9. Oct, 2022

Week Three: Keep Confident

I had some great feedback this week about my new book, and quite a bit of that has come from people who have contacted me through social media, people I don’t know. These are readers who have bought Exposed and, it seems, completed it very quickly. It’s good to know I’ve written something people are genuinely enjoying, which does make me feel more confident moving forward with my marketing campaigns.

That surge of confidence is very timely, because I’ve a couple of projects going live over the next week and it will be interesting to see whether or not they work. One is a video advert I can use on social media that is designed to look like a film trailer. The other is a media release being published by a professional PR company to multiple news outlets in the UK and the US. They have a good list of LGBTQ+ websites and magazines, which is important because readers who enjoy gay fiction were great supporters of my first book.

And my first book, Exposé, is a useful reference point for marketing and PR, because I tried multiple different channels to promote it and some worked well, whilst others were (sometimes expensive) failures. For instance, social media advertising worked well, for a while, but advertising in local and national publications had no impact on sales. The Goodreads Giveaway was important in getting crucial early reviews, but poster adverts in shopping centres (close to bookstores) did not work at all. And although advertising through Bookbub (a very popualar website for millions of booklovers) worked for a while, other ‘book club’ mail-outs fell flat.

That said, I do worry that I had much more early success with the publicity for Exposé than I am currently having with Exposed. But that might just be my memory playing tricks on me. It’s only been a few weeks since Exposed was published and without the luxury of a publishing house and its marketing team, it really is just me and the limited budget I have for publicity.

I need to maintain my confidence that my book is good. And then I need to see if the video advert and the news release help raise the profile of Exposed. I will check in with you next week and let you know.