me anxious. I realize just how naive I am about social media and words like sub-domain. I would rather stand up in front of people and try to wow them with my book, but I don’t get a lot of invitations.
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Yeah, but then, you’re in management. [ducking…running]
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Oh, Kurt, things have been crazy, and I just now saw this. Thank you. I think I know the writer of whom you speak . . . who loves to promote 🙂
I’d rather have my fingernails pulled out than have to get up in front of rooms full of strangers and try to “wow” them with my fabulous book. Hah!
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Yes, you do, though there are a few of our acquaintance who might easily match the description. Love it or hate it, most of the struggling writers I know are consumed by thoughts of how to promote their work, spending too much time and energy on that, instead of on writing their next, best work. I found your NDAS post to be very helpful in separating myth from reality.
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I dunno, it just looked strange. 🙂
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I can never seem to get the hang of the “reply” structure around here, can I?
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The new site looks good.
The “About” page is written in the 3rd person. Are they usually written in the 1st person? It felt odd to me, but maybe 3rd person is more normal than I realize.
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There’s no official standard, but most author pages/websites have a 3rd person bio (I checked ten of them, and the only one that was NOT in 3rd person was Richard Castle’s page, and that’s just part of the gag, there). Also, the KRAG Actual page is a portal for information, whereas the SeattleAuthor blog is “me.”
However, there is inconsistency in KRAG Actual, as it pops from 1st to 3rd person. Maybe I should do it all in 2nd person, present tense? 😉
–k
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