Off the Desk of Avidreader…

As an avidreader I’ve been read­ing nov­els for the past 16 years and count­ing. Romance was the genre that I started with and over the years I’ve had to expand my read­ing palette to pre­vent unnec­es­sary burn out. Read­ing this long there is very lit­tle that sur­prises me. There is very lit­tle that I haven’t read already. I used to have a pretty good author list that has now dis­solved to a select few. How­ever, there are new authors emerg­ing every­day. Back in 2004, The New York Times reported that a new book was being pub­lished every 30 min­utes. As a reader with a select few of favorites these days, I’m always in the mar­ket for try­ing out a new voice.

Mar­ket­ing Tools that Work or Don’t Work for this Reader

Each reader goes through their own process of try­ing a new author out. New authors have their work cut out for them from the time they are handed their first sale. How to get noticed? How to get your name out there? How do you attract a new audi­ence? I’ve read my share of first time authors and unfor­tu­nately, a few of them never make it past their first book. Why? No audi­ence, poor sales, or lack of pro­mo­tion for starters. What respon­si­bil­ity does the author have in get­ting their name out there? I’d say a lot.  The pub­lisher can put your book in the right places but I would think that the rest is up to the author to self-promote like hell to get their book noticed among the thou­sands that are pub­lished each year.

Much of this com­men­tary is from my per­spec­tive as a reader. However, other read­ers are more than wel­come to add their thoughts and opin­ions on the mar­ket­ing tools that pub­lish­ers and authors use to gain new read­er­ship. I only know what works for me and what doesn’t. I’m a sea­soned reader and have read it all.  Most of us have a sys­tem when it comes to pur­chas­ing a new book from a new face. So here’s what I look for when buy­ing a new book.

1. Excerpts are invalu­able. I love to read excerpts espe­cially since I buy more “e” more than I buy “paper” these days.  So it is only pru­dent to have excerpts made avail­able to clinch the sale after I’ve read the rather bor­ing plot sum­mary. The impor­tant role of excerpts is pretty much obvi­ous. As read­ers we get a taste of the author’s style and nar­ra­tive voice. I can some­times tell imme­di­ately if a book will work for me or not based on the excerpt. Also is it first per­son or third? Very impor­tant for some read­ers to know before they buy.
2. Word of mouth or good buzz doesn’t hurt and can be pretty pow­er­ful. How­ever there has to be a bal­ance here because too much good buzz is a killer. Most read­ers like me are turned off by it.
3. The cover debate still rages on. The impact or role book cov­ers play in mak­ing or break­ing a book is still, well, debatable. Rarely do I buy a book based on cover alone but it does hap­pen. How­ever, more times than not, the book itself just doesn’t live up to the cover. On the other side of the coin, there are books with under­whelm­ing cov­ers. Obvi­ously, cov­ers are impor­tant. It’s the first thing read­ers see before they even read the plot summary.
4. Pro­fes­sional review sites, mag­a­zines, reader blogs and such. Ah, well, they play a impor­tant role in how I decide on new authors I’m on the fence on but more often than not, if I’m already a fan, reviews don’t have much of an impact on my wal­let. I do pay atten­tion to Pub­lisher Weekly’s starred reviews but often their taste in books doesn’t always jive with my own so it really just boils down to read­ers hav­ing sim­i­lar taste to your own. Another good pro­mo­tion tool is hav­ing favor­able reviews in RT because it does seem to help. Barnes and Noble puts their RT mag­a­zines right next to the new romance releases. Uh, I really don’t use RT reviews but mil­lions of other read­ers do.
5. Pro­mo­tion and Place­ment is very impor­tant. When I shop at Barnes and Noble, I always make a point to visit the Rec­om­men­da­tion shelf where book­sellers pro­mote the books they’ve enjoyed to read­ers like me. I’ve had much suc­cess with one book­seller named Janet. She likes Stephe­nie Meyer and Patri­cia Briggs. Also, the dis­play stands that serve to block my path down the aisle as I try to go to another sec­tion of the book­store or books that are high­lighted as “new” will always get my atten­tion but it doesn’t always turn out a sale. Atten­tion is good.
6. Hav­ing a unique voice or a dif­fer­ent spin on the cur­rent trend doesn’t hurt but if you’re not churn­ing out what is pop­u­lar and hip then you run the risk of hav­ing very lit­tle audi­ence for your new book. I like unique and dif­fer­ent but I am a lone voice in a sea of voices that want more of the same.

There are other mar­ket­ing tools that I find quite annoy­ing but there is one that I find mis­lead­ing.  Author cover quotes any­body? Author cover quotes don’t pro­mote your book to me. Espe­cially the same generic cover quotes by the same peo­ple who prob­a­bly didn’t even read your book. I just learned from Mrs. Gig­gles web­site that Talia Gryphon is a pen name (pen name?) for Lau­rell K. Hamilton’s ex-bodyguard who is now writ­ing dark fan­tasy. It’s a book I’d been look­ing at because of the kick-ass cover and sure enough the LKH quote was on there, too, tout­ing that it is a “unique idea” in the para­nor­mal genre. Right.  After read­ing Mrs. Gig­gles review of it, I think I’ll have to pass. I must admit that I do like read­ing cover quotes from mag­a­zines or other review sites but author quotes don’t quite do it for me for impul­sive buys.

Another annoy­ance is the lack of updated author web­sites. I think many other read­ers have expressed the need of hav­ing a updated web­site very elo­quently and I’m not rehash­ing that here. It looks as though many authors seemed to have received that mes­sage while there are those who are still MIA or just don’t have the time to update their web­site. Well,  it’s a good thing that there are  hun­dreds of other books to read by authors who do update their web­sites. A Reader’s Plea to Diana Nor­man: please get a website!

Alas, I could go on and on with this topic but all good things must come to an end. I will end this say­ing that a reader’s jour­ney to find­ing that “good book” is end­less and hard work.  Ama​zon​.com always rec­om­mend books based on my buy­ing his­tory but I don’t put much faith into their choices. I think I’ll stick to my gut feel­ing, reader reviews and my gut feeling.