Good, bad, and ugly of fiction writing

My experience with book promotion - what worked, what did not

Michael W. Davis

Stories to touch the heart and mind

This article offers what I’ve learned over the last two years from self promotion of my novels. Conclusions are data driven from recording visits to my website during periods
when promotional activates were conducted. I discuss promotion avenues I’ve attempted, which worked, and which did not.

Let’s began with a little background. I’ve been writing fiction for four years and became contracted by an independent publisher in May 2007. Once my first book was
released, I was amazed at the level of effort involved in promoting one’s books. I’m sure authors associated with the big eight (Random House, Penguin, etc) have different
experiences, but for the 99.98% of us associated with independent (non vanity) publishers, self promotion is an essential element of our daily routine. The degree to which one’
s time becomes absorbed in promotion activities was a major surprise. Yet I’ve learned from discussing this topic with other authors, I wasn’t the only one shell-shocked by
what it takes to push your books.

Within the first few months I became aware of a problem. Every few weeks a new promotional opportunity would pop up. Thing was, with so few hours in the day, I was
forced to allocate time between my muse (the very reason I started writing) and promotion. I decided to collect statistics that would reflect the effectiveness of each marketing
activity. Those that clearly had a significant impact I would continue, those that did not I would discard. I share this experience in the hope newbies just entering the profession
will have a leg up over the time I spent struggling through the swamp. My observations are offered as is. Others may disagree and I’m happy to discuss via my “contact” page.

The basis of my observations - I’ve kept website statistics since Dec 2007 and my observations are based on a analysis of those results. I would only start up one new
promotion activities at a time and hold back on all others. In that way, any affect I witnessed was not convoluted across multiple promotion avenues.

Terminology - The best statistic to use to evaluate if a promo avenue works increases sells during would be your royalty statement. Unfortunately, there is as much as an
eight month lag between when I enact an activity and when I get my royalty statement. Thus, I fell back on two metrics that should correlate, in some degree, to event sells:
Deep hits and buy page visits (see below). I do not record shallow hits to my site based on the logic that such visits were most likely a false hit.

1. Deep hits – If a visitor to my site stays longer then two minutes, or visits my excerpt, review, or trailer pages, I assume they were interested enough to at least read further.

2. Shallow hits – If a visitor enters my website and exits from there in < 2 min, I assume it was a mistaken search. Rule of thumb: I get 7 to 12 times the shallow as deep hits.

3. Buy page ratio– I compute the percentage of deep hits in a week that exit my site via a visit to the buy page.

4. Base rate – The average rate (computed across ten weeks) of deep hits when no special promotion activities are going on

General Observations

1. Each promotion activity has a shelf life of its own ranging from one to six weeks.

2. Repeatedly doing the same exact promo activity quickly wears out your audience.

3. A promotion campaign must be continuous. Otherwise your hits decline to the base rate quickly.

4. Many authors feel promotion activities have long term benefits (e.g.name awareness). Its not that I disagree, rather the data collected is not aligned to analyze such effects.

Ranking of promotional avenues –The number in front of the activities below (e.g. “100”) indicate their relative benefit in promoting my books when compared to time
spent. The scoring does not deal with intangible return (e.g. the activity is just fun to do, etc). Note that a “100” score represents five times the benefit of a score of 20. All
scores above 50 I considered effective in terms of the time spent and repeat those activities as active components of my marketing plan. Scores below 20, to me, were not
worth the effort in terms of the time involved and dropped from my bag of marketing avenues. Scores between 20 and 50 were done if I had time.

100 Special Recognitions – The events that have caused the largest return on investment so far results from awards (or nominations for awards). Here are four examples:

- When I won “Author of the Year” award I expended maybe an hour to announce it on a few social network sites. For that investment my deep hits increased 350% and buy
  page visits increased 250%

- My novel FORGOTTEN CHILDREN was nominated as “best romantic suspense” by two sites. That event increased deep hits 220% and buy page hits 130%

- When my short SF story THE TREASURE hit the Fictionwise best seller page, the hit rate jumped 260% (the buy page visits only increased 50%.

I’ve discussed this with two other authors and their experiences have been the same. Unfortunately, most of these events happen on their own. I do on occasion submit my
work to non-profit groups for considerations, but there are few of those (I do not submit to the profit oriented contests).

