Reddit for book promotion

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kingsley

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Just curious if anyone has experience with reddit or tried to use it for book promotion?

I've never really used reddit or other crowdsourced aggregators, but they seem to be popular with others.

Thoughts?
 

Old Hack

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Have you ever bought a book because you saw it on Reddit?

I think Reddit can be helpful in directing more people to blogs or websites: but I'm not convinced it'll help in amassing more sales.
 

S.J. Magill

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Just curious if anyone has experience with reddit or tried to use it for book promotion?

I've never really used reddit or other crowdsourced aggregators, but they seem to be popular with others.

Thoughts?

I've done free giveaways and advertised them on Reddit. It got lots of my books out there but didn't translate into sales the way I hoped it would have.
 

sarahdalton

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I've thought about doing an 'AMA self-published writer - ask me anything' not necessarily for promotion though, just because I'm interested about how self-published writers are perceived.

They also have a reddit writers section and you can post links to your work after you've been a member for long enough and gained some Karma. I think I might add myself to that.

It's social networking at its core so I don't see why not. My aim is always to try and make myself as visible as possible. As long as it doesn't take up too much of your time... now reading reddidt/r/funny... that's a whole other issue of procrastination :)
 

Kylabelle

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I'm confused. Why would you need others to support your dropping a useless tool?

Do you mean that if there are others who know how to make it useful, would they please post about it? That's where I thought your post was going until that last sentence.

:)
 

Kylabelle

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Old Hack

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Peter, if you make a mistake with your post, it's best to just explain so. Deleting your posts like that is really unhelpful.
 

EMaree

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That http://www.redditauthors.com/ website... I don't see its use as a promotional tool. I hang around r/fantasy and a few other writers boards but I've never seen any mention of this website up until now. I'm not even seeing any of the r/fantasy regulars there. I find myself doubting that it's well trafficked.

But then again, I dislike Reddit for visibility in general. The lack of any kind of profile or bio space makes it near impossible to identify writers I know on there (unless they have a very obvious screenname).
 
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Grimball4

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I use Reddit and have a love hate opinion of it. It's fun to post things and see them become popular, also when I can link stuff to my blog I get a lot of traffic. What is frustrating about Reddit is it can bring out the worst in people with its down voting of posts and the sites policing of what you can or can't post, which is different in each catagory...
First that I have heard of redditauthors need to up my comment karma to join.
 

SRHowen

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I posted a guest blog and author did on my blog, she was talking about the research that went into her book on the history of garden seeds. It was pretty interesting as it focused on one man's life, the seed king as he was known. I'm also an avid gardener and found it fascinating, thinking others would too, I posted it and got slammed. I got a number of people who posted, begging to sell your books is spam, and so on. It wasn't even my book, and what I was sharing was the blog post, not trying to sell books! I have not used it since.
 

SRHowen

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I looked at the site and this is what it says about the Karma thing:

Submit Your Work

Want to be included on Redditauthors.com?

The guidelines are pretty simple.

First, you need to be a Redditor.

Must have been a member of Reddit for at least 30 days.
Must have at least 50 comment karma.
Second, you need to have a published work somewhere.

Amazon
Smashwords
Lulu
iBooks
B&N
Literary Magazines
That’s it. To be included, send a private message on Reddit to Karl Grave with the following information:

Link to author page. Should include headshot and biography.
Link to book pages. Should include cover and blurb.
Link to blog/Facebook/Twitter page if you have one.
 

GradyHendrix

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As a moderator of one of the book subs (r/horrorlit) you have to realize how many people parachute in, put up their promotional link, and then disappear. I spend a lot of my time deleting them.

If you're willing to be a part of the sub, contribute links to news of interest to other redditors, and comment on other threads, then you stand a chance of putting up a promo (ask first!) and having it stick.
 

metamemoir

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I did an IAmA on reddit that blew up but I was getting slaughtered so I ultimately bowed out. I requested to go on the calendar but was denied since I wasn't famous enough, but encouraged to informally post one. My mistake was that I thought I had to compensate for not being on the calendar by over-marketing myself and really hyping it up. I got destroyed for this, and even when I admitted my error and said "touché" the trolls kept coming at me. I ended up as the top thread on the front page but it wasn't worth it, so I just deleted it. One Redditor actually went through the trouble of buying my book (but obviously not reading it) just to write on Amazon that I was a d-bag.

There's definitely potential to get traffic and eyeballs onto your work, but it can quickly backlash and a mob will form against you. They don't like people coming in there to blatantly promote their work/product. Which I think is unrealistic -- unless you really just want attention and like points through the Reddit system, EVERYONE who stops by there for an IAmA has some ulterior motive. But those Redditors, god bless 'em, take the integrity of the IAmA board very seriously. My thread snowballed but it just wasn't worth it. Maybe in the short term I sold a couple more copies, but it's not sustainable to rely on pissing people off and stirring up controversy. Your marketing and promotion should be provocative but not just for the sake of it.

Point being, I would do planning and preparation before jumping in with the Reddit sharks.
 

GradyHendrix

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Sorry to hear you had a bad experience. One problem with Reddit is that it has so many people on it that at the exact same moment someone is taking something deadly seriously and someone is taking the exact same thing not seriously at all. It can really kick your butt as you ping pong between the two.
 

GradyHendrix

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I didn't even notice that. Yikes! I was talking to a ghost. Thanks for the heads up. *runsaway
 

TheHungryFreelancer

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I've seen mixed reviews on people promoting their books through Reddit. I'm also a writing instructor, and I know a lot of teachers use the site to promote their classes. That said, I haven't met anyone who has had incredible success using it.
 

anand

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I think if you are into non-fiction, then reddit can be absolutely wonderful. I am active on a few subreddits of various industries and people do not mind if you drop in your website or tool if that's useful. So maybe a book promo would be perceived the same way. I am yet to come across a work of fiction that is perceived the same way though (since you do not have a proper subreddit to target).
 

FantasticF

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I've used Reddit in my line of work with moderate success.

As far as promoting a book? You really only have one shot so make it count.

If you post multiple links to the same site, you'll be "shadow banned."

Basically, what that means is this...

You're user name will be banned from posting new links.

You CAN still post new links but they will never show up so you'll never even know.
 

aruna

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I've never seen the point of book promotion on sites peopled mainly by authors. I don't know reddit so I'm not referring to them specifically; just that someone upthread mentioned an Author's room.
It sounds to me like that room on the Kindleboards where writers can get together and post promotional threads about their own books. Seems to be that only one or two people ever bother to check out those threads. Same with the writers rooms on Goodreads.
I really don't believe much in self-promotion.Or maybe I just hate it, and that's why I don
t believe in it. I want readers to talk about and thus promote my books.
 
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