Something For Nothing?

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum Marketing. I sold 150 times as many books last Wednesday than I usually do on Amazon Kindle. I say sold, maybe moved units might be more germane. For they were all free of charge to the, um purchaser.

I wasn't doing it as any promotion. The book, an anthology of flash fiction, has already been out for 9 months. The organiser of the inaugural flash fiction day asked if me and others would consider making our anthologies free as part of the events of the day and I said yes. Without imagining any consequence of just such a move, for I simply wanted to contribute to the day dedicated to promoting the profile of the flash fiction art.

I had to seek his advice as how to make one's book free, since I'd never done it before. First thing was I had to enter the book into KDP Select, which was something I'd also studiously avoided as I couldn't see its relevance to my work. After that the process was quick and easy, but I'd been advised that the timings of the 24 hours of your offer were taken from the US not the UK. I resolved that in order to ensure that the full scope of the 24 hours of National Flash Fiction Day were covered by the offer no matter where you were in the world (sorry Australasia, not sure if I covered you entirely), I actually set it up for two days, the 15th and 16th May.

So the offer went live sometime on the 15th May. I made not a single plug or announcement of the offer on the 15th, since to me it really concerned the 16th May's festivities. (I covered the 15th to ensure people in the Uk could get it for a full 24 hours of the 16th, being 5-7 hours ahead of the US). There was a link from National Flash Fiction Day's own website, but again it was trumpeting launch day of the 16th. And yet lo and behold lots of units moved on the 15th. Mainly in the USA it has to be said.

So what did that suggest to me? These purchasers could only have come by the book and the offer by trawling for that day's free books. Perhaps they did this every or most days at least. Perhaps they do it once in a blue moon when they need something to read and America being so large, this was the cohort who just happened to be looking on this day and in categories pertinent to my book. I wondered if those same people surfed on the 17th May, using their same search requirements of genre and the like, whether they would have bought the book for its modest price of $2.89.

Once the day of the 16th dawned, then the British take up of the offer started to catch up to the US one, though US sales continued to tick over. That was unsurprising since National Flash Fiction Day, though international, originated and centred in the UK. I even appeared in the upper reaches of the charts of Literary and short fiction on Amazon Kindle UK, which was nose-bleed territory for me. I'd never even bothered to consult them before. I was just below the likes of Victor Hugo which seemed fair enough to me.

That started me thinking about the whole question of promotion through freebies. My book appeared in the free chart and would no doubt disappear within 24 hours once the offer had ended. Therefore how much of a boost could that inject to its profile? I suppose if one were able to link it in to other things such as a press release, a video or live reading it might engender a bit more sustainability. But otherwise, nice as it was, I couldn't quite see the long-term benefit.

But then there is the greater boon of my work being introduced to 150 new readers. Even if only 5% of them were to read and review, that would represent an enormous and lasting boost to the book's profile on Amazon. But of course I have no way of knowing who these purchasers are to gently nudge them via social media. Particulalry those Americans who bought before the offer was advertised. I do have more idea of some who might have interacted through National Flash Fiction Day's site, plus of course my own endeavours via social media.

So what are the benefits to promotion from day long giveaways? Apart from getting your work into the hands of more readers, I'm not sure there are any useful ones. And while any writer welcomes more readers, I do wonder if the way of Amazon and Kindle shopping means there is a tranche of readers who maybe only want something for nothing?

In many ways I have no problem with that. Many of the stories in the anthology first appeared on my blog where they were therefore available for free. If a writer only writes to be read, then maybe we should give our work away for free (although there's still no guarantee that the book will reach an audience, though the evidence above suggests it probably will). But then what price art and artists in this? A writer is to make no money from their endeavour? Maybe that's how it is to be, a return to the days of the tribal storytellers around the campfire, entertaining their kinsfolk but maybe only for the price of their meal cooked on the spit.

