Blink, think and click

Say that three times fast. Blink, think and click.

I just tried typing it three times fast and it didn’t work out once. Anyway, on with the show.

Have you heard the classic marketing joke? Even the best marketing only works 50% of the time. But nobody knows which 50%.

Click, blink and think

With that in mind, I have been reading and researching book marketing, book covers and so on. The main challenge for me is finding an audience, category, and genre. The overall wisdom from my reading and research is that one has go out there, find your potential readers and ask them what they like to read. And, even more importantly, find out exactly what they will spend their money on.

Luckily, I have found a wonderfully informative podcast hosted by Joanna Penn. She covers everything one could think of related to direct publishing, including marketing. And, in the most recent episode she talked with and guy who wrote “Fat Vampire”, which is now being turned into a series on Syfy. It was not an overnight success, but you can see from the title and word vampire, that it is so easy to find an audience, category, genre. I think if you wanted to find books on vampires, then putting the word vampire in a search engine would be a good start.

Think, blink and click

Sadly, my characters happen to be human. The thought did cross my mind of turning Jay in Tripio into a time traveling, kickboxing, preternatural creature who feeds on Starbucks baristas. It could even be topical. Starbucks corporate knows of the creature but does nothing. Thus, providing the baristas with incentive to unionize.

But serious folks, buy my book, please. For the youngsters reading, that’s a riff on the classic Henny Youngman joke.

I have read two books on the above topic-not Henny Youngman, on finding and getting to know your readers. One was quite predictably called, Book Relaunch. I found the book helpful. I will use a good deal of it, I am sure. I have even started on survey questions, set up a Mailchimp account and began to construct a marketing campaign in order to ask as many readers as possible exactly what they think want to spend their money on.

Then I read Malcom Gladwell’s, Blink. A mistake, I think. Because, in Blink, Malcom Gladwell goes into wonderful, readable detail that makes a great case that, when asked, people seldom know they want, what they would buy and why. The failure of New Coke is used as a test case. Buy New Coke, please.

So, I feel like I’m back to square one. If I do launch a marketing campaign to find my readers, will they even know what they want? So, the old marketing joke above probably does apply. Which gives me 500.5 chances to get it right this time. Because the next book I plan to read is 1,001 Ways to Market your Books.