Guest Post: Kit Bradley on Book Promotion

As an indie writer (author of  Mere Anarchy: Lord Goblin's First Joint, editor and contributor (along with Douglas Miller) of  Night War: The Dark Side of Dayton and indie publisher at  Sword & Lion Publishing, I've been looking into the best way to promote my work and my collaborations.  I find promoting my works to be an intensely personal experience.  Like most writers, I love my writing with an unreasonable passion.  I put myself into it, and when my work is rejected, I feel it personally.  So how to promote my book and myself is full of drama!  It touches me deeply.  I think this is common with all writers.

When promoting my books, I have chosen to be joyful.  Which sounds either cool or hopelessly goofy, but also unspecific: what do you mean, Kit, by joyful?


By now, I've read hundreds of posts and threads about marketing indie novels and books.  I've read half-a-dozen books about marketing, online, offline, and specific to indie writing.  They range from slickly professional pages and works by people who are clearly great at self-promotion and marketing (such as Joanna Penn's The Creative Penn) to frantic posts from desperate authors whose frustration is palpable (no examples given because why would I want to spread someone's misery - but they're easy to find).  But as one browses Indie Authors or any board or group about indie writers and promotion, it is clear that almost none of them are having fun promoting their work.  Listening to writers try to suss out enough information about search engine optimization to target their Facebook ads towards people who might buy their stuff?  There is no happiness, there.  And it is about as far away as the creative ecstasy of art that one can imagine: rather than spending one's time creating enduring artistic works, is all we have to look forward to the grinding drudgery of finessing search engine results?  Worrying about creating a social media presence?  Endlessly updating websites?
Few writers take to such tasks, and, quite frankly, the success rate is low.


Worse, there's a lot of. . . lore out there.  How many Twitter followers buy books?  Good question.  I wish there were a good answer.  As far as I can tell, there isn't.  Nearly everyone who talks about self-promotion for indie writers insists that an active social media presence is vital for success.  Without proof.  Which is lore: a story without proof, accepted without question.


Then, one goes and looks at the people who attend sci-fi, fantasy, comic, and/or horror conventions.  It's like a different world.  While cons have many perils - there are start-up costs, travel costs, lodging costs, food costs, not to mention the costs of buying a table and getting into the convention - most of the people who attend cons are. . . very enthusiastic.  They're not the dry, sad stories of artists pounding their heads against SEO and trying to find ways to boost up their Amazon review rating so they can apply to the sweet promo sites.  Convention artists talk about the positive experiences they have interacting with fans and other artists, the time they spend on cool panels, and even how much they sell.  It's a different world!


It made me go, "Hmm, Kit, which would you rather do?  Spend your time hammering your head against AdWords to take advantage of some obtuse sorting algorithm, or hanging out with cool people and selling books?"


Which lead me to my first conclusion about promotion: the promotions you can and will do are far better than the promotions you can't or won't do.  It doesn't matter how many books you would theoretically sell if you mastered the Google algorithms and could direct inexpensive ads to the exact people who will shell out their hard-earned dough for your book if you can't or won't do it.  A promotional style that is technically less efficient but includes things you can and will do is far better, right?


So, instead of trying to sort out the kinds of promotions that are simply most efficient (assuming that one can do them efficiently, which is a big fucking assumption), I started to look into promotions that I can and will do.  This list is likely to be different for everyone, but here are the things I know I can do and can work towards doing:


Conventions.  Clearly.  When passionate and enthusiastic about a product - like my splendid novels - I'm a pretty good salesperson.  I'm also good-looking, charismatic, witty, funny, and smart!  I'm awesome.  Going to cons will let me be awesome with other awesome people, and that's great.


Book signings.  These are like mini-conventions!  At book, comic, and game stores, running a table for a couple of hours is another way to get my book into people's hands.  Probably not that many.  But, again, the promotions that you can and will do are better than the ones you can't or won't.  (And as a starting indie writer, I know that you've got to hustle for every sale, every positive review, everything.)


The online stuff.  This is a grab bag because it's often hard to tell what works and what doesn't.  Does getting a good blog help?  With some people, sure, but not universally.  Likewise, many very successful indie writers don't have a brilliant web presence. So, do what you can and will!  Do what gets you some joy, people!


For me, that seems primarily book promotion sites.  I am blessed to be firmly in the middle class.  Spending some money to advance my career is an option - I don't even have to break even, I can lose money.  (Which, gentle reader, I will remind you is normal in any small business.  If you expect to make money immediately, you probably need to throw out that idea.  It is considered remarkable if a business makes a profit inside of a year, and most businesses plan for multi-year periods of low to no profitability.)  I like that many people talk about book promotion sites in concrete terms: "I spent this much money, I got these many downloads, I made so many sales."


Writing.  And, honestly, one of the biggest predictions of success is to. . . keep on writing.  Readers like authors with back catalogs.  If you've got one book out?  You're probably not going to get a lot of sales, especially if it's part of an unfinished series.  Like all businesses, indie writing is built on return customers.  And to get return customers, you need to get new stock.  And the stock of an author is words.  Keep on writing.  Which is great!  Because writing is the part of this that I love the most!
Furthermore, with each new publication, you can start over.  Between electronic sales and print-on-demand, publication is eternal.  Each time you publish a new book, you can do what worked last time, and try new things, and success once helps your whole back catalog.


To finish things off, what I have found - and this is true in all areas in my life - is that joy motivates me.  I did not become a writer to immerse myself in the minutiae of marketing details, to be endlessly studying advertising techniques of the digital age, or force myself to make eight tweets a day to drive my social media presence.  I write because I love to write.  Even if there were no audience, I would still write.  When no one is around, I tell myself stories.  When people are around, I tell them stories.  I love writing, and I'd be a fool to trade a love of writing for self-promotions that I hate.


I publish because I want to share what I love and because I think there are people out there who will enjoy the books I have written.  To share this joy, I know I need to do certain things.  Mere publication is not enough.  I need to get the books out there.


To me, though, life is not an endpoint, but a process.  There is no point where I'll sit back and go, "That's it, I'm done selling books."  I may change how I do it, but if it's ten or ten million, if there's even one person out there who would like my book, I want to get it into their hands.  So instead of trying to sell an arbitrary amount of stock, or make a specific amount of money, I am more interested in creating a life where I match my books with readers who will enjoy them.  It will be an ongoing process.


And none of that leads me anywhere near search engine optimization, or an elaborate social media presence.  In the end, a life well lived is its own reward.  When looking at a way to promote my books, I look first and foremost at creating joy for myself and others.


Kit Bradley is a writing living in the largest city in America whose name begins with the letter X.  He shares a house with a human wife and four cats (ranging from the quite excellent to the hopelessly defective).  In addition to writing and, predictably, reading, Kit enjoys riding on weird shaped bikes, inexplicably picking up large pieces of iron and setting them back down, and turning defenseless wood into sawdust.  He can be reached via email at kit@swordandlionpublishing.com.  Sword & Lion Publishing's website can be found here, and Kit's personal website can be found here.  He can be followed on Facebook and his Twitter feed is here.