We write because we love it right? That we choose to spend time at the keyboard rather than go out drinking with mates or seeing a movie. Do we expect to be remunerated for our time? I do think that art suffers when it is entirely drawn into a commercial nexus. That is when the main considerations have to be about commerce rather than artistic content. But maybe I'm deluding myself. Here's an earlier post on the issue of art and artists.

I'd love your responses to this as I'm genuinely rather baffled by the whole experience.

It's Been A While... Theory versus practice of book marketing

Gosh 9 months already, like a pregnancy coming to term. Although this post has needed to be induced with all the other things going on. Where did the time go? Why, into marketing of course...

But just like London buses, no posts here in an age, then 3 come along all at once. One is on Twitter and the other on the value of artists in society and how we approach pricing our work.

Don't think I've been idling in all this time fair reader. In fact I've never been so busy writing in all my life. This blog is the one that has been pushed to the back of the queue, as every week I'm writing a new 1000 word piece of flash fiction, posting to the "Spectator" arts and culture blog, posting a book review to Booksquawk commenting on blog posts of others and other people's flash (see below), making goodness knows how many tweets through both my Twitter accounts and posting pieces on various parts of literary craft and the ever-changing literature market here, there and everywhere. Oh and to counterbalance all this virtual world activity, I've joined not one but two writers' groups just to re-engage with other writers in the flesh.

Very stimulating, very thought-provoking, very indirect. For while these each are I believe, a worthwhile endeavour for its own sake and all loosely bracketed under my marketing campaign, they are very indirect forms of reaching potential customers. None of them involve the book itself, but offer more of me the person and hopefully people will be attracted to the book by osmosis. But it's hard to get any data to back that dynamic up. Take Twitter for example, you build up a virtual relationship with someone you come to consider as a friend. At what point in the relationship do you drop in "maybe you'd be interested in my book?" At any time it can seem a betrayal or a manipulation at best. Answer, I don't do it.

Before I go on to examine some of these indirect marketing strategies, I'll present evidence of a direct one. I have a 20 page sample of the novel up at BookBuzzr.com To date, it's had 5700 views. Now if everyone of those views had turned into a sale, I would have smashed my own sales target. Of course they haven't and I've no real way of knowing how many sales have emerged from this source. So this direct form of marketing, successful in its own terms in that 5000+ views is a very acceptable figure, yet even this is probably not having a huge impact on sales of the book itself.

So indirect forms of marketing, a sort of getting my name out there qua name rather than qua book, is likely to have less success even than that. There definitely seems to be a giant leap from someone liking what you have to say about the status of the "hero" in the early 21st century in a blog post somewhere, to them being moved to stump up money for your novel. It seems a bit more than theory leading them to chase down the practice.

I think there seems a fundamental flaw to social networking marketing. Because so much quality product is online FOR FREE, the discerning surfer can get their fill of really good literature (or art or whatever they're interested in) without having to declare their credit card details. Freemium may just not work as a model when you are starting out as a neophyte producer. Once you've achieved Seth GODin like status, then you can seemingly charge the earth for your product, but how to make the jump from one to the other...

Sometimes this glaring reality bugs the hell out of me, other times I don't care. There are other forms of validation. Take a Twitter hashtag community called FridayFlash Every Friday writers all over the globe post a new piece of flash fiction (1000 words or less) on their blog and tweet it with the hashtag Fridayflash. All the members of this community are thus alerted to each others' work and they read, comment and then re-tweet it to their own twitter followers. It's a great way to get your work read, to direct people to your blog. How many of such readers are not themselves writers? Probably very few. So it is a validation, but it is writers mainly talking to other writers. And thereby that reflects out wider when you are trying to pimp your book, it is mainly a message sent out to other writers, who as we all know are penniless!

None of this really diverts me from my original business plan, my sales target and means of achieving it. It has however made me extend the period devoted to marketing from 6 months to 18 months. If it achieves anything, it's going to be via a slow build is the one lesson I've learned. I've still to receive final edits of 4 of my 5 video readings for example, and they were shot in January. These delays always happen and you just have to allow for them. What it will enable is a fresh impetus when they do land on video file-sharing sites. So the way I look at it is as a happy adjunct of the marketing drive, I've also developed these rather joyous online relationships, not necessarily with customers or dedicated fans, but with a group of people who are just fantastic to know.

