Book marketing – anecdotes v. real stats…
As an ex-scientist, it’s always amusing for me to see other authors and book marketing gurus push various marketing techniques on the basis of anecdotal evidence. The only source I’ve ever found who comes near to using real stats is Mark Coker of Smashwords. Mind you, I’m not plugging Smashwords here—there are alternatives nowadays, maybe even better ones. Smashwords offers no advertising options, for example, paid or free, leaving that for the online retailers it distributes to. Maybe that’s why Coker once said, “Your best marketing is a book that sparks enthusiastic word of mouth….” Of course, in “word of mouth” he’s probably including the internet, because there’s absolutely no way that an author can reach out to the entire country and the world otherwise.
It’s clear that many of the so-called gurus want you to pay them to do that, so they offer you online services and advertise themselves as the anointed who hold the keys to the kingdom of book success. Many of these offers are limited to ebooks, charge according to genre, and require N 4- or 5-star Amazon reviews (as if a 4- or 5-star review means your ebook is any good these days). None of them offer their services pro bono; in other words, they don’t back up their claims with willingness to share royalties over a certain period of time. They all want their money up front.
Ignoring their hype and anecdotal testimonials, these websites follow Sturgeon’s Law pretty well. There are no stats to prove that marketing method X really works. For every successful author (there are only a few, by Amazon’s own admission—their stats, of course) who claims to have achieved her/his success via X, there’s a more successful author who was frankly surprised at her/his success because they did nothing special. Consider Mr. Weir, author of The Martian, a one-book wunderkind like Harper Lee (I’m not counting her rejected MS), at least so far. He offered a free PDF-download of the book. Coker’s “enthusiastic word of mouth” took over. If we call that a marketing technique, it certainly didn’t generate the enthusiasm—the readers did, not the technique per se. In the same way, readers can kill a book, no matter how much money an author pours into PR and marketing—and certainly if s/he just offers a free PDF at her/his website.
The Martian and many other books prove Coker’s point, but no one, absolutely no one, knows how to backtrack from the readers’ exuberant enthusiasm and determine the cause of the effect. Coker talks backtracks a little to talk about “a book that sparks.” Writing such a book is the first necessary condition, whatever “sparks” might mean—why The Martian did so is too much like winning the lottery, though. Moreover, any marketing guru who claims to know what causes the post-writing sparks is full of you-know-what (same for agents, of course). You shouldn’t pay good money for you-know-what, especially when there is so much you can do DIY—in other words, spend your time, not your hard-earned money. Note that this applies equally well to traditionally published authors. Traditional publishers nowadays spend all their marketing dollars on the old stallions in their stables even though they’re ready for the glue factory. Most traditionally published authors are relegated to life as a midlist author who receives no benefit from the huge royalties the traditional publishers steal from authors beyond a book cover (maybe a positive benefit) and an egregious contract (a negative benefit).
What really riles me, though, are idiots who treat anecdotes as real stats. Most of us have no access to real stats. Traditional publishers never release them, Amazon spoons out only what’s convenient, and Smashwords releases them only to make a case for Smashwords v. Amazon. And no indie or midlist author has the wherewithal to fund a true statistical analysis even if s/he had the access. Yes, I know, many authors are honest up front and say their evidence is anecdotal. But the gurus will tout it as real. Not all authors are idiots, of course; that adjective is reserved for the marketing gurus and/or authors who write a few works of fiction and then some self-help book about book marketing, trying to cash in with gullible newbies. I don’t want to be part of that. That’s why I give my advice away for free. It’s probably crap too, but at least I’m not charging you for it!
Any reader of this article who has come this far probably has the following question on the tip of her or his tongue: OK, ye olde curmudgeon, do you pay for advertising? I’ve experimented, sure. My anecdotal comments can be simply summarized: in general, I wasted my money. The most egregious example was with Xlibris many years ago. I was new to POD and depressed about the abuses perpetrated by traditional publishing, so I bought into one of their expensive marketing packages. What a waste! Don’t be taken in by these. These outfits outsource to India or the Philippines, define marketing as spamming the world, and charge you tons of money to do it. Nothing like starting off your publishing life by making all human beings (and probably a few ETs too) hate your book.
I’ve experimented with Google, Facebook, and Goodreads ads, all click-type ads. They were a flop. I’ve been waiting forever for Amazon to market my books, but, of course, Amazon just offers a vicious circle—they’ll start marketing your book when you have a lot of readers, but they’ll do nothing up front to generate those readers. Once upon a time, I tried giveaways on Amazon and more recently count-down sales—they all flopped. Seems like you have to advertise those on expensive sites like BookBub, which means you pay good money to lose more money—only the PR and marketing sharks like BookBub get rich. That’s my negative anecdotal experience FWIW.
Now I only pay for PR and marketing when I release a new book. That seems to work sometimes. At least it lets the world know I’m still alive and writing, and the person doing it does it well. I doubt the press releases have more effect than that modest hand wave that says “He world, I exist!”, though—journalists, magazines, and newspapers don’t really give a rat’s ass about books anymore. The only thing they review nowadays is streaming video and computer games. The NY Times Book Review is an exception, but it’s just a tool of traditional publishing (write them and ask how they determine a bestseller—they guard the formula better than CocaCola guards theirs, so you’ll be disappointed). But the PR and marketing I do lets lots of readers know I have a new book. They probably only care if they’ve read a previous one, though—another vicious circle like the one Amazon perpetrates.
The bottom line here is that old X-Files maxim: Trust No One! Ignore anecdotal evidence; analyze carefully the fidelity of so-called “real stats.” Don’t swallow whole what authors or publicists say when they claim to have the keys to the kingdom of book success. Try their techniques, though, if they only cost you time, but, when they don’t work, forget about them. And especially don’t trust any PR and marketing guru who asks you to pay up front for her or his advice and/or Universe-shaking skills until they win your trust (that should put most of them out of business, of course). Generally speaking, you should spend time, not money, pushing your book, because spending money only makes someone else richer, not you.
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[Fans of hard sci-fi, dystopia, and post-apocalyptic novels should try the “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy.” Earth suffers through the Chaos in Survivors of the Chaos and Humans arrive at a new colony on New Haven, a planet orbiting the star 82 Eridani. On that planet and other new colonies, the saga continues in Sing a Samba Galactica, where first contact takes on a new meaning with friendly ETs, the new coalition must fight against not-so-friendly ETs, and ETs and Humans strive to do the right thing when confronted with a huge collective intelligence, the Swarm. In the third novel, Come Dance a Cumbia…with Stars in Your Hand!, humanity almost loses the battle with a megalomaniac when the conditions that started the Chaos threaten to return. Available in all ebook formats.]
In libris libertas….
