Back to Writing and
Publishing Archives.
Writing and Publishing, Part 50:
Becoming your own publisher:
Marketing:
Advertising Methods:
It should be clear to everyone that I do not know how to advertise
and/or market a product. I am not a huckster. All I can tell you
about is what I have tried which did not work and why I think
it failed.
Two things I have never tried are TV ads and infomercials. I have not even investigated them because I believe the cost would be prohibitive for me. I have tried many other methods of direct advertising. I have advertised in magazine classifieds. I have also advertised in a newspaper. I have sent out direct mail and I have sent out catalogs. I have advertised in the PMA catalog and I have placed advertising links on web sites which promised me customers. None of those efforts produce useful results. Most produced no results. Some even produced negative results.
So, I am here to tell you that direct advertising has not worked for me. Think about it. Do you look at advertising? My wife looks at the weekly grocery specials because she is going to buy groceries. If we decide we need tires, we look at the tire ads. Does my wife decide she is going to buy a book, then look at the bookstore ads? Of course not. What is the only thing which would cause her to look at a book and, perhaps, buy it? If someone she respects tells her about it. Then she may look at it. If a publisher tells her it's special, she is likely to say what you would say, "Yeah, sure!"
In most cases we do not look at advertising at all. We do look at publicity, good and bad. Firestone got bad publicity and it is likely to destroy the company. Good publicity can make a company or a person. Talk show hosts create successes every day. Publicity works. Advertising does not. The very best publicity is word of mouth. You will usually buy a book if someone tells you it's special. You may also buy if you are a fan of a particular author, series, or genre.
On the other hand, direct advertising will always find people who want to sell you something. It could be a manuscript or a service. With all of the direct advertising I have done, It has always got me more solicitors than customers. That is a fact. Direct advertising has not worked to produce sales for Wesoomi Publishing.
Here is my experience in direct advertising to date. It is likely to be all of the experience I will ever have.
When I produced my first book, "The Wesoomi Gardening Journal" I placed classified ads in two national circulation gardening magazines. The total cost was $243.00. That produced one response which resulted in one sale. Hardly the stuff of exotic success. It does not take a genius to notice that it was not cost effective.
I also had a bunch of brochures printed at a cost of about $300.00. I could compute the exact cost, but it's not important. What is important is that no brochure handout produce any sales. So much for the Gardening Journal effort.
My other efforts for my other four books were equally unspectacular. I paid a website huckster $44.85 to put a link to my website. The link turned out to be set up so that my website looked like a page on his site. He got the money one time. Of course, no sales were produced.
I placed a $45.00 ad for "The Siege of Acheron" in the Publishers Marketing Association's catalog. So far as I could tell, the ad had no effect.
I had a local printer make up 2000 copies of my booklet on publishing. I have sent out countless booklets upon request. They have produce good will but no sales. The postage has increased my costs.
When I first set up my website, I paid $135.00 to a company called OneStep to list my URL on a number of search engines. That got me some website visitors for the first two weeks. After that, my site was so far down in the list that no one saw it. Now my number of visitors is gradually increasing. I believe that is a result of word of mouth because of our excellent content. The word is getting around.
For my book, "The Anatomy of a PC" I placed a 1/4 page ad in a local newspaper called the Citizen. It cost me $229.50. That ad produced two telephone calls from people who wanted to sell me manuscripts. There were no sales.
That is my effort in direct advertising. You would think that I would be discouraged, but it is not so. I am still having fun most of the time. I have also tried many other things in marketing, most of which I have already covered in other essays. Some things, I will get into in my discussions of my efforts and mistakes with my five books.
Of course, I have tried giving books away for PR. The idea is to get people to say something about the book. I have found it does not work well. I have had some of good reviews for "The Anatomy of a PC," but I sold fewer books than I gave away. I have come to realize that giving books helter skelter is not effective. It simply costs too much. I try to give them to people who I think can really help and are honest. So, for me, I will forget the trade journals. I will generally ignore the big city newspapers and the big TV houses. I have found that there are just a few honest folks out there. I will continue to search for them.
I have found that what really does work a little bit for me is the internet. Each week my website gets a few more visitors and most of my sales are a result of this. It is not enough to claim any real success. However, I continue to believe that the website is the essential hub of my effort in sales. Having the site is not enough. The trick I think is in finding a way to get people to visit my site. As I said, word of mouth is beginning to work.
Now, there is one other thing to tell you about. This is the follow up on Amazon.com. I did send books to them and they have listed my books in their online catalog. They are listed as available to ship in24 hours. That is very good. I believe it is a good thing to make my books available for credit card purchases. Having Amazon list the books makes it cost effective for me. It remains to be seen if there will be any real sales out of this. I am somewhat optimistic. I will keep you informed.
Next time I will get into contests and other promotions.
Back to Writing and Publishing
Archives.
|
|
|
|