An Adventure in Digital Book Marketing

Since February, I’ve been giving myself a crash course in book marketing and promotion, especially in regards to social media marketing, because it’s the cheapest route for getting your books out there that I’ve found. Which is not to say that it is the most effective, or that paid promotions aren’t more effective. Those are things I cannot yet say. Ask me when I’m a successful and wealthy author. Perhaps I will know the answer by then.

While educating myself in areas beyond my own expertise, (I’m a writer, not a marketer), I launched a marketing campaign and created promotions of my own to get a feel for what works for me and what doesn’t. Since that time, I’ve dipped my toes into the pool of paid promotions, as well. Among the methods and techneques tried: I now have a slowly growing mailing list for my new monthly newsletter. I’ve sent out two so far, and have so far met with medicore success, and I launched a media campaign for Delilah which included a few modest paid promotions, social network promotions of new advertisement photos, sending out press releases to select Colorado newspapers pushing the local author angle, and my very first book trailer which I created myself.

It’s hard to determine the success of any of my efforts as yet, although the press releases resulted in runs in two newspapers that I know of. What that adds up to in sales, I don’t yet know. Although there was a small increase in sales April, there doesn’t seem to be a correlation with any of my promotional efforts. Sales come slow, and often, only after great effort on the author’s part, I think. Only time will show the effectiveness, or ineffectiveness, of my first marketing campaign.

The newsletter email list is growing slowly, but it is growing. The weird thing is, when you sign up in the sidebar pop-up, you get a link to a free e-copy of my paranormal mystery novelette, Hidden Secrets, but only a handful have been claimed. I even sent out the link in the newsletter for April, and still subscribers are not claiming their thank you gift. Of course, only a little over thirty percent are opening the newsletter, so I don’t know how much help it will be. I’m asking all who read this post to subscribe to my monthly newsletter using the sidebar pop-up, and then claim your free gift. The newsletter is monthly, so it won’t clutter up your inbox, and Hidden Secrets is not available on any other platform.

I don’t know if the book trailer had any effect on sales, but I sure did have fun creating it once I figured out what program I could use to get the job done. After looking at numerous free programs that claim to make book trailers, it turns out I had the program to do the job already installed on my computer in my Microsoft Office 2013 Power Point. A little more self-education on what can be done with Power Point and how to do it, and I had myself a book trailer, which I absolutely love. It’s amazing what can be done with software I already own. Made me happy. Even if it doesn’t bring one sale, I think it’s cool. I’d post it here to show you, but the free plans on WordPress don’t include video capabilities, so if you’re interested, you can see it on my Delilah Facebook page. I hope you’ll check it out.

I’ve learned a lot from my search for knowledge in book marketing and promotion. While SEO is still important, it’s valued different than it used to be, because search engines now operate differently, according to Hubspot’s 20 SEO Myths You Should Leave Behind in 2018. Technical terms like bounce rate may be beyond my limited understanding, but I understand enough to realize I need to give SEO more thought when designing my content. It would be a lot easier if my books would just shoot up to the top of the best sellers charts overnight and rode there for awhile. Maybe then I could afford to hire somebody to do all this brain numbing stuff for me. I always try to write using keywords. Isn’t that enough?  I only had a very basic understanding of SEO to begin with, and if I try to take in too much SEO talk at one time it gives me a headache, but I’m determined to give it my best shot.

So, that’s my first big marketing adventure. I may not be able to tell how effective it was at this time, but I know I’m learning a lot as I go. The adventure isn’t over yet. In July, I’ll be at my first face to face event, when I sit on the alumni panel for Western State at the Writing the Rockies Conference and print copies of Delilah will be available. I’m both excited and nervous, but I know it’s going to be a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to it. Be sure and catch next Monday’s post to learn more about the conference

As to the effectiveness of any of it? I’ll let you know.

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