Book Marketing On The Internet 2
Unlike most publishers out there who are just publishers, I am also a book distributor. We deal directly with the bookstores in Singapore and the region. Now, everytime we distribute a new book, the author always ask the question: Are you putting up the posters in the bookstores on my new book?
I decided that I will answer the question here in my blog so that we can move beyond posters when comes to marketing a book. While it is true that having a poster on your book displayed in the store is a plus point, but the fact is that not all bookstores allow you to put up a poster without their permission. Most big chain bookstores do not accept posters now. The reason is simple. If every publisher gives a poster to every bookstore for every new book, the bookstore is not a bookstore anymore, it becomes a Poster Shop. You see the problem?
As a distributor, what happens in the retail store is not within the control of the distributor. We don’t call the shots at the bookstores because we don’t own the retail space, the bookstores do. Now, if the option for posters as a marketing tool is out, what alternatives do you have? By the way, if you can only think of posters, you are not catching up with times, you belong to the old economy, sad to say. Even, if the poster is there, it will not last you one week, if you are lucky, two weeks later it is taken down. So, what happens two weeks later? Your book will be lost forever and no one will buy it anymore, because that poster is no longer there? You see, this is a short term solution and not a clever one too.
For a book to sell, you want to generate continual awareness. Yes, you can try advertising in the newspaper but since the money we make from books is little, most authors do not have a budget for it. It is just not worthwhile to place an ad to sell one book. What then is the solution?
The internet is again the solution. Have you considered doing a book trailer or a video ad on your book and post it on Youtube? Once you got the video, you can post it on your site, facebook, etc and it is generating awareness for your book 24 hours a day. Have I done one before? I did, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iX6YKafGFOU
Oh, if you are a non Singaporean reading this, you may not understand the content of the video because it is done in Hokkien, a local dialect in Singapore. It started as an experiment and I never thought I get more than 50, 000 hits! Hits means eyeballs! Hey, not really a viral video but it is a great success to have so many hits! No publishers dare experiment something like that, but I did it my way.
Now, another option is to load sample chapters of your book on your site for people to browse. I used to think I was very clever to give sample chapters in pdf file for people to download for certain books but now I just discovered, it is not hip anymore. The new thing is ISSUU. What ISSUU? http://issuu.com/
ISSUU converts your pdf file or a word document into an online e-document that allows people to view it online. No downloading needed. View it directly on your webpage like watching an embedded Youtube video. COOL! The best thing is, IT IS FREE! Converting a pdf file into something for online view used to be troublesome and costly. Most people convert to Flash format and if you know nothing about Macromedia Flash, you are dead. So, here is a FREE solution that do it so beautifully that you cannot resist trying.
So, this means now, people can browse sample pages of your book online without first downloading the pdf file! In addition, if people like it, they post it on their site and when more people post it on their site for others to view, it travels and that is where awareness of your book is generated. So, say goodbye to posters, lets welcome ISSUU. I got no time to write anymore on this, i need to convert my sample pdf files to ISSUU now!