Cross Marketing
For an independent author the biggest and often most daunting hurdle to sales is a little thing we call marketing. We choose to be writers and somehow, at times, it seems like we have become more marketers than anything else. Welcome to the new reality!
So we are marketers and no matter how much we hate marketing, it is very much a core part of being an independent author. Marketing is basically getting your brand (name) out there and using it to generate interest in your product which hopefully will lead to sales.
So what is cross marketing? Your first thought may wonder to the image of selling your books in angry ways. Buy my book or else! Have you met Griff and Muscles, they get upset when you don’t buy my book. That may be amusing to think about, but would never really work in the real world unless your end goal is to reach the prison population with your books.
Cross marketing is actually getting involved with likeminded writers and promoting each other. Think of it this way, if I tell you to buy my book because it is an awesome read, it does not necessarily have the impact if someone other than me tells you to buy my book because it was a really terrific read. This is the same reason why reviews work.
So we just scratched the surface of cross marketing. There is a lot more you can do such as exchanging reviews, retweeting other’s posts, and engaging with them via social media. Websites like goodreads.com and tribrr.com offer great places to start. Building a twitter following is also essential to make all of those very important connections. I personally greet every single new follower because those connections are that important. First impressions mean everything!
The math of cross marketing also makes it a huge cannot ignore concept. If you have 1000 followers on Twitter then you can get out your marketing to 1000 people. Now if you are involved in a group of say five people with 1000 followers each and you all use cross marketing, you then have access to 5000 people instead of 1000. This kind of math wants me to cross market even more.
In conclusion, you know you will have to market and if you do not include cross marketing then you are going to miss out on sales. Embrace it, meet some authors and promote their books as they promote yours. Maybe find an author with an interesting book and exchange reviews. Join Tribrr and Goodreads and put yourself out there. Together we can sell books!
So we are marketers and no matter how much we hate marketing, it is very much a core part of being an independent author. Marketing is basically getting your brand (name) out there and using it to generate interest in your product which hopefully will lead to sales.
So what is cross marketing? Your first thought may wonder to the image of selling your books in angry ways. Buy my book or else! Have you met Griff and Muscles, they get upset when you don’t buy my book. That may be amusing to think about, but would never really work in the real world unless your end goal is to reach the prison population with your books.
Cross marketing is actually getting involved with likeminded writers and promoting each other. Think of it this way, if I tell you to buy my book because it is an awesome read, it does not necessarily have the impact if someone other than me tells you to buy my book because it was a really terrific read. This is the same reason why reviews work.
So we just scratched the surface of cross marketing. There is a lot more you can do such as exchanging reviews, retweeting other’s posts, and engaging with them via social media. Websites like goodreads.com and tribrr.com offer great places to start. Building a twitter following is also essential to make all of those very important connections. I personally greet every single new follower because those connections are that important. First impressions mean everything!
The math of cross marketing also makes it a huge cannot ignore concept. If you have 1000 followers on Twitter then you can get out your marketing to 1000 people. Now if you are involved in a group of say five people with 1000 followers each and you all use cross marketing, you then have access to 5000 people instead of 1000. This kind of math wants me to cross market even more.
In conclusion, you know you will have to market and if you do not include cross marketing then you are going to miss out on sales. Embrace it, meet some authors and promote their books as they promote yours. Maybe find an author with an interesting book and exchange reviews. Join Tribrr and Goodreads and put yourself out there. Together we can sell books!
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Sarah
(new)
Apr 03, 2012 10:03AM
Yes, just scratching the surface in marketing for myself and my publisher (indie). Fortunately, I learn intuitively and grasped the cross-marketing concept by seeing what other authors were doing. I have learned patience over the past several decades, and perseverance (my mother would call it hardheadedness) comes naturally, so I will keep trying. Thanks for the information...
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I very much like the idea of our helping each other but it may fall down when for example two of you offer to review each other's books. What if the book you receive is dire? Do you warn the author? Or do you publish and get a dire response for your masterpiece? Look, there's a dilemma here. How is it to be resolved? I have to say I'm open to review pretty well anything on some kind of reciprocal arrangement. I'd just like some ground rules to be formulated.
Trading reviews is tricky at best because you are right in that there is no guarantee that you will like each other's book. I think you have to set up ground rules when it comes to a trade such as you will both submit reviews at same time so as to not let each other's review influence what you have to say. Also you may want to add a stipulation that you will not post the review if it is a negative one.In addition to that there needs to be some common sense in just who you will trade with. If you, for example, hate romance novels then trading a review with a romance novelist who may very well not be into your genre will make the process painful.
