Make friends not readers

Filed under Promote your book.

It seems that both writers and publishers simply can’t resist the temptation to talk about their books. It is becoming an increasingly common site to see writers’ blogs that contain post after post about their upcoming book and why you need to buy it now. It is the same for some publishers, day after day they are looking for new and slightly different ways to tell us about their books.

My advice is simple – STOP.

The world of one way advertising is dead and buried. No longer are readers happy to sit passively whilst publishers and writers instruct them what to buy. Today we live in a new world. A world were readers are empowered, have choices and can buy ANY book they want at a click of the button.

So the answer is simple. Stop talking about your book. Stop trying to convert readers of your blog into buyers of your books. Stop being a salesperson. Instead, take a step back and make some friends. Focus on adding value to your blog reader’s lives. Make coming to your site a pleasure, something they look forward to doing. Give away books, links, information, humour, secrets, knowledge – anything of value. Talk about things that readers find interesting - the writing process, the publishing process, anything but buying your books.

And here’s the real secret. If you can turn your readers into friends they will buy your book anyway.

Why?

Ask yourself this question – If YOUR friends had their book published would you buy it?

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  • http://www.publishsmarts.wordpress.com @BenDawe

    Very true. I think those sorts of stilted campaigns are doomed in this space. The people have spoken – its no longer acceptable to be inauthentic.

  • http://decodingstatic.blogspot.com/ Andy Harrod

    Interesting article, thanks for sharing. I set up my blog as a home to my novel that I am writing, but I try my best not to push it and instead post extracts and posts about the ideas behind the book to try and engage the readers with the ideas and thoughts behind it. I also do branch out into music, other books and art which I find helpful for me as it is a chance to explore other avenues and hopefully it is also enjoyable for the readers.

    Cheers Andy

    • Gary Smailes

      Andy, I think you have it spot on. The key is to make your blog something people want to read. At BubbleCow I try to only include posts that will add value to writer’s lives. The same with our twitter account (@bubblecow). You will find with your blog that readers become friends first and then will buy your book because they have an emotional investment. If your book is great they will then tell their friends. You can imagine the conversation – my mate wrote this great book you must read it…

  • http://andewallscametumblindown.wordpress.com Miriam

    Absolutely. I get easily bored with blogs that only promote books. My blog doesn’t mention my books. OK, I know, I don’t have any yet. But even if I did, I’d still want to write mostly about the background that led me to start writing, something most people don’t know about, but should.

    • Gary Smailes

      Miriam, I think it is good to have a pic of a cover in the sidebar, but talking about your book is not a great idea. This said it is very good to talk about the process of producing your book – writing, cover design and editing are all great topics for posts.

  • http://decodingstatic.blogspot.com/ Andy Harrod

    Cheers Gary, you are right and I think diversifying what you blog about is key to that. Also twitter is very good for meeting like minded individuals and helping each other out. If it wasn’t for twitter I would never have been a part of A.C. Tillyer’s An A-Z of Possible Worlds blog tour and that was great fun and something people enjoyed reading about.

    • Gary Smailes

      Andy – to be fair I am still to be convinced by blog tours but the A-Z one worked well. The reality is that a writer’s web presence is a net of blog, website, twitter and facebook threads (and google wave!).

  • http://decodingstatic.blogspot.com/ Andy Harrod

    Hi Gary It was the first time I had heard of such a thing (must be out of date!) and it seems to be working for Anne and her book. Willing to give them a go and see how they develop.

  • http://westpierwords.blogspot.com/ David O’Connor Thompson

    Serendipity or wot? I have posted a comment on the opposite point of view that in no way negates your far superior thinking. To me, the reader is all. And before you rush to your keyboard, I know we are not disagreeing – I approach the same issue from a different perspective. The reader is all. Understanding who the reader is, is always the matter of debate.

    • Gary Smailes

      DOT – Spoken like a true advertising man. The reader is indeed king. I am just saying add value to their lives but not trying to over sell your book.

  • http://victoriamixon.com/ Victoria Mixon

    I think this is all part of the normal evolution of the standard rush to use new technology, first and foremost, to make bucks. After the first flush of excitement, everyone starts realizing numbers do not necessarily equal results.

