Guest post by James Wells: Community Marketing

When you are getting ready to self-publish your book, two questions loom over your project and in fact your entire life:

- Who will read my book?
- How will I find them?

You'll find lots of advice online about how to promote your book. Typical ideas may include setting bargain days (especially for the ebook version) and then paying promoters to send out thousands of emails about your opus to their subscribers. You are advised to set up your website and Facebook page, and flood the ether with tweets (doing your part to alleviate the serious shortage of tweets out there).

Some sites may advocate a kinder, gentler version of self-promotion, where you locate online groups who might be interested in things similar to your book and so you join, making a point of doing enough to be recognized as a contributor before you do much mentioning of your great work. Conducting the delicate dance of promoting while seeming not to. Flying casual past the imperial star destroyer of being perceived as selling or spamming.

While online promotion is an important part of launching your book, there's a complementary approach that’s worth doing at the same time: Community Marketing.

One of the best methods to help get your book started is to bring it, directly and honestly, to the communities where you already are a contributor and a known friend. You'll be surprised how many people are willing to give your book a chance, and if it's excellent (that part's up to you) they will tell their friends about it or write a review.

This may seem to be in conflict with another piece of advice that you'll see - to seek out people interested in the subject matter of your book, rather than people you simply know.

Here's how that apparent conflict resolves: The people you choose to spend time with probably think about similar themes as you, and hopefully what matters about your book is theme - those ideas that you care mostly deeply about - just as much as the overt subject matter.

[Let's be clear that affinity groups matching your subject matter can be great. I won't turn down a chance to meet with a bunch of scifi readers!]

Here's an example of community marketing from the launch of my science fiction novel The Great Symmetry. A reasonable person would think that it's important to find science fiction enthusiasts - that's the overt subject matter. But that posed a problem, because as much as I love science fiction, in my daily life I have not become part of any scifi affinity groups.

Rather, my community is defined mostly by the groups shown in the diagram below.

Luckily, there's some alignment going - more than I would have thought. Out of each population, some people like science fiction. Others care about freedom of ideas and social equity, which are strong themes of the novel. Others just like an adventure story in any setting.

It's really worth evaluating which of your communities may be interested in your book, even if you initially don't see any alignment. For example, members of all six of the groups I list above have bought my novel.

Now you need to learn how to tell people about your book. It's scary. Nobody wants to sell to their friends.

Here's the key realization to help you through this stage: You are not going to make money on your first self-published book.

It's not a commercial venture. Some day in the future? Okay, maybe. But not today, or next week, or next month. The selling price of your book isn't income, not by a long shot - it's cost recovery.

This is actually good news.

Your book is your art. It's your labor of love. And that changes everything.

Instead of selling, you are sharing a part of yourself. People respect that. Once you embrace this idea, suddenly you can ask where you never could before. Go for it - tell people about your book. Ask them to come to your book launch. If they read it and liked it, ask them to post a review on Amazon or elsewhere.

You can ask because it matters. The ideas in your book matter. Sharing those ideas with your friends matters.

My friend Kurt told me this one day, as I was pondering how many Facebook posts about the book launch was too many:

“James, DO NOT apologize for promoting your book! Use any legitimate means at your disposal to get the word out!”

As the date of my first reading and book launch approached, I faced a level of social terror that I don't think I have ever experienced before. I had spent years on this project. But - no matter what I might do to get the word out, what if nobody other than my mom showed up?

So I asked. I wrote individually to friends to tell them about the event. I asked a local talk radio host for a radio interview. I asked the editor of our local weekly to profile the book. I made a Facebook event and invited everyone in the known universe. The results were encouraging.

None Specified

Attendee count: 123 people, the third highest in the history of the bookstore (Tom Robbins and Ivan Doig outdrew me). Mostly because I asked. And in case you were wondering, my mom did make it.

Community Marketing won't work forever. After a while, you'll run out of friends who don't yet know about your book. In the long term, it can't be your only plan. But I believe Community Marketing can be very effective in helping your book get started: getting some copies out into the world, having an encouraging first reading event, and accruing those all-important first few reviews.

Just remember - it's okay to ask for something you think is important.

Notes:

All the community marketing in the world won't help your book if it's not good enough. See this post The Kübler-Ross Stages of Editing about the process of getting ready for publication.

Song Lyrics from Paperback Writer by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.

About James Wells:

James R. Wells is the great-grandson of pioneering author H.G Wells, and so naturally he grew up loving science fiction. He writes in very personal terms about the kinds of choices that we all may face in the fast-arriving future.

James is a life-long cave explorer and outdoor adventurer, having led expeditions deep into some of North America’s great caves, including the Mammoth system, longest cave in the world.

When he is not writing or with family, James can be found in a cave, on a mountain, or anywhere else outside.

The author lives in northwest Washington state with his wife and his daughter.

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