Writing Workshop – The Theory of Longtail Book Marketing

When it comes to marketing I’m no expert, but I’ve been doing it for a little while now and although my books are not selling in huge volumes they are selling at a steady trickle, so in the next couple of blog posts I’m going to explain my book marketing strategy.

I bill myself as a part-time author, because I have a life, a job, children, and other businesses.  My dystopian steampunk novel, Gaia’s Brood, is not my first book or the first I have put on sale.  It is, however, the first book I have produced on a commercial basis, treating writing like any of my other businesses.

I’m going to be totally honest here:  sales are steady, but not great – they will pick up after I have added two more novel length books to the series and a free prequel novelette, because that is the nature of internet self-publishing.  Please don’t expect anything big from a single novel, despite what everyone advertises, unless, of course, you are a hidden genius.  And certainly don’t part with any sizable amounts of money, because there are a lot of people out there who have discovered it is easier to separate you from your cash, by selling you the self-publishing dream, than it is for them to realize the dream themselves – self-publishing has been called the next great gold rush.

Paid for marketing does sell books, but the amount of money you need to spend on publishing is loosely proportional to the quality of the book.  Of course, if you are that one in a million genius, you still won’t have to spend much money, because viral publicity will do the job for you.

So how do the other 299,999 pulp fiction writers, like me, with fun, but average books/stories do effective marketing?  (I am ignoring the 250,00  writers who never finish their first book and the 475,000 who only ever write one, because no amount of marketing will magically create a writing career – only sustained hard work will do that – sorry, the hype is lies, hope you haven’t spent too much).

Market slow; write fast; target a specific audience.

I could be completely wrong here, but let me explain what I mean by ‘Market slow; write fast’:

For me, marketing must:

Have a low impact on my writing time
Have low cost
Be Scalable
Be Sustainable
Have a low impact on the rest of my life

Here’s the explanation:

Nothing sells books to readers like more fun books in the same series, so the most effective and cost-effective method of selling books is to write more. As far as I am concerned, anything that detracts from the sacred writing time is bad business, and that includes marketing.
I may be just a skinflint, but it seems to me that instead of spending my writing profits, however small, on short-term marketing, I should be investing them long-term on producing a high quality next book (hiring editors, cover designers, etc).
Repeating the same marketing tasks over and over again is a waste of effort. A novel is a scalable product:  you produce it once and sell it over and over again.  I apply the same principle to marketing:  I want to create one really good piece of marketing and then reuse it repeatedly.  I have done this with the book trailer for Gaia’s Brood – I was aiming for spectacular (method URL), I hope you will agree the investment of time and effort was worthwhile.  All I need do now it keep drawing attention to it so it sells my book.  Scalable
I’m not very consistent at marketing. Having a busy life and writing schedule, my marketing tends to appear in short patchy bursts as-and-when I can fit it in.  This means, ideally, that my marketing efforts must be self-replicating and sustain themselves.
Whatever marketing I do must be manageable within the context of the rest of my life – yes, writing is a business, but also a lifestyle choice. I need to know there is a steady marketing base chipping away in the background ready to support whatever short-term promotions I choose to trigger as-and-when I get the opportunity/time.

I draw a lot of marketing inspiration from Derek Murphy.  He has a formidable work ethic, but he is also a gifted copy writer, running a business, and has at least ten employees in the background, not to mention other freelancers, helping him churn stuff out, so take what he says with a ‘healthy pinch of salt’.  What he does is incredible and he is very successful.  However, for him life is business, but that is not me and not my life.  I cannot possibly emulate him, so I try to use some of Derek’s marketing techniques, within the framework of my life, in a low impact way.

Here’s one thing I have learned from Derek about selling on the internet, and which is illustrated by the graph at the top of this blog:   the internet (specifically social networking) is the perfect tool for targeting niche markets.  So if you want to self-publish successfully, make sure your novels are aimed at a niche audience.

The key to self-publishing success is finding a niche market for your novels.

I failed to learn this lesson with my  first books, The Helium3 Series.  The audience were too generic, which meant my marketing efforts were swamped by a sea of other generic marketing.  My current books, Gaia’s Brood and Cogler’s Brood are aimed squarely at the Steampunk niche.

Well that is the theory.  Next time, I will share the practicalities of my longtail marketing strategy and how to reach the niche audience.

Nick