Idiots in the email (part N +1)

AUTHOR here,
Sorry for the impersonal email but, I just copied and pasted all my 'contacts.' The purpose of the email is to announce that my first novel has just been published!! It's an e-book for now, the publisher says the paperback will be on the shelves sometime in October. You can find it right now on Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com or even as an iBook. Just put my name or the title (TITLE) and it'll pop right up.
And, if you do read it and think it's good, please consider writing a review and then, tell ALL YOUR contacts!
Thanks,
Author

Well, no.

Instead I'm going to block you on my gmail account and post a rant about ineffective promotion.

This is textbook ineffective.
For starters, I have no clue who you are.
I assume I get these from people who've queried me, and my name got added to their address book. A lot of email programs do that (add to your address book) automatically.  It's something you want to be aware of.

Except a Savvy Author knows that "send all" is the kiss of death in any kind of promotion.

If you're not going to personalize your email (which you should but I'll fight that battle another day) at the very least you should send a form email to subgroups of your address book: friends/family; fellow writers; people in your address book you can't remember but they must be important if they're there, right?

Look at each name? Do you know that person?  If you do it's ok to send an email. And by "know" I mean something other than a form email passing on your book.

If you do NOT know the person, why is their name in your address book?
You then target the email to why they are in your address book:

Dear Felix Buttonweezer,
We met at the Flash Fiction and French Fry Eating Contest at Coney Island.
My book is being published. You can find it here.

Dear Colin Smith,
We met when we were in the kale fields of Carkoon.
My book is being published. You can find it here

Dear Janet Reid,
We corresponded when you rejected my novel that's now being published.
Boy, don't you feel stupid.

Notice that none of those have a request to spam YOUR friends.
And none of them ask for a review.


Promotion is hard work, and it takes a lot of intestinal fortitude to get out there and do it. Short cuts like these are just plain stupid. Don't do it.

Any questions?

Marketing for savvy authors: your book isn't in the store

Recently I called Editor Excellence only to find him fuming and grumpy (while this is not rare, it was, shall we say, heightened, that particular day.)

"What gives?" I asked, knowing some delicious info about the publishing world would follow. (Getting editors to vent is an excellent tutorial lemme tell ya.)

"Well," he said, settling in for a good rant "I just got a call from one of my authors. A reader had informed him that New Title was NOT in Store X."

Author was all atwitter and affronted and ranting about lack of store presence.

Editor Excellence let the author run off at the mouth for a while then gave him a quick lesson in Publishing 101:

Not every store orders every book.


This is not news to anyone who thinks about how retail sales work for longer than thirty five seconds.

Store X had in fact ordered copies of AuthorAsshat's first book. 20 in fact. Sold 5.
And ordered 10 copies of second book. Sold 2.
And ordered 5 copies of third book. Sold none.
O copies orderd of books four and five.

This makes TOTAL SENSE if you are the inventory manager of that bookstore. You stock what sells. Anyone who wants to argue with that premise should move to the  501C3 Zipcode and take up non-profit retailing.


Now, what does this mean for you, author who finds that your amazing tome is not in a particular store?

First, you do NOT call your editor.
Second, you do NOT call your agent.

What you do is say to the reader who so carefully passed on this bad news as if there was something you could do personally to stock the store: "DID YOU SPEAK TO THE MANAGER? DID YOU ORDER THE BOOK?"

In other words, if the book isn't on the shelf, did you give the inventory manager at the store some clue that perhaps you would buy it if it was?

No? You just emailed (or worse FACEBOOKED) the author who can literally do NOTHING to get a book in your hands.

Readers do this all the time. They think they are being helpful. All they're doing is tormenting writers, and frankly I want them to stop, cause that's MY job.

So, if you've got a book for sale, make sure you tell people to ask for it at their local store if it's not there, and ORDER it at the store.

Sales beget orders.

Complaints beget something else.