Marketing Your Novel

I have a novel published!

For a trade published author, those lovely words mean the  newly published book will be stocked on bookstore shelves all over the country. And readers will buy them because
that's how business been done for hundreds of years - you want a book - go to Borders or Barnes and Noble.

Even though it's been around for 8+ years now, epublishing is still the new business on the block.

And it's gotten even harder to get ahead than when epublishing first started. That doesn't sound right, does it? Unfortunately, it's true if you write a wholesome story. It's no secret that smut has taken over the majority of sales on line. If you write regular romance or mainstream, sales on line are getting more and more dismal every day as publishers grab up the erotic 'romances'. Some epublishers still happily take the mainstream and standard romance, but I'd like to hear from an epublished writer of them with less than 10 releases out who makes more than a few bucks every quarter. Meanwhile, smut writers are making a fortune. It's a sad testimoney to the mindset of the readers, but it's true all the same. And feel free to bash me for calling it smut. I challenge you to prove that threesomes and moresomes and books that exist only to peddle 'creative' sex, isn't smut. Porn. Get used to the terms because I won't stop saying them. Many of the stories I've read in this catagory I couldn't get beyond the first chapter without being grossed out by the meaningless of the encounters, and usually wanted to wash my eyeballs afterward, and believe me, I'm no prude. I've written several erotic romances - real romances but with a bigger proportion of loving sex between the romantic couple than a standard romance. They're wholesome, but still shamelessly, blushingly steamy.

It's not that epublishers are evil. It's a matter of survival. They sell what readers buy. If readers aren't buying the standard romances or mainstream novels, they can't afford to pay editors to edit them, cover artists to cover them, and company funds to advertise them. Readers govern what sells, naturally, and unfortunately, the new wave of ereader wants porn. But I do wish writers would write more responsibly rather than to feed the hunger for meaningless sex between any partner/s willing. Writers have a responsibility to lead the readers in a more wholesome direction. If you wouldn't want your son or daughter doing what's in your book, it shouldn't be in your book. Just because your kid won't see it isn't justification to write whatever sells. Other people's kids are big consumers of this stuff. Give your characters a decent moral center. Please.

Not including the current smut trade in novels online, epublished authors are already faced with a giant challenge. We have to change the book buying habits of the public. The fact is, it will be years before the average shopper considers going to an on-line bookstore for their next novel as quickly as they do driving to the local bookstore for it.

Fortunately, more and more people ARE shopping ebookstores everyday. Why? Publishers and authors advertise. Publishers advertise their on line bookstores.
Authors advertise their novels on their websites. Because of this, web shoppers are becoming increasingly aware that they can buy excellent novels on line that they
can't find in ordinary bookstores.

So, how do you lure potential customers to your website business?

I've tried many types to see what works and what doesn't. While there are countless ways to get visitors to your site, most include more time and effort than I want to devote myself to, and the yield was disappointingly low.

The advertising methods I've found so far are:

1) Unique Visitor Traffic you buy from vendors
2) Safelist emailings
3) Email ads you pay a company to send for you
4) Banner ads
5) Getting listed on book review sites
6) Free ads
7) Reciprocal ads
8) Be a link on someone else's site.
9) Banners on major websites like Yahoo
10) Advertisements in newspapers
11) Posting bookcovers on busy book related sites
12) Get listed on Web Directories
13) Get listed on Search Engines
14) Develop a Mailing List
15) Advertise or Post in eZines

 1)  Purchased Traffic 

  This service makes your website pop up or under various other big websites that people are surfing. This is a good way to get seen. And sometimes hated - if you choose pop-ups.  I'd never opt for pop ups, but pop unders are a lesser evil. They don't interrupt a visitor's surfing, and when they close  the screen they're on, there's your website, fully loaded for them to see. However, with all the new applications of Pop-Up Blocking, this type of advertising is fading.

2) Safelists 

  Some people swear it's a great way to get seen for free, including Secret of The Big Dogs ebook.  I tried safelists once. Just the name gives me the creeps now. What is a safelist? It's an opt-in mailing  list. Everyone on the mailing list agrees to receive emails from each other. After all,  you can't be accused of spamming someone if they've given permission to you to send  your ads to them.  But everyone on the safelists is trying to sell something, not buy.  Considering that, I'm certainly missing the point of safelists since all the members are doing what I'm doing and deleting 300+ messages a day from fellow safelist members unread.  I want to reach buyers, not sellers trying to advertise cheaply.  I should've seen what was coming when the safelist owner recommended that members get a seperate email box for their safelists.  I tried this for a couple weeks, then rushed to cancel my account. 10-million-hits dot com has ignored my emails asking for a refund. What a surprise.

www.diamondpowermailer.com is one such vendor of email advertisements. Their package of 25 million emails a month  for 30 dollars sounds impressive, doesn't it? They claim about a .25% read rate of the  25 million they send. A 1-2% return rate on any bulk advertising is considered good.  So even though only 2% of the people open the mail, that's still 75,000 people reading my email ad about my new release.  If 1% of those bought my book, that's still 750 sales. That profit far exceeds the initial cost of the 30 dollar monthly fee. 

