I see several problems with this idea:
1. We have published authors continually saying 'you won't be in this business for long unless you self-promote, because marketing budgets are being cut all over the publishing industry'.
They're wrong. Have you read the
not-a-FAQ? Self-promotion is fine if you've got a knack for it, or have too much spare time, or need to work off your anxiety while you're waiting for your book to come out, but it's not required. Many excellent authors never go near the practice.
The idea that midlist books aren't getting promoted any more, so authors have to do it themselves, is a meme promoted by vanity publishers and people who are trying to sell books about self-publishing. The idea is that since you're going to have to do your own promotion anyway, you might as well self-publish and keep all the profits. This is wrong. It's a meme that contains more errors and fallacies than words. The AW Bewares Board has discussed it dozens of times.
I don't mean to come down on you with both feet. If I sound impatient, it's because this myth is so all-pervasive that the AW regulars wind up having to explain that it's not true about once a week, and have been doing so for years.
2. By far the biggest capabilities the trade publishers have in marketing are getting reviews and getting books into bookstores; most traditional media outlets won't review self-published books and few bookstores will sell self-published books. Now anyone can get their ebook on the virtual bookstore shelf and while trade publishers probably still have a lock on traditional media reviews there are many more places to find book reviews online which aren't as restrictive.
Conventional publishing doesn't have a lock on the traditional media. What we have is credibility: we do our very, very best to not publish turkeys. Reviewers resonate with that.
3. I just don't see much evidence that other forms of marketing work, unless you're aiming for bestseller status and can afford to plaster ads for the books everywhere. Most books won't get that kind of treatment.
As Jim Macdonald has also explained, the reason most books don't get that kind of treatment is that it's a completely ineffectual way to sell books. When was the last time you bought a book on the basis of an ad? Odds are, the answer is "never." Ads exist to advise people that books they already want to buy are now available in stores. They're also occasionally used as pacifiers for bigfoot authors who want the reassurance of seeing an ad for *T*H*E*I*R* *B*O*O*K* in the NYTimes.
We do promotion where promotion does some good. If you know someone who works in a big chain bookstore, go ask them how it's determined which books go on those table displays at the front of the store.
I'm more likely to buy a book because it's got a good review on one of the blogs I read or because someone I know says it's good than because it got a good review in the New York Times or an ad on a billboard, for example.
That makes you normal.
Why readers buy books:
- They read and enjoyed another book by the same author.
- It was recommended by someone they trust.
- They like the cover.
- Everything else.
Each of those reasons is approximately half as significant as the one that precedes it.
