Tonight’s guest blog post is brought to you by psychological thriller novelist, guest postee (also on marketing) and interviewee Rachel Abbott.
Evolving your marketing plan
Just over a year ago, I wrote a post for my own blog called “Using Twitter – are you a writer, a brand or a salesman?” and it received more responses than any other post I have ever written. I talked about how, as a writer, you have three choices: you either write books and don’t worry at all about marketing on the basis that if you publish enough books, they will take care of themselves; you are a brand, and you are trying to connect with people at a deeper level, so that readers remain faithful to you in the years to come; or you’re a salesman and all you care about right now is people buying your book!
There is absolutely no doubt that when I launched Only the Innocent, I was a salesman. I desperately needed to get people to notice my book, and I believed that, given most people’s Twitter streams zip by at a rate of knots, I had to tweet about my book at least every 15 minutes, or nobody would never get to see the tweet. I can almost hear people screaming in horror at the thought – but do you know what? It worked. I don’t regret it, and even though I know it turned some people off completely, I did sell a lot of books.
I am not quite naïve enough to believe that I sold them all because of Twitter. In reality, it probably had a relatively low impact once the book started to take off – but I did measure Twitter’s impact in the early days, and I do think that at a time when I was building the book’s visibility it was accounting for about ten sales per day. Not huge, but enough to get the book noticed and more visible on Amazon. Ultimately it was the positive reviews and the fact that people started to talk about it in forums that made it take off – two things that I had very little control over.
However… one year on, and it’s a different story. When I wrote Only the Innocent I had a target of selling about a thousand copies. That was what success looked like to me. I had a vague plan for another book, but I didn’t know when I was going to get the time to write it. I ended up being incredibly lucky, and my first novel has now sold over 150,000 copies. And nobody is more shocked than me. Because of this success, I have changed a few things in my life and I’ve found the time to write the next book.
So why is it a different marketing story this time around?
It’s because now I want to focus on the brand. I was lucky enough to get some terrific readers who have been very supportive of my writing. If these people follow me on Twitter or on Facebook, they’re not doing that to have my new book thrust down their throats every two minutes. I now plan to be a writer for the long haul, and I already have book three planned. So I would love to have these readers stick with me.
In many of my previous blog posts – both on my own site and as a guest blogger – I have talked about my marketing plan. For book one, it was seven pages long. My second book – The Back Road – was launched in the UK on the 18th March 2013, and in the US at the beginning of October 2013, and my marketing plan this time is twenty-eight pages long. And the big difference is that it’s all about reader engagement.
I haven’t got this right yet, so don’t check my Twitter stream and say “oh yeah” in a scathing tone, but the whole focus of my new plan is to create content online that my readers are interested in. That’s on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and the various forums. I want my readers to continue to follow me, and continue to be interested in the future – so that they may (hopefully) decide to read book three, four, five.
The question that my marketing plan tries to identify is exactly how to go about this, and it’s not easy. Some authors seem to think that they must never mention their books – almost as if the title’s a dirty word (or words). They assume their readers are interested in their daily lives, and tweet about what they had for breakfast, or how much they spent at Tesco. That doesn’t interest me at all, so I’m going to assume that it doesn’t interest my readers either. Other writers are funny. I love the funny ones – but I know that I’m not very, so that’s never going to work. Then there’s the group that somehow believes that their tweets are invisible and they write snarky comments about people who have reviewed their books. I really don’t understand that.
To be clear, I am not going to stop talking about my books on social media, but I am going to look at innovative and fun ways of engaging my audience, in a bid to get to know more of them. When The Back Road was almost finished, I was able to approach readers who I had been chatting with on social media to ask if they would be early readers. The response was terrific, and they gave me honest comments about storylines and characters – all of which I was able to incorporate before it went to final edit. I’d love more of this engagement.
Getting a solid bank of people who are interested in my books to follow my tweets and engage on Facebook is now more important that striving to reach the number one spot – a nearly impossible feat given the plethora of 20p books. That level of pricing is beyond my control – it is a decision taken by Amazon to price match other retailers. But that’s okay. I have to focus on what really matters.
And if you’ve published a book, so do you. The decision in terms of marketing is exactly the same as it was a year ago, and each individual will have a different point of view. The question is – are you a writer, a brand or a salesman? If you go the salesman route, you won’t be alone. There was a post in The Guardian recently that demonstrates quite clearly that some big names have no compunction about self-promotion. But for now, I am going to try a somewhat gentler route.
I don’t deny that there will be some promotional tweets – but not one every fifteen minutes! I ‘m going to try to develop ideas for tweets and posts that readers will enjoy in the hope that they stay with me in the years to come. I’m still trying to figure it out, but I’ll get there, and I’m sure it’s going to be worth it.
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That was great. Thank you, Rachel.
Rachel Abbott spent the majority of her working life running an interactive media company that designed and developed software and websites, mainly for education. Her company was sold in 2000, and although she continued working for another 5 years, she also fulfilled a lifelong ambition of buying and restoring a property in Italy, where she now lives with her husband and their two dogs. Her website is http://www.rachel-abbott.com and she blogs at http://rachelabbottwriter.wordpress.com.
