Paying For It

A Literal Literary Loser Gets Desperate

I’ve never paid for it.

Book promotion, that is.

I always believed that I could get enough attention for my book using social media, guest posts, personal appearances, book signings, and word of mouth.

In 2014, to promote my Figure Skating Mystery series (originally published by Berkley Prime Crime as paperback originals, I got the rights back and re-released them as enhanced e-books with videos by Ice Theatre of NY as part of the story; why merely read about figure skating when you could watch it, too?) I partnered with Dick Button.

I’d worked with the two-time Olympic champion and broadcasting legend at ABC Sports, and he had a book out that year, as well.

We both understood that there was no better time to promote a figure skating title than during the Winter Olympics, the one time every four years when even non-skating fans suddenly had an opinion about costumes, music choices and, especially, judging.

I suggested that I produce Dick’s commentary of the 2014 Games on Twitter… and use the commercial breaks to promote my books. He agreed, and it was a roller-coaster of an experience. (I am sure the case of shingles I got right afterwards had nothing to do with it. I adore Dick. As I said to my husband, “How often do you get to be in a room with a bona-fide genius?” But a bona-fide genius is a perfectionist, and half-assing is not an option. It’s thrilling. But it’s exhausting.)

The promotion proved to be a success and, in 2014, my book sales went up 400%.

I knew I needed another, equally good idea to promote the series in 2022 to take advantage of this once every four years window of opportunity.

Except that, in 2022, between the pandemic, losing my agent and editor, and trying to restart my writing career from Square One, I just didn’t have the energy to focus on the figure skating mysteries the way I had in 2014.

So I broke down and decided to pay for it.

But how? I’d done Facebook ads for some of my other books, and seen modest results. I’d done Google ads and seen nothing.

In 2014, I’d thought out of the box. I needed to think out of the box again this year, even when it came to something as conventional as advertising.

I could just buy a banner ad on a figure skating site. (Though, fun fact: It is almost impossible to get a figure skating site to write you back with actual rates and other specifications. Eighty percent of those I reached out to didn’t respond at all, and the rest promised to “check with the marketing department…” and promptly fell off the face of the Earth. Do they not like money? Do they think this is still 1994 and, thanks to Tonya Harding and Nancy Kerrigan, figure skating is still a hot commodity?)

Eventually, I came upon the Figure Skating Fan YouTube channel. They had 38.6 thousand subscribers, and some of their videos received over a million views.

I knew that if I wanted to sell my enhanced e-books, I needed to make skating fans aware of them, like I had during Dick Button’s twitter commentary. In 2022, a YouTube channel seemed like a reasonable way to do that.

So I reached out to the owner, and he suggested I sponsor a video. We agreed that it should be one on the Top 10 Scandals and How It Changed Figure Skating.

After all, the first book in my series, “Murder on Ice,” was based on the 2002 judging scandal in Salt Lake City. In real life, a judge was accused of favoring the Russian pair team over the Canadians. In “Murder on Ice,” the judge who gives the Ladies’ Gold medal to Russia’s dour Ice Queen over America’s perky Ice Princess is found murdered (this did not happen in real life; she’s fine). Who dun it? You’ll need to read “Murder on Ice” to find out!

And if you want to see the top 10 scandals, click here.

Will sponsoring a gossipy video get me results similar - or even better - to partnering with a legend? The video went up on January 7. I am hoping it will continue to draw more and more traffic as we head into the Olympics.

I’ll keep you posted and let you know if this turns into a win… or into yet another Literary Loss.