  However, sales netted from this type of advertising - 0, zippo, big goose egg. I'd imagine the failure of this type of adveritising has everything to do with the scourge called SPAM. The average person gets 2-5 pieces of spam a day. I get a hell of a lot more than that. Since I see a lot of spam everyday, I know the variety of styles it arrives in. I'm sure the recipients of my email ads thought the post looked amazingly like spam.

4) Banner Ads  

Everyone sees banners everywhere in the web. Some are nice, or amusing. Some stink because they flash and hurt my eyes. That's one way to make sure I'll never buy their product just in retalliation for my sore eyes. But banners fit nicely on a site, and even if a person isn't looking directly at your banner, their mind is seeing it. That helps you develop a presence.  I post banners for my books at popular review sites. I pay a nominal fee, and the exposure is great. I recommend them.

5) Get your book reviewed everywhere

  Find reviewers in your genre and request a review. I add these reviews to my website, too. It gives me and the review site more exposure.  Got a bad review? Don’t be afraid of it. Post that on  your site. Yes, that's right. A long list of glowing reviews doesn't necessarily sell your  books. Controversy sells, too. Think  of the recent tv war between Rosie ODonnell and Donald Trump.

6)  Free ads 

 Free ad sites are everywhere. www.trafficswarm.com is one. I tried them for a while. I set their website as my homepage and earn points each time I open my browser. This means that the more points I earn, the more my ad is shown on their list. I can also earn points by clicking on the sites they list.  It was free, but it was also boring and time consuming to click, click, click to get exposure. And I didn't get a swarm of traffic to my site either.

7) Reciprocal Ads 

 These programs allow you to post your banner or url or ad on someone else's website in return for posting theirs on your website. It's good to be linked wherever you can be.

8) Links 

  Get linked to all appropriate sites. Reviews sites sometimes have free author link pages. Get on them. If you're in a Yahoo group, put your url in the Links section of your groups. Get people to put your link on their website. Links to your site help to give you a presence on the web, and you're considered more important to the Search Engine crawlers who crawl your site looking for new content.

9) Banners on major websites 

  This is a very effective, and expensive, way to advertise. That's why the big companies do it. It works. Putting your banner on the Yahoo.com homepage is excellent exposure. And it makes you look important, too.  However, the prices for a small business? - bring a box of tissues to the computer table when you view the cost of posting banners so when you start quietly weeping, you'll be prepared.

10) Advertisements in newspapers 

  If you're an author with an epublisher, ads in newspapers is a good idea. Poll 20 people who don't know you if they know they can buy great fiction on line that they can't get in ordinary bookstores. I bet most of them will say no. You have to change that. The fact is, only 50% of America is on line, and even less shop on line. Though that's rapidly changing, educating your community about your publisher is always wise.

11) Post bookcovers on busy, book related sites

  I pay a nominal fee to post my bookcovers on review sites. A great cover attracts buyers and you establish a presence on the web. Determine your audience and choose those sites.

12) Get listed in Web Directories 

 Use a search engine to find, etc for web directories. There are a lot. www.Dmoz.org is a very popular one. You go to their site, fill out their application to be listed.

13) Get listed with Search Engines 

Pay someone to submit your site, or buy the SE submission software and do it yourself.  Keywords are crucial. That's why posting reviews and links and your book info all over your website is important. Search engines will zero in on word combinations, bringing visitors to your website. I've always been very happy with my visibility on the web using  www.2submit.com. You can do it yourself for free, but then you must agree to recieve all the mailings from them, which are copious, believe me.

14) Develop a Mailing List 

Even if you don't have time to do a newsletter, work on your mailing list. That way, when you have a new release coming out, you have an audience to send a friendly blurb to, and who WANT to hear from you.

15) Advertise in eZines

Determine your audience and advertise in appropriate eZines for good exposure.

  Other Marketing Options.

I came across this group while surfing the web. www.Advertiseforbooks.com  This company makes a tv commercial about your book. I reseached the site and was interested in their product. It's  expensive to advertise on TV, but not unaffordable. And the benefits! Being on TV will instantly make you seem popular. The  cost would be worth the yield. 

Once, I saw a book ad on TV. It couldn't have been more than thirty seconds, but it was impressive. Though I'd never heard of the author or book before, just because she was on TV subconsciously elevated her importance.

Good Sites for Authors Trying to Promote:

www.SiteProNews.com  has everything for the author trying to market novels.

 

Tips on Email marketing:

www.homebiztools.com

If you come upon a broken or dead link, please report it to me at:
SizzlingInk@BelindaPalmer.com