Connie (Corcoran) Wilson is the author of "Writing as Reading" and "Discovering Truth" in the MWC
Creative
 |
| Connie (Corcoran) Wilson |
Writing Primer (MWC
Press,
2012) and has taught writing at all 6 colleges in the
IA/IL Quad Cities and wrote for both the Quad City Times and the Daily
Dispatch. She has been writing, for pay, for 57 years. She was English
Department Chairperson for Silvis Junior High School for 17 years, founded the
Sylvan Learning Center in Bettendorf and the Prometric Testing Center there,
and is listed on Amazon and Facebook as Connie Corcoran Wilson and on
Twitter as Connie Wilson Author. On Yahoo, check for Connie Wilson
and sign up for notices of her posts that range from film coverage of the
Chicago Film Festival to articles with titles like, "Don't Tas Me,
Bro!" She was selected as 2008 Content Producer of the Year (Yahoo) for
her coverage of the 2008 Presidential campaign. @Connie_C_Wilson
That’s
the number one problem for every self-published author. You could be the next
Shakespeare, but if nobody knows about your book, it’s not going to sell. Here
are some things I've learned over the past ten years. I've
written (and promoted) 3 novels in that time, 5 short story collections, 2
books of humor, 1 scholarly novel about teaching, 1 nonfiction book of movie
reviews written for the Quad-City Times in the 70s, and 1 illustrated
children's book.
While
e-books are a totally different world, I did manage to drive The Color of Evil, the series I am finishing up now with KHAKI = KILLER to #8
in free downloads and #232 overall on all books on Amazon (1 p.m. on Oct. 28,
2013). I also drove HELLFIRE & DAMNATION II to #11 using the Kindle Free Book
Give-away method on Amazon.
But
free is free, and we all would like to make something from our hard work. All I
can tell you is
that, if your book is part of a series (I have 2, The
Color of Evil for novels and Hellfire &
Damnation for short stories ), promoting one book in that series
does have ripple effects that are positive for the other works in the
series---if they're any good, of course. I
also learned, the hard way, that humor books only reach Best Seller status if
you're a stand-up comedian or Chelsea Handler or Dennis Leary or Tina Fey or
someone with a national platform, and that this often seems the way with
works in other genres, as well. David Sedaris is an anomaly, amongst humor
writers. (And good for him!)
1. Banner
ads don’t work.
Many sites will sell you a banner ad in a choice of sizes at a fancy price to
promote your book. None will yield a profit. You might not even get a single
click-through. Why? The average click-through rate for banner ads is three tenths of one per cent or 0.3%. That’s
the industry average according to imedia connections.com.
Only three in 1000 people who see your banner ad will click on it. Only about 4%
of those people will buy your book. (That’s the average conversion-to-sale
ratio at Amazon.) You’ll make just one sale for every 10,000 people who see
your banner. How much will you be charged for that banner? Anything between
$100 and $1000. [This information courtesy of
Michael Alvear from his book Make A Killing on Kindle.]
Result:
you’ll
lose your shirt.
Rotating banner ads are even worse. They’re a duck shoot. Now you see them, now
you don’t.
2.
Google Adwords don’t work. (Nor do Bing or Facebook ads, very well.)
To specify any keyword that might attract a book buyer you’ll need to pay
Google or Bing around $1 per click. You can run ads for just a few cents per
click if you select obscure or ‘long tail’ keywords. They’re cheap because few
people ever search for them. So you’re no better off.
Do the math. If your novel sells at $2.99, how many folk who click your Google
or Bing ad at $1 per click will have to buy your book for you to break
even?
Amazon, with all its sophisticated marketing, averages only 4% conversion to
sale.
Result: you’ll lose your shirt
again.
Facebook ads are only slightly better.
You’ll just lose your shirt more slowly.
3.
Blog tours:.
For a fee, a publicist will set up a
blog tour. The more stops, the more money. (You
can try to do it yourself.) Over
the period of a month you’ll be interviewed at a different blog or have a review of your book, (if the unpaid
blogger is up to the task and responsible enough to follow through.) (*This is why having a blog tour organizer who
is diligent is good; the blog tour organizer will “ride herd” on the unpaid
bloggers and make sure the bloggers stay on schedule and, hopefully, keep an
extra article in the hopper in case someone drops the ball). [*Be careful that you don’t commit to too
many interviews. They can be a real time
suck.]
