Since so many people seem to be interested in my blog entry on How I Promoted My Book, I thought I’d post a few more random thoughts and suggestions about book promotion here.

Keep in mind that there’s no one set way of marketing anything, or we’d all be swilling down New Coke. This is especially true with the book publishing business, which certainly must rank as one of the most bizarre businesses in existence. So your mileage with my suggestions may vary.

Lastly, let’s remember that I have exactly one (1) to my name (obligatory Amazon link here), which has been on the shelves for a grand total of five (5) months. So if Orson Scott Card says one thing and I say another, you might want to, y’know, strongly consider following his advice instead. (Unless he’s talking about politics, religion, or homosexuality. I dug Ender’s Game and Speaker for the Dead like everyone else, but the fellow is a wee bit unhinged.)

And now, once again, we present Dave on Marketing:

Market for the long term. Some people will tell you not to bother with a particular marketing effort because it’s not going to sell any books. But sales or marketing are completely different animals. Marketing is for building reputations, for generating buzz, for spreading the word, and for creating positive impressions, among other things. The ad agencies who spend millions of dollars on Pepsi commercials don’t expect you to run out the door that instant to buy a six-pack; neither should you expect that everyone who reads your blog is going to click straight over to Amazon. The ultimate goal is to boost your writing career, not just the immediate fortunes of one particular book.

Take your book seriously. This was one of the hardest things for me to do after I’d signed my contract with Pyr. Not that I wasn’t utterly serious about the content of the book. But in order for other people to take your book seriously, you have to be serious about the way you market it. You need to be able to stand tall, hold up your book, look a skeptical customer in the eye and say, “I wrote this. It frickin’ rocks. It’s worth your time and money.”

…But don’t take it too seriously. You are marketing a piece of literature, after all, and not a miracle pill to cure leukemia. Many people buy books simply for diversion or entertainment, and they’ll resent an author who believes their book should be read for moral edification and uplift. Hyperbolic statements about the quality of your book (“best thing since sliced bread,” “better than Jesus,” “Foundation is amateurish in comparison”) should be left to your blurbers and reviewers.

Network like a mad fiend. It’s the prime irony of the field: many of us are writers because we’re not comfortable communicating face-to-face. I would much rather sit hunched in the garret scribbling by candlelight than walk around a meeting shaking hands. But the Cranky Lonesome Writer in the Attic routine doesn’t work nearly as well as getting out there and pressing the flesh. And if you’re in science fiction, remember this: no matter how socially awkward you feel, there’s always someone within a stone’s throw who’s ten times worse.

Keep a file of stock promotional materials handy. If you carry around a briefcase or laptop bag, it’s a good idea to keep business cards, review sheets, catalogs, and (of course) a copy of your book with you at all times. You never know when they’ll come in handy. When you’re at home, make sure you have a short bio and synopsis of the novel primed on your computer for quick access. You’re going to be cutting and pasting this stuff a hundred times.

Spread your e-mail address far and wide; answer all of your e-mail. If you’ve got something interesting to say, people will want to contact you. Make sure your e-mail address is easy for them to find. Personally, I don’t bother with the spam protection measures that most people use — the Google and Outlook spam filters work pretty well in concert, and I’d rather wade through a dozen extra pieces of spam than risk losing a single message.

Work with your publisher, not against them. As I mentioned in my last piece, the success or failure of your book in the marketplace largely rests on your publisher’s efforts, not yours. You can certainly add some shine of your own, but as far as marketing and promotion of your book goes, you’re clearly the supporting player. Find out what they have in mind to promote your book. Learn to know where you can offer your assistance, and where it’s better for you to just stay out of the way.

Come up with a nice tagline for your book and keep it handy. You have no idea how often friends, acquaintances, strangers, colleagues, co-workers, etc. will ask you “so what’s your book about?” They don’t want to hear a five-minute exposition about the Three Goblin Warlords in the Kingdom of Vogelvix and the missing Crown of Wobblesparkutron, and how it’s up to a plucky heroine with a band of quirky adventurers to blah blah blah. When someone asks me what Infoquake is about, I simply say, “Dune meets The Wall Street Journal.” It’s short, it’s punchy, and it’s on the book jacket. Sometimes I also use one of the lines from the Barnes & Noble Explorations review of the book that called Infoquake “the love child of Donald Trump and Vernor Vinge.”

