Rethinking Book Marketing, and Some Quotes from Reviewers

A 1970’s artist depiction of a ringstation (from https://settlement.arc.nasa.gov/70sArt/art.html).

Becoming a published science fiction author was a jubilant moment for me, and I coasted on that high for a long time.

But of course everything that goes up must come down. I’ve found my mood and attitude regarding my nascent writing career to be significantly less jubilant now that I’ve struggled with the problem of how to sell more books.

Ideally (for the author), the publisher would take on 100% of that burden, but that’s not the reality of today’s publishing world. All authors — even those with the biggest, most influential publishers — are expected to pull some of their own marketing weight. Indi/self-published authors, and authors with small, independent presses are responsible for the bulk of their own marketing efforts (with some exceptions — small Berkeley press Omnidawn got my novelette The Icelandic Cure reviewed in Publisher’s Weekly). My current publisher, Flame Tree Press, is somewhere in-between; an established mid-sized publisher with good distribution (including Barnes & Noble), but somewhat new at the novel game (The Sky Woman was among their first round of genre novel releases). They’re good partners and I’m happy to be with them, but by no means can I sit on my laurels and relax. Like most modern authors, I feel compelled to put in some hustle.

The problem is, I have no idea how to best spend my limited time, energy, and money to promote my work. Obviously the best marketing plan is to write a great book and let word-of-mouth do the rest, but even that won’t work if one’s book isn’t read by some minimum number of vocal supporters.

Here are my early intuitions about book marketing, sales, and career longevity, so far, in no particular order:

• The vast majority of an author’s energy should be put into making their books as good and entertaining as possible for their core audience.
• Time spent socializing (networking) with other authors and publishing industry people at conventions is mostly well spent, especially in terms of boosting morale and motivation, gaining insider industry knowledge, meeting people face-to-face, and generally learning the ropes. But there are significant financial, time, and energy costs, and diminishing returns.
• Most direct advertising campaigns are probably a waste of money, unless you are really good at analytics and enjoy that sort of thing (I’m not and I don’t).
• Maintaining an author blog is probably helpful, at least if you enjoy blogging (I do).
• Persuading people (even your friends who read fiction) to review or even rate your book is challenging, but worth it. Honest reviews on amazon and goodreads are important.
• Easily agitated randos on goodreads and amazon will give you bad reviews and one-star ratings for all kinds of reasons. Look up your favorite books by your favorite authors and read some of the garbage reviews. Don’t let these reviews get to you — they are keeping the wrong readers away from your books. For example this goodreads review of my award-winning novelette The Icelandic Cure:
• Trying to get particular bookstores or libraries to carry your book is an uphill battle; this is more in your publisher’s court (via having good distribution, and getting your book high profile reviews). This being said, my local indi bookstores have been really supportive, especially East Bay Booksellers. But I spent several hours trying to figure out why Pleasanton B&N carries my book, but not my local Emeryville store (probably shelf space, but who knows?).
• Many authors generously offer free publicity to other authors, and this is worth taking advantage of. Lawrence Schoen does Eating Authors, Cat Rambo features guest posts, and John Scalzi has his Big Idea series (I’ll submit one for The Guardian). I’m trying to give back in this department with my own Word Craft series of author interview posts.
• I’ve been surprised by the large number of acquaintances — including people I might have met just a few times — who have read The Sky Woman. I think it’s worth mentioning to new people that you meet that you’re an author, even if you suffer from imposter syndrome (which most authors do, to some extent, unless they have won large numbers of awards and have sold millions of books).

At some point I’ll try to formulate some general strategy of how to effectively market my books and sustain my career, but I’m not there yet. I would say my top three “notes to self” at this point are:

1. “Pull” works better than “push” (vocal readers pulling other readers in, and pulling your books into stores).
2. Putting myself out there, meeting people, and in general being a good person and giving more than I expect to receive; these are always good strategies. Anybody who still believes that “nice guys finish last” in the age of Keanu Reeves and Neil Gaiman is completely delusional and ignoring reality. While being a passive doormat isn’t going to get you anywhere, being a compassionate, considerate, gentle, non-asshole human being will always help you in the long run (and usually in the short run as well).
3. It makes sense to put the most energy into marketing and promotion methods that I actually enjoy (or at least don’t hate). If my novelist lifestyle veers too far into the marketing lane, it ceases to become a writing career and becomes a marketing career (which is not what I want). However I do want to sell enough books to make money for both myself and my publisher(s), so we can keep making more (hopefully good) books.

Some Review Excerpts (that may interest you in The Sky Woman)

If you already purchased my debut science fiction novel The Sky Woman, thank you — I truly appreciate it. If you reviewed it and/or recommended to a friend, thank you again!

If you haven’t, maybe some of these amazon.com reader review excerpts will pull you in. I would love to introduce some new readers to the Reclaimed Earth series before Book 2 (The Guardian) comes out in September.

a riveting tale of surviving Earth dwellers desperately striving to survive unspeakable conditions on a devastated planet; and of one 27th century human woman’s perilous adventures among them.

Earth has gone through a major shift, or a series of severe depopulation cycles and humans have been set back to a new Iron Age. There are however those that live in the ring stations in orbit around the earth, where the technology has continued to advance.

The Sky Woman’s stew of Sci-Fi, anthropology, psychology, history (past and future), suspense, and a soupcon of romance kept me turning the pages. 

I was sort of intrigued by the unique elements of the world – mixing festival-throwing, sword-wielding Vikings with advanced technology, fantasy-style monsters, space stations, and mind-bending simulation, all on post-dystopian Earth. Some readers may find this is too much to mix, but I found myself staying interested. And yes, the Vikings are doing Vikingy things like flaying people and dripping meat juice from their mouths, and there is some rather enthusiastic mention of explicit forms of violence, but I did recognize that was all part of the premise. I did really like the characters.

In determining the fate of planet Earth (actually the history of Earth at this stage in the story), so many popular disaster theories have been brought into the mix. A series of events has de-populated Earth. Low birth rates, extreme economic decline, cultural collapse, and natural disasters, culminating in the catastrophic eruption of a Mediterranean supervolcano. The Sky Woman takes place on and above a post-apocalyptic Earth, centuries later when the earth is becoming habitable and civilization is making a comeback. This is a fascinating future Earth, where those that escaped the apocalypse live in the sky, in ringstations.