90 Reviews – Whenever I have a new release, I submit the novel for review to various websites, plus my publisher has their own list of review sites to which they submit.
The level of effort to submit is minimal, yet when you receive a top review (like a 5 star review or “Reviewer’s Best Pick”) the deep hit rate and buy page visits roughly
double, but its short lived (about two to four weeks). After that, your review is replaced by other “New reviews” on the sites “Top review” page.

70 Site Participative contests – Web sites conduct contests where they enlist visitors to participate in the author’s world by asking readers to go to the author sites and bring
back some interesting factoid. Deep hits increase about 160% to 210% depending on the site. This is another avenue you cannot really orchestrate yourself, however any time
I'm notified of one of these types of contests, I gladly participate.

50 My Participative contests – The only contest I run myself now are those where I encourage visitors to participate and at least read about my stories (trailers, excerpts,
etc). The participation comes in the form of questions they need to be answer or things they must search for. Deep hits increase 60% to 90% and but page visits go up about
40%. Problem is these avenues take a tremendous amount of time to send out to 900 past players and to manage the answers from the 170-220 responding participants. To
me, the true return that justifies this activity is the input I get from potential readers. I solicit views from visitors on titles or tag lines for future releases and I find this feedback
extremely useful.

50 Shared linking – For about a dozen published author friends, we reciprocate writer news (new releases, reviews, awards, etc) and links. The number of deep hits from
links on their websites is relatively low (3 to 5 a week) but so is the cost in time (mere minutes every few month), and unlike other promotion activities that die off in a few
weeks, once added to your website, the affect goes on indefinitely.

35 Interviews – On average I received 12 to 20 deep hits the first week an interview is released tapering to 2 oto 4 by the third week but disappearing all together after about
6 weeks. The problem is the amount of time required to complete a detailed interview is significant. Could be the genre in which I interview (suspense with a romantic core)
with most of the websites conducting the interviews being pure romance. I’ve never discussed this with writer friends so their experience may be different.

35 Special chats – Every few months my publisher will schedule an author chat and their roster of writers interact with each other and readers about a variety of topics.
Whenever the chat sponsor is new, or has not hosted a chat for a long period, my deep hit rate increases 45% to 60%, and my buy page visits go up by about 40%. Although
the benefit is significant, the commitment of time is major (chat durations reach from 2 to 12 hours in length.) None the less, I always do the chats orchestrated by my
publisher or author friends. They spend a lot of time setting them up, plus I believe in supporting the other authors.

30 Video Trailers –I researched opinions on the web and unfortunately views were split. I decided to conduct an experiment and developed videos for two of my novels. I
posted the trailers on two dozen posting sites (You Tube, Vimeo, Seven up, Photo bucket, etc). Although the videos were viewed several hundred times, and even given five
stars by the audience, by the second week views on the posted site dropped to about 12 per week and by week four they trickled in at 2 or 3 a week. The real problem was
that there was no change in deep hit rate or visits to the buy page, at all. This was a surprise to me. Afterwards, however, the results made sense. The posting sites represented
a broad based audience versus just book readers, thus they viewed the video as a random interest but they really weren’t in a buying posture. Since that experiment I have
observed a logical but unanticipated benefit. Of those that deep visit my site and actually view one of my book videos, the visits to a buy source increased 110%. Videos do
take a major effort to create (eight days for both trailers) but they are fun and they do increase the buy page visit rate so if I have time, I'll do 'em.

30 Bookmarkers – I use two styles of book markers: 2”X6” glossy markers aimed at a new release; and business card size that reflect cover art and bulleted 5 star reviews
for two books (one on each side). The large ones cost .10 each while the small cost .02/ea. I use the larger ones at talks/signings and for trivia contests during chats, and the
smaller ones are convenient in my wallet when someone asks for my website. I do not leave them in random non audience specific locations (like restaurants, coffee shops,
etc). I actually tested leaving markers in such places on trips with the result that I received no hits from those locations afterwards (my stat package tracks server location). I
do use them, but the expensive markers are rationed to special events because of their cost.

25 Blogs – From all I’d heard and read, I expected posting articles on blogs to have a major impact, at least in turns of deep hits. Yet each time I posted on blogs, I saw no
measurable increase. I found that peculiar and decided to stop all other promo activities and posted thirteen articles on different blogs across a month. Again, I saw no
significant increase in site visits. There were a few redirected hits, but nothing that justified the effort in writing all the articles. That could be because of the articles I post, or
the blogs I posted on, or my genre itself, but that was the result for me. I do enjoy the interaction and emails from readers so I participate in selected blogs with author friends.