    I have a tiny little following of extremely high quality readers. (They really are! Hi, guys!) I even deliberately shook off a certain number in a reorganization of my blog back in September. My blog and, now, my Pulp Rag community continue to generate plenty of work for me without generating high numbers of viewers passing through. I like to consider my place a warm, friendly little backwater of the Internet—come hang out if you’re interested in a small gang of people sincerely interested in plumbing the depths of the craft of fiction. But if you’re really looking to follow the herd. . .it sure ain’t going to lead you there!

    I do have a published book, but I don’t even have a link to it. It’s out of print, and it wasn’t my best effort, anyway. I don’t worry about it.

    I just love talking about fiction.

    best,
    Victoria

    • Gary Smailes

      You are correct in that it is more about quality of follower than quantity. This is especially true with channels such as twitter. It is very easy to become obsessed with numbers of followers rather than whose these people actually are in real life. I work hard with my twitter account to only follow people who add value to me and to remove followers who are spammy.

  • http://victoriamixon.com/ Victoria Mixon

    Yeah, me too. It keeps my numbers down. But really—I have more important things to do.

    Improving the overall quality of literature in the English-speaking world is my modest yet sincere goal. Maybe we should form a grassroots organization of such editors. I’m tired of watching the quality of published fiction slip, cog by cog, even as incredibly talented unpublished writers like so many of my clients continue to butt their heads against the glass ceiling.

    I’m not going to get rich this way. But I am going to enjoy this one life I get to live.

    Victoria

    • Gary Smailes

      I think that self publishing is more erosive. Many self published books go to market with little if any pre-production editing!

  • http://victoriamixon.com/ Victoria Mixon

    Wow, do they. I just commented on this the other day on my own site, where a regular reader wanted to know whether editing is really necessary or just a crutch. Self-publishing has the bad reputation with traditional publishers that it does because not everyone who can afford to self-publish realizes editing is necessary.

    The truth is it takes two people to write a book: an author and an editor. Traditional publishers have known this for ages. You can bang your head against that wall for as long as you want, but unless you 1) study the craft of editing in-depth, and 2) perform the magical, death-defying feat of learning to edit yourself (a feat even Toni Morrison can’t perform). . .yeah, you really need an editor.

    Not only that, but you need a really GOOD editor. The companion problem to unedited self-publishing is the incredible plethora of folks on the Internet advertising themselves as “editors” because their critique group friends complimented them on their critiquing. I managed to unload one or two readers when I wrote a post on why critiquing is not editing. They were outraged! They had no idea there was more to editing than just guessing.

    This is what confuses writers (and agents, too) and makes them so frightened of spending money they can barely afford on someone they don’t know from Adam. I have heard stories—believe me—of “editors” whose comments consisted entirely of things like “needs more here” and “very nice!” There’s no point in paying for something your writing buddies are willing to trade you for free. We all know struggling authors don’t have money to burn that way.

    Editing is a craft. It takes years of study, years of practice, and a broad, deep understanding of the history of literature. A really good editor can take a decent manuscript and, with the cooperation of the author—who almost certainly needs to revise, reorder, and even write brand new scenes—turn it into something truly wonderful, something an agent or publisher will love. How? By understanding the industry from the inside, coupled with years of experience.

    And, yes, even Jack Kerouac’s famous scroll manuscript went through an editor (Malcolm Cowley, one of the greats) before it was publishable.

    It’s just part of writing a book.

    Victoria

    • Gary Smailes

      This may be the best comment I have ever read about editing. People simply don’t realise just how much time and effort goes into a good edit. Yet, it is not just time it is also expertise. I recently explained to a client that it was HIS choice to either indent speech or not. From a grammatical standpoint he needed to indent, but the market the book was entering would have been happy for the speech to not to be indented. It was his judgement call but my knowledge of the genre that gave him the option.

  • http://victoriamixon.com/ Victoria Mixon

    Thanks, Gary! I’ll tell you, I just had lunch with Alan Rinzler, and if there is one thing that impresses an editor with only thirty years of experience in the writing industry it’s the chance to pick the brain of one with fifty years.

    I do believe the industry is changing, and five years from now independent editors will be the norm rather than the exception. In the meantime, we just on keep plugging away!

    best,
    Victoria

  • http://fogtdal.blogspot.com Peter H. Fogtdal

    You’re making a good and important point, especially concerning TWITTER. However, I think your argument is a tiny bit black and white. Some promotion IS important. It’s the overkill that … kills.