You
also have to be aware that there are no guarantees that the bloggers will like
your book. They might pan it. Always write the reviewer to thank them and ask
them to post their GOOD comments on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Goodreads.
There are “good” blog tours and “bad” blog tours. I’ve done a fair number of
blog tours for one reason: it helps to “prime the pump” with good on Amazon.
Unpaid bloggers potentially fill that
need, IF
they like your book. [This assumes that the members of your favorite
club or organization won’t help you out.]
If you commit to a virtual blog tour, you
should (a) specify that the blog tour will be e-book only---Mobi or Kindle
downloads (b) decide whether you want to give away any e-book or paperback
copies as prizes and (c) decide how much time you are willing to devote to
interviews. My goal on blog tours was
always to get reviews that would be posted on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and
Goodreads. [One caveat: your book had
better be good. Bloggers are under no obligation to give you a pass if your
book sucks. My worst experience on a blog tour was with a book that said,
ON THE COVER, that it would be critical of George W. Bush. This did not set
well with the red states.]
I also have become leery of ever mailing anything anywhere in paperback format. I
mailed 5 books to Canada, via the USPO and none of them arrived. On April 5th,
as we were leaving the country for 2 weeks in Mexico, the post office sent a
lame apology note with a badly battered envelope (brand new mailing envelope
purchased at Staples especially for the purpose) with the information I had
filled out for a Writer's Digest contest enclosed. I called WD. No book or
check arrived. I couldn't "fix" this until we returned on April 20th
and I began making phone calls. Fortunately, the contest deadline was April
30th, but I had to remail, and I used UPS. A day later, 3 more envelopes that
had contained 3 books for review purposes arrived back at my house with lame
apologies about how they had become mangled (they had) in the mail. I no longer
entrust anything of real value to the USPO and certainly not a contest entry,
with a check and a deadline. Maybe your experiences have been more positive,
but I think the budget cuts at the governmental levels are taking their toll,
and, in one West Des Moines suburb, a series of break-ins was even being
tracked to possible informants within the post office letting thieves know
when they could rob houses in broad daylight because the Snow Bird residents
were not home. So, writers, beware.
4.
Press releases, posters and press ads don’t work.
John Locke, the first man to sell one million self-published e-books, author of
“How I Sold 1,000,000 E-Books in 5 Months,” relates spending $25,000 on
paid-for publicity and not selling a
single book. I can testify to that, locally, in a small way.
The
year the children’s book The Christmas Cats in Silly Hats came out (2011), I
bought ads in The River City Reader,
on condition that they do a feature story on the book. They did do a feature
story on the book; the story and ad helped sell a few copies. But the ads cost
$800—and that was a special price!
The
cost of the ads basically wiped out any and all profits from sales of the book
at Festival of Trees, the Geneseo Victorian Christmas Walk (I sat in the window of the Four Seasons), through the Watermark
Book Store on John Deere Plaza at Christmas-time, and during the Village of
East Davenport’s Christmas Walk. Although I knocked myself out to sell the
children’s Christmas book, the paper ads were so pricey that it became a
break-even proposition.
Press ads can work well if you sell non-fiction
into a specific niche.
Nonfiction sells better than fiction. I actually had
one Public Relations firm turn me down when they learned that the book I wanted
them to publicize was fiction and not what they wanted to promote, as it wasn't
a "how to" tome. If you can
get your ads for a nonfiction book free, in exchange for feature articles, or
buy them cheap at ‘last minute’ prices (10% of list rate), perhaps they might
pay off. My experience has been spotty, at best.
Press ads rarely work for fiction. Big
circulation consumer magazines that reach your target readers are not likely to
give you a cheap or barter deal. Why should they?
So
what does work to sell fiction?
John Locke, author of “How I Sold
1,000,000 E-books in 5 Months swears by
the ‘funnel’ approach. No less an authority than David Morrell (“Wise Blood”)
told me, during a one-on-one hour-long session in December at the Writers’
Benefit for New Orleans that my goal should be to get “a list” and to learn as
much about Internet advertising as possible.
John Locke first sold novel number one at a token 99 cents. He built a Twitter
list to promote it. (Google+ may be a
better option today as it may be more
author-friendly than Twitter or Facebook.) He encouraged reviews, welcomed
feedback via an email link in his book, and acknowledged every customer
personally.
Locke put every customer on a database.
That was list #1. If anyone bought more than one book, they were transferred to
list #2: ‘Friends’ or repeat buyers. These people got regular, highly
personalized emails, gifts and privileged previews of his next novel. It was
worth the effort because such people would buy everything he wrote.
