How-To Discussion of Promoting and Marketing Novels and Written Works

[Rocket Sheep]

If someone says they've written something interesting, I always check it out in their profile links. Sometimes a "novel" can turn out to be a self-published online at a brag site, epic, that has 15 mistakes in the opening paragraph. I don't call that a novel. I call that an ms in progress. However I do know someone who hosted a masterclass on "finishing that novel" having those exact credentials and named the brag site as the "publisher".

I don't want sff to be the dumping site for links to "novels" like that... (altho it did accidentally read like lesbian porn in the opening few lines so it was a very funny link to share around).

Profiles are the key to letting people find out about your work and pointing out that they can find out more about you via the link in your profile is okay.

[Hereford Eye]

Profiles needs another line. After you discover Sue and I have a website how are you going to know we added a blog if we don't tell you? http://holbrookandhe.com/blog

[Holbrook]

Profiles needs another line. After you discover Sue and I have a website how are you going to know we added a blog if we don't tell you? http://holbrookandhe.com/blog

Also how are you going to know we are both quite slightly mad if you don't look at the website and blog...

Though truth be told I feel uncomfortable blogging, not a natural at it. I do keep a presence on a few places but it is just that.

Hal Duncan is the King of bloggers as far as I am concerned, 3000 word upwards posts and his one about being dropped on his head at Fantasycon is superb!

[Teresa Edgerton]

Right now I (along with a growing number of family and friends) am working on a promotional trailer-type video for my book. I'm certainly not the first writer to give this a try, but it's still fairly new territory, and I think it will be interesting to see if this kind of promotion even proves effective.

So much time and effort has gone into my video already, I hope it will prove effective.

But I also want to see if an ordinary midlist writer with ordinary resources (not just the big names who don't really need the promotion) can do this and do it well.

In case anyone is interested, here's a link to a small portion of the footage that we posted on YouTube to see how it would look. (There will be far more exciting things in the trailer, of course, and we will be mentioning the name of the book in the final version. This is just experimenting with formats etc.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmZRNeH54Gk

[Rocket Sheep]

It looks great. Did you hire actors?

The music and the perfect costumes (clean, neat) gives it a comic feel tho, is that intentional?

[Holbrook]

The trailer was very interesting. We are used to a book coming out based on a filem and a film based on a book, but using a video trailer for a book?? That is something I have never come across before.I hope it works, it certainly would be a talkng point at a Con.

[BrianC]

Right now I (along with a growing number of family and friends) am working on a promotional trailer-type video for my book. I'm certainly not the first writer to give this a try, but it's still fairly new territory, and I think it will be interesting to see if this kind of promotion even proves effective.

So much time and effort has gone into my video already, I hope it will prove effective.

But I also want to see if an ordinary midlist writer with ordinary resources (not just the big names who don't really need the promotion) can do this and do it well.

In case anyone is interested, here's a link to a small portion of the footage that we posted on YouTube to see how it would look. (There will be far more exciting things in the trailer, of course, and we will be mentioning the name of the book in the final version. This is just experimenting with formats etc.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmZRNeH54Gk

Well excellent effort thus far. I would agree the costumes might look a little more weathered.

[KatG]

Well that was interesting. There are two trial sample versions of Madelaine's "video." One is listed as quest5, which is what the link took me to, and just has the folk walking along. Then there was another listed with it, a longer version -- Hidden Stars 1, which starts off with a bunch of people fighting, including some albino type guys in scarlet hooded robes, the last one of whom produces a lighting bolt weapon, then we get text -- a quest is beginning, then the people walking again, then text again -- something is following. So I think when it's all done and actually says what the book is and everything, that it will be quite effective. Your actors were quite good -- at least the ones walking. The ones fighting and those albinos were a bit confusing and maybe a little cheesy, but I think when it's all in context, it will be more interesting.

What was also interesting was that YouTube starts listing other vids with it as is their custom, which then allowed me to watch SCA melees set to rock music. And it would seem if you wanted to do this sort of thing, that the SCA folk who might be in your area might be very useful and might even lend or sell you footage of their big battles, which for somebody doing a war epic might work a lot better than hiring a lot of people or drafting all your relatives and friends and having to find them costumes.

Also listed was an animated short -- an extraordinary one called Kiwi! by someone named Dony Permedi, who has a website -- donysanimation.com. In it, the flightless kiwi bird uses rope and hammer and nails to... well I won't spoil it for you, but it's very good, in my opinion. And that's another possibility for this sort of thing, I suppose. You could team up with an animator who could make you a short film, and this might be a great way for those dealing with magical creatures and the like to do something that would be much more difficult to do as live action, unless you were into puppets.

