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Don’t Spread Yourself Thin When Building an Author Platform

10/19/2012

11 Comments

 
I recently ran into an article on the web about the top 65 sites where you can list your book for free. The article states the following:

For your book to sell, you need to create the demand. You need an audience, a platform – which you will get when your book is showing up on many websites and forums, visible to readers. Make it a habit to submit your book to at least 2-3 websites a day.  Don’t forget to post links to them on Google+, Twitter, FB, Tumblr, StumpleUpon, LinkedIn, Chime.in, Pinterest … whatever social media you are signed up.  In one month you will have your book on all of these listed sites and you will see a difference in sales.

I think this advice is wrong for two reasons.

The first reason is that in most of these sites it is not enough to merely upload a notice about your book or a chapter or two. Your post will be one among thousands; for all practical purposes it will be invisible. To guarantee visibility in these sites you have to create an account and then develop a following. This means interacting with other people, reading what they upload, and then commenting, liking, sharing, pinning, readcasting, retweeting etc. This is a lot of work and it is impossible to do it for many sites unless you are glued to your computer 24/7. Developing a large following in many of these sites can take years. If you follow the above advice and post in 2-3 websites a day you are in effect wasting your time. You are better served by choosing some carefully selected websites and then concentrating your efforts on them. But which websites should you select?

This leads to the second reason why I think this advice is wrong. You have to ask yourself who will read your book. For example if you wrote a book that will be of interest primarily to people 60 years old and over, then maybe you should not even bother with social media (yes you read that right) as this group of people does not use it that much. If you wrote a book that will be read by younger but still mature audiences (say 30 to 50 years old), then you should probably not devote your time to websites whose readers belong predominantly to a 18-24 year old crowd. Depending on the subject matter of your book, other pertinent questions that you may have to ask yourself when selecting a website are things like what will be the gender of your readers, what will be their level of education, and whether they have children. But even if you have selected a website that seems to be visited by people that would be interested in your book there are further questions. How big/important is the website? Does it have a lot of traffic? Are people that visit the website primarily interested in books or does the website offer other products and/or services that would distract them from looking at books? Is there a better website? These are all important questions to ask to make sure you make the best out of your promotional efforts.

So don’t spread yourself thin trying to list your book everywhere. Try to focus and tailor your promotional efforts to your target readership. I know this is easier said than done. I myself am still learning and experimenting with promotional approaches and different ways to do things and sites on which to post. But when it comes to promotion we should all heed the old seemingly paradoxical advertiser’s maxim: less is more.

What do you think?
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11 Comments
adrienne warren link
10/21/2012 01:47:10 pm

excellent advice that applies well to all marketing. In approaching web based marketing I like that you give some ideas about the right sort of questions to be asking yourself about the web sites. thanks so much for the ideas

Reply
Rolando link
10/23/2012 08:26:52 am

Thank you for your comment Adrienne. I think the right approach is to pick and choose rather than what is suggested is the post I quoted.

Reply
Laura Zera link
10/23/2012 04:17:19 am

I think it's sound advice, Rolando. The more targeted the marketing, the better the results. And authors should leave some of their marketing time for genuine interaction with their readers!

Reply
Rolando link
10/23/2012 08:28:27 am

Yes, and with targeted marketing one can also have a life, LOL! Thanks for your comment Laura. : ^ )

Reply
Barbara Alfaro link
10/23/2012 04:22:52 am

An excellent post Rolando. Personally, though I think of myself as someone with good organizational skills, I'm finding trying to keep up with timely Twitter, Facebook, Google + and Pinterest postings seems like a part-time job I'm not being paid for. Also, most people I am courting to buy my book are usually hawking their own books. I also find a lot of social networking takes time away from creative writing. I'm sure there's a balance but I simply haven't found it yet. If you know the "secret," please let me know!

Reply
Rolando link
10/23/2012 08:30:41 am

The most cost effective form of promotion we have is to write and publish more books. Each book is an advertisement for our other books. I am beginning to think that, in terms of marketing to total strangers, social media is a waste of time.

Reply
Barbara Alfaro link
10/23/2012 09:09:37 am

I'm agree with you. And I am oh, so tired of that guilt cloud over my heart for not "keeping up" with social media, etc. etc. My time is better spent - writing and publishing.

Adriene link
10/24/2012 07:18:11 am

You and Barbara have hit on a point I have often wondered about myself, that the social media sites are full of people like us who are trying to get their work in the public eye. But how do we get our message to readers? Writers follow writers on Twitter, for instance, probably because only writers can tolerate the constant hawking of each others' wares ...

Reply
Rolando link
10/24/2012 08:11:19 am

Thanks for your comment Adriene. Most writers tend to follow writers and write a blog about exclusively about writing, and this is a mistake. The problem is that writers don't buy as many books as readers because they are too busy writing. Also people using social media are mostly interested in free stuff (like Facebook has found out). Our goal is to reach readers and so far the KDP Select program has been my most successful tool for that.

Reply
Inge Meldgaard link
10/30/2012 07:18:45 pm

Great to read this as I was feeling 'guilty' too for not keeping up with all this 'stuff' out there, but also wondering how much it was worth it - I feel much better now :) and reading the other comments, I suspect they are right. One has to yell awfully loudly to be heard these days! I've definitely come to the conclusion that if I have to do that, then it ain't worth it...so I'll just try to find ways of interacting with writers and readers that I enjoy, and put my main effort into writing as well as I can.

Reply
Rolando link
10/31/2012 08:20:29 am

I have had problems lately selling more copies of my book, despite working all my social media. On the other hand, however, the book has been out for a while. I hope I can do a post about this issue in the near future. Thanks for your comment Inge.

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