Once
he hit a critical mass of several thousand customers he found he could
relax and his fans promoted his books
for him.
Second, he traded up his regular list to buy his next novels at a higher and
more profitable price, but his original
list of Friends still got a discount.
His strategy was time-intensive, but it
worked. Locke himself admits that he first threw big bucks at billboard
advertising and all sorts of unsuccessful methods. In my own case, I recently
did an E-blast to 100,000 people over a period of a month. I knew the owner of
the company that does them, so the price and preparation were right. Too
soon to know if it "worked" well or poorly. And I'm still building
"the list" that David Morrell values so highly.
Why was Locke so dramatically successful when many self-publishing authors will
say they’re doing much the same thing? Answer: they’re not. Locke sells
through Amazon and other on-line book stores, like everyone else, but he works
hard to get every customer on his own mailing list.
If you put up your books at Amazon, Lulu, CreateSpace and the like, and do
nothing else, you’ll fail. These stores will keep your customer names to
themselves; you’ll never see their names. So you can’t build a direct personal
relationship with your customers, encouraging them to come back.
You must build your own list
plus an after-market that you control.
As Morrell told me, “The list is key.”
This is often where having your own blog comes in handy, as you can often
secure names of interested consumers by asking them to “opt in” to receive a
newsletter with news about your next release.
A recent Goodreads post showed that word-of-mouth was the single biggest
factor in selling books, and winning awards for your writing helped, too. But
The List is paramount.
Another suggestion I’d make for selling your books would be to become
active in writers’ organizations where you might form influential contacts. I
belong or have belonged to the MWC, MWA, IWPA, AWP, HWA, and ITW. What do all
those initials stand for?
Midwest Writing Center
Midwest Writing Association
Illinois Women’s Press Association
American Writing Program
Horror Writers’ Association
International Thriller Writers
As you move into different fields, you may move to different
organizations. I, for instance, am seguing out of “horror” as a field and into
other areas that interest me more. I’m interested in the True Crime
novels of folks like r. Barri Flowers (whom I interviewed), will probably be
active in “Love Is Murder” in Chicago in February, again, and may join Sisters
in Crime.
But each writer is different, and it depends on what you write. And,
of course, independent bookstores are making a comeback and writers can sell
their wares directly to the public, if they can draw a crowd. (not always
easy).
I have attended activities/conferences for many genre areas and
was even selected as Silver Feather award winner by the Chicago chapter of IWPA
(Illinois Women's Press Association, June , 2012) and David R. Collins Award
Winner in 2010 by the MWC. As a member of IWPA, I am also able to participate
in Printers’ Row each year, selling books at the Midwest’s largest outdoor book
fair, and David Dorris and I sold books at the Iowa City Book Fest one year, on
behalf of the MWC. I have attended the BEA (Book Expo America) for many years,
although that is not a book selling opportunity, but more a chance to learn
more about marketing your books and meet others. (You have to give away your
books). I'll be at International Thriller Writers in July and write for their
newsletter and I continue to "write short" for Yahoo as a Featured
Columnist, specializing in entertainment and politics (although I was out
taking flood pictures last week.)
I hope any of the above helps other would-be writers. Please check out my
books and write me back at EINNOC10@Aol.com with your thoughts on the
above, which may differ from my own. I'd love to hear your experiences.
Meanwhile, it's back to finishing KHAKI = KILLER, the third installment
in "The Color of Evil" YA trilogy and working on more short stories
organized around Dante's "Inferno" and the crimes punished at each of
the 9 Circles of Hell.
ChI was just notified that I've won a NABE Pinnacle award (Thriller
category) for RED IS FOR RAGE, and that HELLFIRE & DAMNATION II
won 2 E-Lit awards (silver) so the beat goes on.
***********************
See more about Connie (Corcoran) Wilson on her
websites at
www.ConnieCWilson.com; www.quadcitieslearning.com
(under construction); www.TheColorOfEvil.com; www.RedIsforRage.com;
www.ItCamefromTheSeventies.com;
www.GhostlyTalesofRoute66.com;
www.HellfireAndDamnationThebook.com
and, soon, www.KhakiEqualsKiller.com.
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The QC Book Rack, an independent bookstore with locations in Davenport and
Moline, and 918studio, an independent
literary press in LeClaire, have teamed up to participate in Indies First and are promoting a
local author event for Small
Business Saturday sponsored by the American Booksellers Association
(ABA). 