Of course, this is all advertising and has been up till now, the big hurdle for fiction in competing with movies et al. Advertising photos of book covers or illustrative art with book covers has never been very successful, except for already well-known authors. It's expensive and its range is uncertain. So publishers don't do it much, except in conjunction with bookstores and for big titles that are already hits. If a book gets made into a movie, then you can hitch your wagon to the film and film promotion, but that happens only for a tiny proportion of books. And television and radio ads are even harder, since it's only a written work, and are even more expensive.

Then there was the web, but getting people to your website is hard. Banner ads and such at websites have the same difficulty as print and billboard ads, though they are cheaper, but they are more difficult to target with. So these vids -- same problem as with the website -- you're a drop of water in an ocean, but people do cruise these things, and puruse lists of vids, so even if you only get some folk watching, it's like a t.v. ad. But it's a lot less expensive potentially. It's very ambitious. You will have to let us know how it works out once you have the finished product out there.

Been getting lots of depressing information about the fiction market this last week. So this vid was a lot of fun. Love the woman being mean to the blonde guy. Are any of them you? Offspring?

[parvenu]

the best new cyber noir hybrid is a novel called chrome by a guy called sk cooper , australian. makes it all worthwhil. he's through a lunatic called altair-australia. incredible imagery

[BrianC]

cyber noir hybrid

Now I've heard it all.

[Teresa Edgerton]

No, none of the people are me or my offspring, though some of us may make an appearance in the longer version. Many of the people are, in fact, SCA -- we started out completely recruiting from my husband's SCA contacts, and then my daughter brought in a friend who brought in some of his friends who are actors, performers, and martial artists. Everyone is a volunteer, working for free. It astounds me that we were able to find so many talented people willing to do this without compensation, or to lend us their armor, etc.

The red robes are supposed to be a bit on the pristine side. Everything else actually is weathered, whether it shows up on camera or not. Most people seem to like the music a lot, which is Finnish and some sort of fusion of contemporary and traditional. But we'll know better if it's effective or detrimental when we have everything together and a larger sample of people have seen it, so your input is definitely welcome.

The bit that you liked, Kat, with Sindérian snubbing Prince Ruan, has been quite popular with the women who have seen it. The men don't comment. We now have some footage we are adding in that show he isn't just a big wuss who allows girls to pick on him.

Originally, the temptation was to make it into a synopsis of the book, all in consecutive order (my linear mind at work, I wanted to tell a story), but it finally came to me that the idea was just to get people talking and wondering, to generate some word of mouth. And we're not really going for the die-hard fantasy fans that know everyone is supposed to look like they've been wearing their clothes every day for the last ten years -- we're going for the readers who never go to conventions or join forums or any of that, the people who, as I've always understood it, make up a far larger part of the market.

I know that most forms of advertising have not been a particularly effective when it comes to promoting fiction. So this is an experiment, and even with our comparatively tiny budget a risk. But I've been timid (and cheap, due to the whole starving writer working in a garret thing) about promoting my books in the past, and I decided to be bold just this once and see how it works out.

There are other book trailers on YouTube, but they're mostly for romance novels and vampire novels. (Romance writers are always so proactive with their promotion, aren't they?) I think this will be just about the first live action fantasy that's for a book rather than a movie, so it may have the novelty factor going for it.

Thanks for your comments everyone.

[parvenu]

you should get out more brain c; cyber noir is the new way in sf, like a splinter in your mind. suburban hell? wait till you see a film shooting now called 'cul', may eventually be released as 'watch'. thyat will be suburban hell

[KatG]

Sounds like cyberpunk given a new name, or sf horror. But it's cute -- cybernoir. It's better than New Weird, anyway.

We stopped in a comic book store while on a trip. It's been awhile since we were in one. I was surprised to see how different lines have expanded, and how many t.v. shows had comic books. Then there's the superhero t.v.show "Heroes," to which I am addicted, which has web comics. It also reminded me also of this web comic I had gotten into called Shooting War, which was a sf comic set in the near future. They did the first twelve installments on the website, for free, and that got them a graphic novel deal, so the rest of the story is in the graphic novel. So the online stuff becomes a draw for the print. And that's maybe another way to go, and a little cheaper than animation or live action, though more traditional -- comic or illustrated teaser online.

[MrBF1V3]

I found a listing of PODs and information about which might be useful, if one is tending in that direction...

http://dehanna.com/database.htm

B5

[darrenreid]

Hey everyone

What about creating a forum topic to promote non-commercial projects - ie (e)books and stories that authors only want read rather than bought?