I HAVE just published a new book, and in doing so have come face to face with the dark arts of neo-marketing.
Anyone who knows me will happily attest that I am no businessman. However, fortunately for me, I married into an entrepreneurial family so grudgingly accept advice when I head-butt against brick walls.
Anyway, after writing three top sellers (Amazon says that, not me), I still live in a matchbox house where our newly-acquired dog gets dizzy running round and round the runty garden. So I figured something was wrong with the traditional publishing world.
The penny dropped when I was in America pitching the book, Forces of Nature, to a publisher and his eyes glazed over when I mentioned Hurricane Katrina.
The book, incidentally, is the true story of two wonderfully eccentric adventurers who drop everything to go and rescue hundreds of thousands of animals abandoned when New Orleans was evacuated.
Hurricane Katrina, he said, was sooo yesterday, even though it is embedded in the American psyche.
I then somewhat boldly stated we may get the data bases of animal rescue organisations for marketing purposes. In other words, a shed-load of potential readers.
This was optimistic, but his eyes lit up like megawatt lamps. If I could get that, he said, he may be interested.
In other words, I would have to do the marketing.
Cool – except I then worked out I only got 9% of total book sales. Why should I and the heroines of the book do the legwork for that measly amount?
So we self-published, as many authors nowadays are doing. It costs nothing except your time and marketing skills.
However, digital promotion is a far cry from my comfort zone. I like placing an ad in a newspaper with high penetration readership, such as the one you are reading, and then people come to me.
Digging into geekdom
But when you rely solely on the internet, this is a bit more nuanced. Standalone digital marketing is digging deep into geekdom, something I never in a million years thought I would be doing.
You have to delve into the shamanism of search engines to get a whiff of success. In my case, Amazon.
And with Amazon, that can be summarized in one word: Algorithms.
It’s probably easier to steal gold from Fort Knox than it is to crack the Amazon algorithm. But if you can grasp some basics, you may have gold dust.
Amazon has a gazillion products to sell, so obviously can’t quality test them all. Cunningly, they get their customers to do that.
The algorithm wizard is constantly searching not only what individual customers buy, but also what they say.
The more boxes ticked in the algorithm tokoloshe, the more likely Amazon will flash your book up as an offer when a buyer logs on.
With books, you need to get into a ‘best seller’ category. My latest book is a niche read, so you have to think not just outside the box, but outside the box of the box.
For example, most people will buy thrillers or romances.
This book is an adventure, but if I put it in an adventure category, I’m up against Wilbur Smith. It’s also about animals. But if I put it in an animal category, I’m up against James Herriot.
So I find another category called Nature > Animal Rights. The algorithm doesn’t care if it’s obscure – it just cares that I’m among top sellers in a category.
Then, of course, search words. If I put in Hurricane Katrina, I get nothing of relevance. There is far too much other stuff on Amazon. But if I put in ‘dog Katrina’, I pop up as number 3.
Algorithms love that.
The beauty of Amazon is that you can keep testing and changing your categories and search words. For example, there are floods in Louisiana at the moment, so I can get that into the book search profile to see if it works.
The irony of it all is this: I’ve always want to write books, not be a marketing geek.
Sadly, unless you’re JK Rowling, that doesn’t happen anymore.