The other direct form of selling is via live readings. I've done about 7 now, always in tandem with other writers rather than solo spots and thoroughly enjoyed each one. Sales have been skimpy, but again that''s secondary because the show has been the thing! I'll post my thoughts on doing live readings here next week.

So that's the update. A lot of sound and fury for possibly scant return - we'll have to see the results of the royalty statement due in October which covers Jan-Jun of this year. But it's been a lot more fun than I'd anticipated. And as I said when I started this, I can have no one else to blame but myself if it doesn't work out. Just so long as I know I gave it my all.

Artistic Values -What Is The Value Of a Writer Today?

Okay I've been doing this self-marketing thing for 9 months now and I'm a little puzzled by the conclusions I'm drawing.

Marketing online is a great way to make contact with readers, but not necessarily a terribly good way to sell to them. (I think it's greater strength lies in a post-purchase service, by which they can come back directly to you and dialogue about the book and their feelings about it which is invaluable).

Why do I say it's a questionable way of selling product? I think because so much literature is available online. A canny reader can surf and trawl and find very good literature for free. The E-Bay hunting trove mentality is very much in evidence. By passing on your book, which they've probably sampled (for free as you've provided it as part of your marketing), it may not be any reflection on your writing, but on your pricing.

Which begs the question, should all literature be free? That the freemium model is the only way to go to maximise the chances of your book being read. After all, you've taken down one of the two major barriers to it being read (the other being visibility, pointing people in its direction).

Two contrary points of view arise from this. Firstly any writer just wants to have their books read don't they? So making them free must enhance the chances of a greater number of readers, as there is no economic impediment to them at least starting your book. But against this is that writers want to be paid for their artistic output. It takes anything from 6 months to years to write a full-length novel, a great investment of the individual and one for which he would hope to be partly reimbursed or rewarded for. The only way a freemium model could allow a smidgeon of recompense, is to have a sort of special edition, print version, maybe with some extras not otherwise available. This can be priced way above the current cost of a print book, as it is more of an artefact or piece of art in how it's to be regarded. Personally, I think this is unrealistic unless you are in the upper echelons of the literati, when your signature is akin to that of an artist's on a canvas. That is what inflates the value of the product. And just a brief note on the freemium model; something that is on offer online for free, tends to put the purchaser in a mindset that it's of no value, and therefore far less likely to buy a physical, priced version of the product. If you've got free tickets to a reading or panel discussion of a book, it's no loss if come the day you don't feel like going; wheres if you've paid for the tickets, you likely to be less disinclined.

But such issues lead to a far wider question to my mind. What value do we place on our creative artists in this early part of the twenty-first century? We being society as a whole. With the market and technology seemingly determining most of the options for distribution and promotion as laid out above, seems like the artist possesses very little value today. We are maybe being reduced to offering a service for providing reading material, rather than producing an artistic work which has some value over and above the cost of printing and distribution as in days of old. Artists are tending towards functionaries and costermongers in the open ended online market, with no special regard by society for being able to reflect it back on itself. In the current economic climate, with so many vital public services being cutback, it is really impossible to argue for any elevation of the arts through subsidy or other protections to be sought from government treasuries.

Am I wrong in seeing this as a decline in the status of artists? With the concomitant loss of creditable status within society, whereby we used to be able to reflect it back to itself? Does anyone still care what writers think? Have writers gleaned this and changed the nature of what they write? Going down populist, non-threatening paths as perceived to be market-friendly and therefore sustainable, of escapist literature such as "Twilight". Are writers unwittingly practising self-censorship as they try and reposition themselves within the market? Have authors lost confidence int their own abilities to wreak some sort of meaningful art, because it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to gain validation via a level of remuneration that acknowledges their worth to society?

If we give it away for free, we may get more readers. But they may not gain or give back any value from the experience. There has to be some sort of premium to any work of art.