I'd like your input. How do you shop for books? Before you started writing and joined the various online writing communities, how did you discover new authors to try out?
Robert Lee Brewer on his blog My Name is Not Bob has been having a platform building challenge for the month of April. I've been reading his posts everyday. And after arguing over the necessity of SEO, I started wondering how other people shop for books.
I go to the bookstore or the library and browse the shelves. First I check on whether my favorite authors have anything new out. If I don't have enough books in my arms, then I start looking at new to me authors. When a cover or title catches my eye, I pull it off the shelf and read the back blurb. If it sounds interesting, then I buy it or check it out.
I'm more likely to hear some buzz about a new book now, but even before I started hanging out with writers, if a book had buzz then I would check it out. I discovered Harry Potter through a newspaper article in the LA Times way back when.
To effectively market a book, you have to reach readers who are going to buy that book. So I am gathering information on book shopping habits. How do you shop for books? How do your friends and relatives shop for books?
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label marketing. Show all posts
Friday, April 20, 2012
Monday, October 18, 2010
Facebook and Twitter
Some ruminations on the ever popular facebook and twitter:
When I first started researching the how tos of small publishing, conventional wisdom was that one needed both a facebook account and a twitter account in order to effectively market one's product. My experience is that they both can be effective marketing tools if one spends a lot of time on the computer and one can work with more than one window active.
While I have both a facebook account and a twitter account, I don't have the time to devote to making them work for me as a marketing tool. And I can't work with more than one window open at a time. I lose track of what I am doing and make many mistakes.
Unlike my website and my blog, what I post on those accounts is only available to be seen by the people that I am friends with or who are following me. Facebook and Twitter are not the most effective tools for reaching people who don't already know you. I find it rather surprising that they are/were so strongly advocated, because a blog and a website are much more effective at reaching people you don't already know. Anyone can read this blog. And if the Chinese spammers and hackers can find my website, then it is pretty easy for anyone else to find it, too.
Not to mention that your status and your tweets about your book are buried in everyone else's blathering about what they ate for dinner, how tired they are, OMG I just watched the most fantastic episode of Glee, and John found a lonely bull on his farm will you give it a home. I have to wonder how those who have used facebook and twitter to market their work got through all that noise.
If you made up flyers or bookmarks or something similar and took them down to the library, independent bookseller, coffeeshop, etc, you would have a better chance at reaching people interested in your book than you would with casual use of facebook and twitter.
The bottomline is don't sign up for a facebook account and/or a twitter account thinking that it's a great marketing tool. It takes a lot of time and effort on your part to make them work for you.
When I first started researching the how tos of small publishing, conventional wisdom was that one needed both a facebook account and a twitter account in order to effectively market one's product. My experience is that they both can be effective marketing tools if one spends a lot of time on the computer and one can work with more than one window active.
While I have both a facebook account and a twitter account, I don't have the time to devote to making them work for me as a marketing tool. And I can't work with more than one window open at a time. I lose track of what I am doing and make many mistakes.
Unlike my website and my blog, what I post on those accounts is only available to be seen by the people that I am friends with or who are following me. Facebook and Twitter are not the most effective tools for reaching people who don't already know you. I find it rather surprising that they are/were so strongly advocated, because a blog and a website are much more effective at reaching people you don't already know. Anyone can read this blog. And if the Chinese spammers and hackers can find my website, then it is pretty easy for anyone else to find it, too.
Not to mention that your status and your tweets about your book are buried in everyone else's blathering about what they ate for dinner, how tired they are, OMG I just watched the most fantastic episode of Glee, and John found a lonely bull on his farm will you give it a home. I have to wonder how those who have used facebook and twitter to market their work got through all that noise.
If you made up flyers or bookmarks or something similar and took them down to the library, independent bookseller, coffeeshop, etc, you would have a better chance at reaching people interested in your book than you would with casual use of facebook and twitter.
The bottomline is don't sign up for a facebook account and/or a twitter account thinking that it's a great marketing tool. It takes a lot of time and effort on your part to make them work for you.
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