Promoting a new fiction release? (Without a following)

Here's my trumpet-tootling checklist...

Post release on any and all messageboards and social media channels you're on.
Contact local radio stations and newspapers.
If you're allowed to do so, send out a blanket email at work!

I can't tell you how to get a thousand fans (if I knew that, I'd be rich), but I can suggest something that will most likely stop you getting them. When you gain a reader, you need some way to retain that reader. That means a way to follow your updates, see the other work you've written, and so on. Like an author website and some social media. You don't have to do every form of social media, but find something that works for you. If you don't have that, money you spend on promotions will be wasted, because you don't keep those readers.

Erato said:

Wondering if anybody had ideas on good ways to promote a new release (fiction) that doesn't just amount to "promote to your thousands of fans and followers" since not all of us have those.

In the past I've tried doing free promos of new releases without any success (it seems most people just download the books for free and never even read them, thus no reviews or buzz generated) as well as some paid spots on Facebook and blogs which produced some sales but not enough to compensate for what was spent nor enough to perpetuate more sales once the promo period ended.

Have a new book upcoming and would like to see some success with this one...

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This is going to sound flippant, but if you don't have thousands of fans you need to build them. It's difficult and it sucks but building that readership is the core of most marketing efforts.

How are you collecting readers? Are you tracking mailing list subscribers, social media followers and interaction levels?

You're doing some interesting work with paid spots on Facebook/blogs, but how are you tracking the return on these costs? Are the Facebook spots getting newsletter signups/book downloads? Are the free downloads feeding the mailing list? (Consider Instafreebie for streamlining this.)

I tried to find your social presence from your post here, but I got nowhere. Your signature just links to Amazon, with no website or social media, and googling 'Erato' and 'Erato books' gives me nothing useful. How are readers supposed to track your releases?

What kind of book is this? All you said was you have a fiction book coming out and no audience. You didn't say anything about genre, nothing.

Marketing a romance for example is going to be different than marketing a mystery. A lot of things depend on how you should market because every genre has a different audience. All marketing doesn't work among every genre.

Marketing also depends on the format in which you are published. Is it in print from a print publisher (not POD) then you will need to hit the print-oriented promo options trade publishers use. If it's an ebook, you should focus on online marketing but without knowing your genre or whatever it will be hard to say exactly what might help. For example, many romance and YA authors use things such as blog tours to promote yet authors of other genres haven't had much luck with blog tours I've heard.

Also, are you published by a publisher or self-published? If you have a publisher then you should get with them and ask about promotion. In fact, if this is a pub that intends on doing any promotion, this should've been discussed with you already. If it's a big five press, get with the publicity department and go over promotional options. If it's a pub that has no intentions to promote anything then depending on the format of your book, promote to audiences who buy that format the most.

Hold on, did you say you did free promos for NEW RELEASES? Why would you give a new release away for free? Free does have it's place. Mainly its a way to get people to read the rest of your series by putting book 1 free. But it would make no sense to put a new release free. How would you make any money? If I misunderstood you, I apologize. But, I have seen some authors make new releases free about a week after release to "drum up sales" and I still shake my head about that.

Meow.

cool pop said:

Hold on, did you say you did free promos for NEW RELEASES? Why would you give a new release away for free? Free does have it's place. Mainly its a way to get people to read the rest of your series by putting book 1 free. But it would make no sense to put a new release free. How would you make any money? If I misunderstood you, I apologize. But, I have seen some authors make new releases free about a week after release to "drum up sales" and I still shake my head about that.

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THIS.

It's a weird quirk of books, but... readers tend to value a book they paid for more than one they got for free. They expect better quality, they stop and think before they buy it, and they're more likely to read it.

I've seen a lot of advice about how you should build a readership in any way possible, including giving it away to all and sundry for free, but from all the real life examples I've seen this doesn't work. You end up with a diluted readership of people who picked the book up because it was free, not because they genuinely were interested in it.

Related to that, free book promos can bring out some of the nastiest Amazon one-star reviewers. Which is weird, because you'd think not investing money means they wouldn't be inclined to invest the time, but anecdotally (from self-publisher stories on the 20Booksto50k Facebook page) it seems to make the trolls come crawling forth. It also makes you an easy target for fake reviewers trying to build up a presence (and variety of negative reviews) to balance out their paid positive reviews.

Free promos aren't working for you, so I'd pull that plug sharpish.

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