I Make the Book Marketing Mistakes - So You Don't Have To!

A Literal Literary Loser Tells All

What’s the point of writing about being a Literal Literary Loser if you don’t periodically confess how you literally became one - in an attempt to protect others from falling down the same rabbit-hole?

So here are three book marketing mistakes I went ahead and made - so you don’t have to:

Thinking Your Novel Release Is News

Even Stephen King and J.K. Rowling’s latest contribution to the literary cannon barely qualifies as news anymore. So unless you’re J.D. Salinger (which would really be news, what with him not merely being a post-Catcher In the Rye recluse but, you know, dead), odds are your novel isn’t either.

Fiction just doesn’t fall into that category. Non-fiction, however, more often does.

So how do you fix this book marketing mistake?

By marketing your fiction as non-fiction.

My first novel, The Fictitious Marquis, came out in 1994. It wasn’t until over a quarter of a century later, after I’d gotten the rights back from AVON and re-released it on my own, that I knew enough to market it not based on it being a Regency romance, but on it being the first Jewish #OwnVoices Regency romance as determined by The Romance Writers of America. (Bridgerton’s streaming success also didn’t hurt.) That’s the news hook. And that’s what got me press - and sales. And controversy. Which also leads to sales. Right?

My 18th book, My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region, debuts on November 15, 2022. The news isn’t that there’s a new historical fiction novel on the shelves. The news is that it’s set in a time and place very few readers know anything about. (Quick, tell me where and when it was! See?) News of a new novel isn’t what’s getting me press. Its setting is what’s getting me press. And, hopefully, sales. (If a book is released and it doesn’t get sales… does it make a noise?)

Not Saving Readers’ Contact Info

While I don’t necessarily recommend releasing a book during a pandemic, my July 2020 HarperCollins historical fiction, The Nesting Dolls, coming out during lock-down did grant me the opportunity to do multiple Zoom book talks, which I absolutely loved. (You can watch me being delightful while we are all under house-arrest, here. Yes, I do own more than that one, orange, short-sleeved shirt, but my 15 year old told me it makes me “pop” on camera, and since she has all the style and I have none of it, I do what she says.)

You know what I don’t love? Keeping records. Because I am lazy.

So you know what I didn’t do? Keep track of the email addresses of the folks who came to my events.

So you know what I’m doing now in advance of My Mother’s Secret: A Novel of the Jewish Autonomous Region’s release? I am painstakingly going through all of my past emails, finding the email addresses of all those who attended my events, as well as all the places (synagogues, Sisterhood book clubs, senior centers, etc….) I pitched the first time, so I can pitch them the second time. And, this time, I am saving those emails in a spread-sheet.

Being lazy the first time means more work the second time. You’d think a 53 year old literal literary loser would have learned that lesson at some point during the past half a century. It would seem that I did not. You be better!

Spending Money on the Wrong Things

A popular marketing maxim goes: “Half my advertising spend is wasted; the trouble is, I don't know which half.”

Here are things I’ve wasted advertising money on (with the caveat that, of course, I know people who say all the below worked for them; but this post is about my mistakes, not their triumphs):

Facebook Ads: For my self-published books, Getting Into NYC Kindergarten and Getting Into NYC High School, I spent a year buying Facebook ads targeted to location, age, and interest. Sales were brisk. Then I stopped advertising on Facebook, and stuck to unpaid social media, public workshops, and my own mailing list. Sales went up.

Google Ads: For the 2021 holiday season, I bought Google ads to promote The Nesting Dolls as a Chanukah/Christmas gift. Nothing happened. Except that Google kept sending me bills long after I’d stopped the campaign. And had the screen-shots to prove it.

YouTube: As the author of a Figure Skating Mystery series, I’ve learned that the every four years Olympic cycle is a golden (ha, see what I did there?) opportunity for sales. In 2012, I partnered with Olympic champion Dick Button to produce his Twitter commentary of the Sochi Games, and sales exploded.

That wasn’t an option for the 2022 Winter Olympics. So I decided to take a chance and buy an ad embedded within a video on the Figure Skating Fan YouTube channel.

They have 65,000 subscribers. Since the video went up in January, it’s been viewed almost a million and a half times. My books are featured prominently in both the video itself and in the description, with a link to the Amazon page.

Figure Skating Mystery book sales definitely went up in January and February 2022. But I had no way of knowing it if was from the ad, or from all the other, unpaid promotion I did, such as guest blogs and social media postings, not to mention just the raised interest in figure skating that the Winter Olympics always bring.

And even if it was 100% the YouTube ad, I’ve only recently sold enough books which, combined with the paid borrows, earned back the initial cost. (And that’s not counting the share I pay out to Ice Theatre of NY, which provided the videos for my enhanced series.) I know I’ll earn the money back eventually, sales are slow and steady, but consistent. But this is hardly a get-rich quick scheme!

So these are the book marketing mistakes I’ve made.

Tell me about your successes in the Comments below!

And if you want to tell me in person, come to my New York City book launch on November 1! Details, here.