September 18, 2010
Getting closer to the publishing date! Finished rereading and reediting the novel last night and, of course toasted myself with some wine. What I felt was that this is a good story. I’ve been away from it for a while and found some gems in the writing as well. There was some overwriting too, as to be expected from a first novel, but nothing that wasn’t easily toned down. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised and hope you are too!
Now I have to move on to the technical aspect of all of this. I begin putting this novel out there in the world very soon. I’ve got to e-publish and then figure out how to create a pod cast. Yup, that’s me super high –tech over here. Working the on-line marketing angels as best I can. Any other suggestions are, of course, welcome. I’ve found they have these things now called book trailers. Like movie trailers, but for books. Honestly, they’re kind of hilarious. I mean some are actually mini movies for the books. A lot of them are in the sci-fi, suspense, or mystery genre. They kind of lend themselves to that kind of marketing. But there are a lot of these out there and just like there’s low-budget movie trailers there’s low-budget and high-budget book trailers too. I got sucked into spending way too much time watching these. Thought for a brief moment about making one, but then changed my mind.
I’m not sure they sell books. I wasn’t sold on them anyway. Plus, it’s not like movies that actually show trailers for other movies in movie theaters. Book trailers have to be sought out on the web or the book’s web page. And there is a cheese factor to the book trailer. It can’t be denied. I’m a little bit of a book snob, and to market a book the way you would a horror film seems a bit silly. (Watch me eat these words some day.) However, book ads look better and more dignified scrawled across The New York Times or along the side of a page in The New Yorker. Now, I know that those ads don’t have the impact on sales that they once did. But what does? We are diversifying as an audience. Television has begun to adapt to this new age of niche marketing. People have so much to choose from that it takes less viewers to consider a show a success. It’s led to some much better programming, and to much worse. The same is now true for books, to be considered a best-seller you only have to sell about 30,000 books, which is much less than in the past.
The question is how to reach 30,000 people that would find this book interesting? A small feat if you’re Coca Cola quite a challenge if you’re Vicki Nicholson. Alas, I will forge ahead and for now hold off on the book trailer. But keep your eyes open for the youtube readings!!!
PS A few places you can check out book trailers for yourself…
No comments:
Post a Comment