25 Libraries – I support local libraries where I can by contributing free books and free goodies (pens, bookmarkers, etc). I’ve noticed very little return from these, but that’s
not the reason I do it. I just like the idea of people having the opportunity to broaden there horizons in areas they might not be exposed to otherwise.

10 Book signings – My first signing was at a B&N. I was shocked to see over ninety people attend. Yet I only sold about a dozen books. Could have been me, maybe my
deodorant wasn’t working, or a variety of factors. I’ve talked to other authors that had similar experience (their book sells ranged from zero to less than 10 at an event), yet
they still do them in the belief it provides exposure. In that light, I do book signings when offered the opportunity, but I don’t seek them out like when I first started.

10 Routine chats – Chats with authors and readers that are done on a frequent basis (e.g. each month) tend to lose effectiveness over time because you’re interacting with
the same readers and lurkers that have seen your excerpts, reviews, blurbs, etc. I do support my publisher in every promotion event they organize but I no longer seek out
chats that I have done several times at author social network sites.

10 Loops – Yahoo has a ton of writer/reader loops where visitors discuss issues about stories/authors they like. Half the threads posted are by authors/publishers promoting
their books (excerpts, releases, contests, etc). I tried for several cycles but noticed no significant increase in deep hits or buy page visits. Although the idea appears fruitful and
the visitors seem to enjoy the interactions offered by the loop chat; I think they quickly get saturated by promotion material posted by authors/publishers and skip those threads.

10 Articles – On occasion I will write an article (like this one) to share the writing experience or to offer lessons learned. One third of the time, they are self generated (I get an
idea and write about it). The remainder occurs when I’m asked if I would be interested in writing an article. I’ve observed roughly a 15% to 20% increase in deep hits and no
significant increase in buy page visits. However, I do still write them when I feel the urge to share (I’m just weird that way) or a friend or publisher requests I write an article.

10 General give away contests - General “submit your name” random drawings have not paned out for me. I did get a ton of hits, unfortunately virtually all are shallow hits. I
talked to several other authors and there experience on general contest were the same.

  5 Social networks – I’d heard great things about social networks (Facebook, Myspace, Twitter, etc) in terms of promoting your work, so I spend one entire month joining
about a dozen sites and monitoring resulting hits. Unfortunately, my personal results were almost none existent. It’s possible that some of the general search engine hits I
receive are correlated to seeing my work on the social network pages, but subjectively my sense is that SNs are on the low end as a promotion activity. Course, that could be
my genre, or the fact that I do not actively spend hours per week sending our bulletins and news updates constantly. I did this for a while, and saw no increase in deep hits. I’
ve discussed this avenue with two other authors that shared my experience, but a couple of writer buds swear by this mechanism as key to promoting their books.

  5 Rings – There are several rings that will freely link your site to those within each group you select if you insert HTML banner code at the bottom of your home page. As a
member of each ring, your site will be randomly displayed in the banner so that potential visitors can click and be transferred to your home page. I have tried two rings and
received about a dozen referred hits each week, but unfortunately they were virtually all shallow hits. Plus, for some reason, the ring periodically changes its code which
requires an update. I decided this was not an affective promotion avenue, at least for me.

  5 Directories – There are a bunch of websites that will freely list your website in their directory, and I have tried dozens. Problem is, all referred hits are shallow.

  1 Advertising – During my first 12 months, I spend a chunk of change advertising my novels across about a dozen sites. The results were abominable. I tried new sites, I
tried different site pages, I tried different kinds of ads, but to my surprise the result was always the same. I would get a handful of hits, so few I was spending about a buck to
earn 8 cents worth of royalties. I’ve discussed this with four other authors and their experience has been the same.

  ? Conferences – Three author friends attend writer conferences and have found then a useful means of promotion. I have never attempted such conferences because I write
in a mixed genre (suspense with a romantic core) which appears void of such opportunities, but if you write SF or pure romance this avenue may be something you want to
check out once to see if it works for you.

Wrap up - I hope newbies will find this information helpful in designing their own marketing plans. If nothing more, it may introduce several avenues you haven’t considered
yet. Like I said at the beginning, if you have questions or comments, email me through my contact page.

                                                                       Michael Davis (Davisstories.com)
                                                                       Author of the year, 2008