Rachel’s new book, The Back Road, is available exclusively from Amazon UK until September, when it will be available in other formats.
The paperback will be published in the US in October.
Only the Innocent is available in Kindle format from Amazon UK, and in paperback, Kindle and audio formats from Amazon US.
For other ebook formats please visit http://www.rachel-abbott.com/how-to-buy.html.
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Morgen 'with an E' Bailey 
Thanks Morgen and Rachel, you raised terrific points. I am going to follow you both on Twitter.
Una Tiers
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Thank you, Una. I thought we were already following each other but I’ll certainly go and check.
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We are indeed. 🙂
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Thanks Rachel, this was very interesting and I found your journey of discovery thought provoking. I think if you look at any successful author, actor, musician or footballer even, branding is the key. Identify your market (reader) and check out what the competition is doing and see if it is successful or not and try to learn from them. Branding done correctly brings loyalty, empathy with characters and writer and the feeling of being part of a club – hence the formation of fan-clubs and author events.
Getting it right is difficult, and today so very public. Make a wrong move (ie; pushing too hard too often as with the tweets etc) can alienate, but it also breeds familiarity. So, a difficult path to tread. Years ago a PR company or Ad agency would spend their time dreaming up campaigns for their clients, time and money seemed not to be such an issue. But times have changed and there are so many other writers out there, so many writing similar books, all with access to e-publishing and so everything is immediate. We all feel as if we are in a rush to ‘put something out there,’ because everyone else is.
Since I have been part of Facebook and blogging I have seen authors publish endless books a year and during all that time I have continued to write mine. I don’t feel the urge to get it ‘out there,’ because everyone else is. I have not decided whether to e-publish or go via a publisher/agent and so forth. The danger is to bombard people with books and so the expectation is that there should always be another in the pipeline as soon as one is published. I wonder that this does not diminish the writer’s stock (value) and eventually lead to a bored reader or one who is fed-up waiting for the next book, or a writer unable to come up with something new and fresh time and again within a short period.
It is a perilous road to travel. We are not experts and made of money so we have to try and make do and mend so to speak, if we go the e-publishing route, and be prepared for years in the wilderness (possibly) if we go the traditional route. And all this time we are having to keep body and soul together, and if we are publishing we have to feed the beast otherwise the beast will be off to graze pastures new. I know the number of recording artists who release a week, month and year, globally, their flame burning bright for all of one release, never to be heard of again. No end of trying to re-brand and re-launch ever really helps – get it right first. Brand loyalty and superior product always wins in the end. Good luck and thanks. Morgen, as ever, thanks and I hope I don’t drive you nuts putting my oar in.
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Thanks for your very thoughtful response, Jane. I struggle to understand how some of these writers can publish several books a year, and I’m definitely in the camp that likes to wait with anticipation for a book that is carefully thought through. I think it’s possible to tell when people become formulaic and just have to churn something out. I’ve been advised that two books a year would be ideal, because otherwise people forget and it makes each book equally difficult to sell – but it takes me at least three months to sort out the intricate details of a plot, define all the characters and get a fixed idea of the locations.
So, I think that one a year might remain my maximum – especially with all the promotion that is still required.
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Rachel, what a great post on marketing! I have two novels out and I’m working on the third for my Malone mystery series.
I had to laugh when I read what you wrote about posting every 15 minutes on Twitter. This past weekend, my publisher ran “Mixed Messages,” my first novel for free on Kindle. The response was fantastic. I believe that my tweets almost every hour made the difference.
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Hello Jane, Patricia. Thank you for your great comments. I have used Tweet Deck to schedule posts (reminders of back guest items) every 15 minutes. It did garner some traffic / comments / likes so definitely worth it and it doesn’t take long to set up a days’ worth of tweets then it just does it itself. I should do a guest post on that. 🙂
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Interesting about the tweets. Both of my books are on special promotion on Amazon – starting today – and so I’ve just decided that ignore the brand for a couple of days, and get the tweeting going! I schedule them all into SocialOomph. In this piece of software (which is actually quite expensive!) it’s possible to create different queues of tweets, and set them with different timings. For example, I have one queue that relates to guest posts – like this one. I write the tweet and store it, and then add it to a queue of other similar posts. I set the timings – maybe one post every couple of days on this subject – and tell it to add tweets back to the end of the queue once they’ve been posted.
I’m just about to set up a separate queue for the Amazon Promotion of my books – because I can just turn that stream off when the promotion is over.
So the tweeting may be a bit more sales than brand for the next week or so – we’ll see what happens!
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Interesting article. The problem for me (and I’m sure about so many other authors) is that I’m not market savvy. Nothing about marketing is easy, but I can’t afford to have someone else do it for me. So, not only do I have to continue improving my product, but I have to learn print formatting, how best to use social media and all the other marketing avenues available. Too many hats.
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