In the end, it’s the writing that counts, not the promotion. I’ve read a lot of blogs about book promotion that complain that writers aren’t supposed to be good at promotion, that it’s the job of publishers and publicists to do this crap. And while I don’t entirely agree, I will say this: your primary job is to write. If the books suck, chances are they won’t sell no matter what you do. (And please, no Dan Brown or Terry Goodkind wisecracks here.)

It’s now been about five months since Pyr published my first novel Infoquake. It seems as good a time as any to sit back and take stock of my promotional efforts. What worked, what didn’t work, what should I have done more of, what should I have done less of?

When I started to make a list of all the promotional efforts I’ve made in the past year, I started to feel — well, a little embarrassed. To an outsider, it must look like I do nothing all day but come up with ways to move copies of Infoquake. The “Infoquakes Cereal” pic here is meant to be a joke, but honestly, sometimes it feels like I’ve tried everything but a sugary cereal for kids.

(Quick aside: Have you ever noticed that when companies say their cereal is “part of this nutritious breakfast,” the cereal box is always sitting next to… a complete nutritious breakfast?)

Here, then, are the promotional efforts I did that I think were well worth doing:

• Designed and programmed a website for the book and bought several related domain names (infoquake.net, jump225.com, multireal.net, geosynchron.net)
• Wrote several original background articles on the world of Infoquake exclusively for the website
• Started a blog about eight months before the release of the book and began consciously trying to write about topics that I hoped would garner me an audience
• Joined the group blogs DeepGenre (thanks to Kate Elliott and Katharine Kerr) and SFNovelists (thanks to Tobias Buckell)
• Attended and got on the programming at a number of science fiction conventions (ReaderCon, WorldCon, Capclave, PhilCon, and upcoming Balticon and Penguicon)
• Hosted a five-book gimmicky giveaway contest on my blog that received a fair bit of attention
• Posted all nine drafts of the first chapter of Infoquake on my website
• Encouraged friends and family members to send e-mails to their contact lists recommending that they check out Infoquake
• Doggedly hunted down every interview opportunity I could find, and ended up getting about seven or eight interviews on sites like Barnes & Noble Explorations, John Scalzi’s By the Way blog, the Agony Column, SFFWorld, and Suite101.com
• Created a MySpace profile and spent a couple weeks aggressively seeking friends with an interest in science fiction (1,698 friends to date!)
• Created a mailing list for the book and added just about everyone I knew to it, then sent out once- or twice-a-month mailings on book news and events
• Made a conscious effort to make friends in the science fiction industry, mostly just because it’s nice to have more friends (although the Machiavellian in me notes that several of these friends have had some very nice things to say about Infoquake on their blogs and such)

I also did a number of promotional efforts that may have had some positive impact, but it’s hard to tell:

• Designed and printed 1,000 four-color Infoquake business cards through VistaPrint.com and passed them out liberally to anyone and everyone
• Recorded the first handful of chapters on audio using my laptop, an old microphone, and free Audacity software, then posted these as a podcast on my website
• Created and gave away approximately 350 promotional Infoquake CDs at cons and readings, including all of the sample chapters and audio files
• Started an Amazon blog that basically just cross-posts the Infoquake-related blog entries from my main WordPress blog, and spent some time tracking down Amazon Friends
• Gave away two signed copies of Infoquake to the Save Apex Digest raffle organized by the radiant Mary Robinette Kowal
• Convinced a friend (Josef K. Foley) to do some original artwork for the Infoquake website
• Did a handful of readings and signings at chain bookstores, which had rather disappointing turnouts, despite considerable publicity (listing in the Washington Post literary calendar, front-of-the-store displays, emails and invites sent to everyone in creation)
• Held two book parties for immediate family and friends on what turned out to be two very inconvenient dates for book parties
• Took a nice, official-looking author photo, only to decide I didn’t like it nearly as much as the spur-of-the-moment photo my wife took outside a club in Boston in 2002
• Read and made comments on two drafts of an Infoquake screenplay, which has been in front of a few big Hollywood players (though I’m not holding my breath)
• Made a conscious effort to participate in the blogosphere by commenting on other people’s blogs
• Managed to get in touch with about a dozen authors and important people to ask for advance praise (“blurbs”), including an Obvious Legendary Hard SF Novelist, two Bestselling High-Tech Journalists, and a Business Legend With a Name So Big That Yes, Your Mother Has Probably Heard of Him — and only got a response from one person, the terrific Kate Elliott, who provided the gracious blurb you see on the praise page

