Marketing for cheapskates

I have decided to be the ultimate cheapskate and spend as lttle as possible, if not nothing, on marketing. But I have 26 books on the market, at the moment, and it's urgent that I get them all out there. And, I find, the more I get people to read them, the more I learn about their general value and quality. I'm like any new writer - there is a lot I could improve.
But this post is not about what I could improve in making covers, doing better proofreading of my own work, or even picking topics that sell like hotcakes. Instead, it is about various ways of getting whatever I have, however marginal, out there in front of people's eyes until I find the ones who like it.

After all, I have come to subscribe to the theory that it takes 100 readers to find one that really likes your genre, your style, and your messages. It takes 100 views of your book & blurb to get one who will even download it for free on KU, much less plunk down five or six bucks to have a copy. And it takes a lot of luck and persistent motivation just to get that blurb in front of them.

Knowing that, I still make kindle promotions where I know nobody will even buy it half-price, or for ninety nine cents, but they will still see it and know it's out there. There are quite a few people who may like your book, once they try it, and may even know that as they are cruising through browsing books, but who still pass it by because in their mind they are seeking something slightly different. I generally have no success with kindle promotions. Anyone who is willing to plunk down 99 cents, was probably also willing to plunk down 2.99, and already did, or already chose not to. These are easiest to do, however. Just now I reached over and made two of them, one a free giveaway. I can do this in a couple of minutes.

I'm about to put a book on ACX and get someone to read it on a free, profit-share enterprise. I hate to do this in one sense, because ACX is its own world, with its own huge market, and I don't advertise in that market much, so I don't think our chances, put together, amount to much. But it's valuable to have it out there, if only because not every book makes it out there and at least now it's available to a wider market. People do watch the ACX listings. Some people snap up stuff that's good. People read from it. I don't make a whole lot of money; neither does my narrator. But some narrators are happy just to have the experience. This is a market I want to develop a lot more. They give you free promotion codes, giveaways, and I don't even use those effectively. I could, I just don't.

Amazon ads: The secret of these is that I think, and I may be wrong, that you can get a lot of exposure without spending actual money. People will see your book even if they don't click on it. If they click on it, you pay. If they buy something based on what they click, you find out. All their actions are recorded in the great online-activity-monitor. But it seems to me that if your book is participating in any situation where it comes under people's eyes, whether they click or not, that kind of exposure is inherently useful. Maybe the average is more like 1000 exposures, one click. My new philosophy is, if I need a thousand, let's get started, the sooner the better.

Instagram and LinkedIn: The thing to remember about these is, participation is free. If I post every day people are going to see me more than if I just jump in there every five months. Actually my pattern is more like every five months, with plans to develop further but no regular action based on those plans. Both, though, have their own unique audiences and in Linked In I have a number of old friends and students from my teaching days who might actually buy my books if I reminded them I was there.

Twitter I put in its own category because it's like a major sound canyon with millions of voices at once and almost everything you say gets drowned out in a huge river of noise. Ideally I'll get the right hashtags (#womenshistory for my present book) and just the right people will see it, and click and buy; I've gotten a few bites this way. For a while I dropped my books in all the writer's lifts, etc. This seemed to be fruitless. Another strategy would be to put your life out there for your audience, so they get to know you, and thus come to want to buy your books as a friend. But sound bites of a few words don't seem to do it for me; I can't put my life into tiny chunks. I carry on; I get on there often; I figure my 1200 followers (it was fairly easy to get 1200) will tolerate my incessant self-promotion. I'm not into fans (someone who follows you but you don't follow, or, someone who you follow but doesn't follow back); I'm into friends. If you can't be friends, it doesn't seem right. But that's the way I am.

There's a lot to say about read marketing, which I've been doing extensively for a while now. Most of my new readers are from read marketing. In short, I read someone's, someone reads mine. One by one, you get new readers. And you read a wide range of what's out there. You give a lot of fives to keep relations up. Slowly your ratings reflect the fact that people are reading your books. Authors that do this know there are a lot of scammers out there, authors who pretend to read your book, etc. But it's the same principle. Get a thousand to look at the possibility; get ten to actually download it and read it; maybe four out of ten like it but maybe one out of a couple hundred like it enough to go download another just like it. This has actually happened to me so I know it works though I have no clue about the actual numbers involved. On a wide scale I know that I'm spending time reading when I could be writing; I'm spending time reading junk sometimes which is aggravating; the good ratings go away pretty quickly, etc. But I have readers now when I didn't used to. And a side benefit is that authors seem to like my family non-fiction - a surprising number of them will choose to read it.

Here are the blogs. By that I mean, you are looking at one of them. There are thirty or forty, and they've been around for a long time, but haven't been commercial, and, even when they're commercial, they'll be blunt and fresh. I intend to just use them as I always have, to make my mind clear about what I'm doing so I can do it better. But I have various interests: linguistics, chat, music, haiku, etc., and I use the blogs to discuss those. Hopefully the same principle will apply: a hundred will look at them; one out of a hundred will read them; one out of a hundred of those will like what they read and want to read more; one out a hundred of those will actually click and buy something. If I need a thousand, let's get started now. This site gets what, about twenty or thirty a month. I hope you'll link to it and maybe it'll get more.

There's always the print market. It was always the biggest, the first, to many the only, market. I never did well on it. How are people to know who I am and how I write? I have this friend who gives her books to libraries around the southwest. Does it work? Do some kids straggle in and read up a whole library? Well, you have to start somewhere, and I respect her for it, but her husband is exasperated at the expense. It seems you have to buy a book just to wait twenty years for some kid to read it somewhere. I've looked in to giving books to libraries, coffee shops, doctor's offices, little free libraries, etc. I'm just getting started on that, and that's because I'm just now getting a few I can scatter around, being outdated a little anyway (since I have others with new covers) and since I'm becoming more aware of the possibilities. Lots of people still look at your paperback ratings as your primary rating; I have books that are so high (>15 million) that Amazon no longer even lists it. It's getting so I'll buy my own book to keep that from happening, because I can't just go out there and get someone else to buy it. But every author has their own way.

There was a book signing at the book shop during railroad days involving a friend of mine, a local author. I wanted to go. I have to be more comfortable with these. One aspect is that you have to buy ten or twenty of your own before you even set up, and then you have to dress nice and be friendly to everyone. I'm basically ok with all of this, just reluctant. How else are you going to be known? I somehow have to convert my identity over into a small-town Illinois identity (from a wild end-of-the-road mountain man) but that too is just a matter of work. The fact is that I have to do All guns firing, so to speak, to get my name out there and rustle up some attention. b<