This phase is, in many ways, the most crucial, as it is your best chance to get into the New York Times Bestseller List, or other lists of the same sort. You can put your book up for pre-order during this time, and start getting it purchased by bookstores. All sales during this period count during one day, the release date, so the longer time you give yourself, the wider your net.
The first obvious thing you want to do is have the book go on pre-order as far from release date as possible. This will probably be 90 days. You also want it available in as many sites as possible. The top ones are Amazon and Barnes & Noble, the latter of which should be done through Smashwords.
Now is the time to build the buzz as large and as fast as you can. Reviewers who were getting it during phase 1 should start putting out their reviews now. You want to do a general press release to go to as many places as possible, and to write to the places that you believe will be your biggest supporters early on so you can schedule interviews to happen before release. These will probably be on your list you made on the Excel sheet.
For the major press release I used PR Web, and I used the $250 option. This wasn't the top service, but it wasn't the bottom. It provided wide coverage without offering a lot of information I didn't need. There are "cheaper" options, but nothing that's actually cheap. There are a few sites that do this for free, but no one does it with the sort of coverage and results PR Web gives you. What I've discovered from doing all this is "go big or go home." I've done the free service in the past, the $100 option, and now the $250 option. The free option barely got picked up by any news sources. The $100 got some moderate coverage, but not a lot. The $250 option got covered by several hundred places, so it seemed to be worth it.
The one problem is that the news sources who picked it up barely mentioned the book, if at all. I had done the press release near the beginning, so the book still wasn't releasing for nearly 3 months. Therefore, most sources seemed to ignore it since it was going to be a while before the book would be out. I had done it so far in advance in case some of them wanted to do interviews, but that didn't happen. I don't know what to say about this. The results seemed really positive, and in some ways it was as the news of the subject of the book really got out there. But the book got no sales directly from it, and people didn't really learn of its existence. Bottom line, if you're going to do this option, do it closer to the release date, and make a bigger deal about your book.
As the release date got closer, I talked more and more on Facebook groups and sent out to Twitter. (I'll be honest, I suck at the latter.) I let out bits of information and clips from the book to get interest. This worked in small, yet sure ways. People showed interest who backed it up with sales, though VERY few bought pre-order copies. They wanted to make sure the book was out before they got it. But I did see people talking about it, and not always just with me. Those same people bought the book when it came out.
The month leading up to release, I spent all my time working on the book and its promotions. (I still had a little work to do on it.) I wrote to every media place I could, especially public radio and television. They pretty much entirely ignored me, which was bizarre considering the incredible story. One of them sent a link to the kind of "historical" stories they do, and it went to someone who went to a psychic and got "possessed by the ghost of Montgomery Clift." I guess, how can the long-lost Capone brother who broke the Italian stereotype compete with that?
I had scheduled the release date for a Friday, assuming it would follow the same rules that movies do. Have it released through a weekend that people will want to buy it and read it. About halfway to release, I learned that the best day to release is Monday, as the New York Times and others count the first week of sales along with the pre-releases, and every day will count to your total all the way to Sunday. I couldn't push it back without losing the right to do pre-orders with Amazon again in the future, so I had to pull the date back from Friday to Monday of the same week. It made a few things have to rush, but I got them all done...
...and had only 11 sales. It was disheartening. I know I made a few mistakes, especially in sending out the press release too early, but I'm satisfied that I did enough things right to feel I couldn't have done a lot better. I can't force the media to tell my story and talk about my book. I can't make them interview me. And the subject matter is dynamic enough that I refuse to believe that's the problem. I mean,it's Capone's long-lost-freakin'-brother, and he was a freakin' Prohibition officer. If that isn't a perfect story for public radio and history stations, I don't know what is.
I have been remembering what I read from another self-published author, that he self-publishes fiction, and traditionally publishes non-fiction. I didn't understand why at the time, but now I do. When promoting non-fiction, you are counting on news sources, such as newspapers, radio stations, and especially NPR and PBS. You count on them because your readers trust them more than they'll ever trust you. History readers are typically more traditional, and they want to know that what they're reading is the truth. Most have bought into the idea that a traditional publisher has multiple readers and editors scouring over the facts and double checking them to make sure they're accurate. They do not realize this is all a myth. Nevertheless, the media outlets perpetuate this stereotype by connecting with the traditional publishers, and their time and space is filled up with authors from these publishers. Many of them are friends with the editors and producers of these media outlets, having made these connections while they were both climbing their career ladders.
It was a discouraging lesson, and I was frankly very depressed by it. But I did start having a small ray of hope as I began moving into phase 3...
#self-publishing #bookpromotion
No comments:
Post a Comment