One of the regular commenters on the DeepGenre blog I belong to, Jellyn Andrews, posted this in response to author Elaine Isaak‘s comment on some of her promotional methods:
Elaine, I wanted to let you know you’re doing something right. My father and I were at Albacon and attended your reading where you did the drawing for prizes. So now I’m on your mailing list and I recognize your name. I think it was your appeal to bloggers on the fliers you posted that initially caught my attention.
And my father also recognizes your name now, because when we were in Borders Express, he took note when he saw your books. You’d been in there and signed them. And one of the staff overheard us talking about it and joined in. I think he said he went to high school with you, so he liked to promote your work whenever he could.
We often hear in the book business that word of mouth is what sells books, and this comment is a prime indicator of that. In fact, this comment shows that a number of Elaine’s promotional efforts came together to help her out here: word of mouth, a convention reading, a mailing list, fliers, a book signing, and encouraging old friends/classmates to act as evangelists. (Of course, I’m unclear from this comment whether Jellyn or her father actually bought a book, but we’ll let that slide.)
Traditional marketers have a variety of tools they use to test the efficacy of their methods. If you’ve ever registered your DVD player with the manufacturer, you’ve given the manufacturer vital information about where you bought it, what influenced you to buy it, and what factors you took into consideration. Booksellers don’t have that option, because the incentive for the customer isn’t there; you’re very, very unlikely to encounter a defective book that needs returning or servicing. (Although remind me to tell you the story about the time I was trapped on a cruise to the Bahamas with a defective copy of Clive Barker’s Weaveworld that was missing 50 pages.)
So how do booksellers know what works in selling books? Or, more germane to this blog and this discussion, how does the author know which of his/her promotional efforts are paying off?
It’s hard to know. I’ve copied a bunch of free chapters and audio files onto about 350 CDs, designed a pretty label, and handed these things out at half a dozen SF conventions — and don’t have any hard evidence that a single one of those CDs sold a copy of Infoquake. Maybe they have, maybe they haven’t. Maybe my name is now burned in the consciousness of 350 people who will then tell 350 of their friends, and so on, and so on. Impossible to know.
So I’m going to try a little experiment here. I want to hear from science fiction and fantasy readers and consumers. Pick three recent SF/F titles that you’ve purchased, and add a comment telling the world how you heard about them, and what inspired you to buy them. “It was sitting on the bookshelf at Borders next to Robert Heinlein and I liked the cover” counts, as does “one of my friends told me about it” or “Amazon told me that I would like it because I recently purchased Paddy Chayefsky’s Altered States.” Extra points for the out-of-the-ordinary. You can tell me how you found/purchased Infoquake if you’d like, but it’s not necessary; any SF title will do.
And of course, if you say “I bought it because the author was handing out promotional CDs at a science fiction convention,” you get a big ol’ glittery gold star with hearts and kisses drawn around it.