Of course, there were also a number of things I tried to promote my book that have had seemingly no impact or fell flat altogether:

• Started a bulletin board-like Yahoo Group to try to encourage author/reader (or reader/reader) dialogue about the book
• Started a reading group program to encourage people to buy Infoquake in bulk and discuss it in their book clubs
• Tried my hand at writing short stories to get my name out there in the SF magazines, only to discover that finishing a short story is even more difficult for me than finishing a novel
• Created a LiveJournal that just mirrors the copy from my WordPress blog
• Contacted a dozen well-known legal/political bloggers known to be partial to science fiction and tried to get them to review the book; all said they’d take a look at the book, but none of them ever responded to my follow-up emails
• Sent a couple of free press releases out through PRWeb to try and spur some news coverage
• Tried unsuccessfully to persuade my publisher to sell advertising in the book (about which see my blog post Should Novelists Sell Advertisements?)
• Spent waaaay too much time trolling Google, Technorati, Amazon, Yahoo, Icerocket, and other websites to see who’s talking about the book, what they’re saying, how they’re reviewing it, etc.

So now that you’ve gone through these lists of all the sh** I’ve done to promote Infoquake and shaken your head in amazement/befuddlement at my persistence/foolishness, what lessons have I learned? What wisdom do I have to impart to other authors about how to promote their books?

1. You don’t necessarily need to spend a lot of money. Almost everything on the “useful effort” list above is a cheap or free enterprise. Conventions, of course, can be expensive — but surely you can do what I did, which is to attend cons where you can stay with relatives or friends and use frequent fliers/hotel points. Designing and programming a website can also be expensive if you don’t know what you’re doing — but it’s perfectly acceptable to use free WordPress software and a free WordPress template instead of hiring a designer/programmer like me.

2. Play to your strengths. My strengths (luckily) are web consulting and online marketing. As I’ve discovered, I’m a mediocre public speaker and not exactly a champion debater. I don’t have the world’s biggest Rolodex. But I’ve managed to find some areas that fit my comfort zone where I could excel.

3. Recognize that the most important aspects of book promotion are the ones you have little or no control over. Sure, spending time doing an interview with a science fiction fan site might get your name out there and sell 10 or 20 or 100 or 300 books. But the buyer at Borders or Barnes & Noble can give you thousands and thousands of book sales if he/she has enough confidence in the book to place a big order. The reverse, unfortunately, is also true.

4. Nobody knows when you fail… I did some research on discussion groups and ended up settling on Yahoo! Groups for an author forum. I created the forum, publicized it in half a dozen places, and nobody cared. So? I took down the link, I shrugged my shoulders, I moved on. People in the publishing biz might be able to track down your BookScan numbers and see how and where (and if) your book is selling, but nobody else is going to bother.

5. …But let everybody know when you succeed. Emphasize the positive. Spread the good word. Tell your friends. Brag about it on your blog.

6. You, the author, are the only one who really gets to decide if you succeeded or not. Today I got a note on MySpace from a reader saying this: “Don’t think I’m blowing smoke up your hindparts when I say that Infoquake is easily one of the best books I’ve ever read…. The depth and detail of this new world rank right up there with Neal Stephenson’s Diamond Age.” It’s comments like that that make me sit back and think, y’know, I don’t care if I sell another copy of the book. I’ve done what I set out to do.

Okay, not really. Buy more. Please.

–David Louis Edelman