Chat Rooms to get exposure

I have no insight on the book side of it, but if someone joined my forum simply to pimp their book, I'd be more apt not to buy it, personally.

It would be different if the person was already a contributing member to the community, kwim?

CaoPaux said:

It's generally considered rude to use social sites to try and sell stuff, and is often a violation of the TOS (Terms of Service). When in doubt, ask the host when and where it's appropriate to promote your book.

Click to expand...

What CaoPaux said.

People who use the children's writers Yahoo group I own for purely self-promotional purposes get warned once, then banned. Group members who participate regularly in our conversations are asked to limit their self-promotional posts to one per month, max.

There are chats run specifically for book promotion, but I have never found them to be particularly effective.

I moderated an interest-specific chat room for five or six years. In that time, we had a handful of people who wrote books about the interest, or made products related to it.

If they came in to chat, and didn't constantly market their work, we were cool with it. They could even link to a point of sale in their profile, although we did not allow them a self-promotional user name. But the few who came in only to promote, were warned, and continued all ended up banned.

If you can spare the time to be a presence at chats which somehow relate to your subject matter, just as a person and not a salesman, you can pick up a few more sales, but my guess is that as marketing techniques go, the return won't be much compared to the time invested.

Maryn, retired from moderating

charlotte49ers said:

I have no insight on the book side of it, but if someone joined my forum simply to pimp their book, I'd be more apt not to buy it, personally.

It would be different if the person was already a contributing member to the community, kwim?

Click to expand...

If it's one of a forum's own, as you say, a contributing member, of course you want to hear about their book, especially if the writer has mentioned it previously, as a WIP.
What was the process like, was the final book what you envisioned (can you actually write?) your on-line buddies want to know. And where can we buy it, so we can buy copies to wave, "I know the author!"
Even if it's not a book group, it's exciting. Like someone else's baby news.
Some random stranger who turns up to pimp their book? Not so much.
And writers who turn up, pretending to be other people who have just found a new book and loved it so much they just had to race right onto the internet and tell everybody about it? Not only not buying it, but snarking about book, writer and sock puppet will commence.

Ditto to what Maryn said.

You'll do more harm than good if you use a chat room or forum for pure promotion purposes.

(And Maryn, are you really in the Finger Lakes region? Me too!)

Cheers,
Sandy