Once I sent my manuscript off and was waiting for proofs, I started thinking about how I was going to let people know what I'd done. I asked myself, how I would discover my book, if I were the reader. I’d bought privately published local histories in Borders in Michigan. If it wasn’t in the local history section of a book store, then I might find it in that section in a library.
When I was reading detective fiction, I tried finding new authors by reading annotated catalogs from specialty bookstores and looking for fan magazines that discussed new authors. As I remember, it was tough to find anything useful
The problem for readers and writers alike is how to get bookstores, libraries and fanzines to take notice.
Reviews are the obvious, most desirable way to promote books with an aura of legitimacy. My publisher offers five bound reviewer’s galleys for $299, but doesn’t offer to send them to the right people, or even suggest who they might be. Five finished paperbacks, at the author discount, is a third that price. Other publishers are more generous with free review copies in their packages.
Critics reside everywhere from the New York Times and Publisher’s Weekly to an author lurking behind an alias puffing his or her own book on Amazon. One publisher even offers favorable reviews by Ellen Tanner Marsh for $399, and another sends books to Kirkus Discoveries, a paid review service, for $360.
I thought about various publications that might influence me, but wondered how many would actually consider a book from an essentially anonymous source. I narrowed my list to those that might be read by people I thought would buy my book and were most likely to publish something favorable. I saw no point in donating copies to the snobbish or potentially hostile. There’s a lag time of at least six months before you see any results.
The alternative is advertising. Unless you want to treat marketing as an expensive hobby, you may want to apply some sort of cost-benefit analysis. Mine was simple: I divided the price of a service by the average royalty I might receive. I then pondered the likelihood of selling more than 25 books for every $100 of outlay.
Almost every on demand publisher offers mass distribution programs, either through faxed press releases, internet links or email campaigns. Pat Holt asked Xlibris for details on their program, and could find the only benefit was a professional wrote the press releases. They did no follow-up, offered no way to distinguish their releases from the hundreds of others arriving daily at every media outlet in the country.
A number of publishers offer postcards with your cover on the front, and ordering information on part of the reverse. Apparently, these are designed to exploit the lower rates offered by the post office.
This leaves two problems. How often have you paid attention to a postcard that resembled an ad, and who are you going to mail them to?
I don’t think I’ve ever even gotten an announcement through the mail for a novel or literary work. However, I used to get them about non-fiction when I was teaching and actually did read some of them.
I asked the post office about bulk mailing, and my postmaster told me I couldn’t afford it, because I wasn’t going to send enough to specific zip codes to justify the $150 start-up cost. He suggested I find a private company to do the stamping under its permit. For them to keep their prices down, they barcode items for automatic sorting.
My purpose in sending anything by mail would be to fool someone long enough that he or she started to read about the book before realizing it was a promo. It wouldn’t do me any good to send something cheaper if it was more likely to be thrown away unread.
I thought an envelope would be more effective than a postcard or folded cardstock, if I could find something that looked classy. Really good envelopes were not available in quantity in the big-box stores that replaced stationers in my area. Decent ones averaged a little over 1 ½ cents. I rounded to 2 cents to cover the cost of addressing ink.
I designed a two-sided flyer using those graphic skills I developed that weekend I was trying to answer the publisher’s contract questions about the cover, then called some printers for general cost information. One was basically a photocopy operation that would reproduce what I brought it. Another did offset work and would take my digitized pictures and mockup and recreate it with more professional software.
When it came time to do the work, I called again, and prices were higher. I tried printing them on my own machine, and found I could produce about 75 two-sided copies with a single cartridge. The cost of ink and paper came to 22 cents each. One company wanted 14 cents, the other 30.
Both wanted me to send them the pictures and text and pay them a setup fee to recreate my flyer. The alternative was to create a PDF file. When I tried saving my file with Adobe on a friend’s computer, the software changed the page breaks and distorted the borders on pictures. I became less concerned with the cost of setup, than with potential battles with another designer.
When I considered including copies of the cover proof with some letters, it was obvious it was cheaper to pay someone 50 cents a page than try to make copies with large blocks of solid color. My printer sucked up ink and left damp paper.
Altogether the cost of a single flyer mailed first class in an envelope was 63 cents. A personalized letter added a penny. A copy of the cover another 50 cents, for a total of $1.14 per item. That’s less than my publisher wanted for a press release, unless I sent out 500 at $499, but still meant I needed to sell one book for every four of the more expensive package.
To do any mass mailing, I needed a list of people to contact. Last spring, I started to compile addresses of local history societies, then remembered professional groups sell their mailing lists. That was tantalizing, until I saw their prices. Fanzines and small bookstores may be less rapacious, if they make their databases available.
I returned to the internet to compile my own list and discovered many had email addresses. That seemed the affordable option, and I could send my flier as an attachment. Unfortunately, the increase in spam means it’s even harder to get people’s attention on their computers, than it is in their mailboxes. Also, unsolicited email tends to make people angrier than junk mail.
Amazon offers another way to use the internet. You create a list of books or other products you think are similar to yours. When anyone brings up one of the itemized books, your list appears. Of course, you place your book first, with a brief description. It’s more effective if Amazon has an image of your cover to display.
The device is called Listmania. You first need to set up an Amazon account. When you do the first list, it asks you to set up a "real name" and starts making noises about confidential information. Go down to where you can use a "pen name" instead. This is a free service because you market their books for them. Amazon tracks how many times your list is viewed.
If you decide the ideal reader for your novel is already reading Stephen King or Tony Hillerman, your list may not appear on Amazon because the screen only displays three. However, I discovered some of mine appear with other booksellers when I do subject matter searches on Google, Yahoo and MSN. So, even if a popular book gets you no exposure with Amazon, it may still publicize your book where it matters.
One final thing to remember when you’re sending out information - most people have never heard of print-on-demand or self-publishing, but probably have negative views of vanity presses. Don’t try to educate them. Let them think your book is like every other book they’ve ever bought.
If you used iUniverse, say it’s an affiliate of Barnes and Noble; if you used Xlibris, say it’s a strategic partner of Random House Ventures. They used the corporate association to build credibility with you; you can use their carefully crafted legal language to market to others. It may be the only unadvertised benefit of the package you purchased.
Sources:
Goldstein, Bonnie. "Raves For Sale," 19 January 2007 at Slate.com.
Holt, Pat. "Outsourcing at Xlibris," 22 September 2004, at Holt Uncensored #389.
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