Another topic that came up in the comments on last week’s thread about crime fiction writer Mark Bertrand was brought up by J.L. Lyons who suggested that “the burden of responsibility for connecting to readers fall on [authors].”
Not to knock Bertrand, but I was just curious what his site looked like so I Googled him. Aside from a post today about the Weekly Standard review, the last post was in February. The one before that was in September 2012. Also, low social engagement on those blogs. While “fiction writers should blog to build a platform and get published” has been debunked, the basic fact remains that continued online exposure requires fresh content that is of value to users. Perhaps Bertrand used to blog but no longer feels he needs to. That’s fine as well, but then why does his site still prominently feature his blog (which is largely outdated)? Why aren’t his books, and his identity as a novelist, front and center?
Admittedly, his publisher and agent should be advising him on this, but again they don’t own the Bertrand brand. He does.
So is it possible that I’m pointing the finger at the wrong party? Perhaps religious publishers aren’t negatively affecting the sales of certain genres. Could it be that sales, at least partly, lies NOT with the religious publisher or the religious market, but with the author who is not performing due diligence in marketing himself?
First, let me say I appreciate J.L’s courage to address this issue. It’s pretty easy to tack fault on “the industry” rather than a specific individual, especially the author himself. But to be clear, I was the one who started that ball rolling by insinuating that religious publishers were more to blame for poor sales. Nevertheless, looking at “the numbers” — in this case, an erratic blog schedule and limited social media presence — is definitely worth considering when it comes to factors in book sales.
There’s basically two schools of thought when it comes to author blogging:
- Blogging doesn’t matter. It’s what’s between the pages.
- Blogging builds and maintains a platform that can result in sales.
Without hard numbers, this is a difficult issue to quantify. From my experience, my blogging definitely affects the sales of my books. Mind you, I’m not ready to retire and become a full-time writer. Not close. And only two of my books, both self-published, provide any real-time gauge for how my social media presence might be affecting sales. My first two novels are controlled by the publisher, meaning
- I have no control over the price of the paperback or the ebook
- I have no immediate access to sales figures
For the record, I have contacted my publisher about lowering the price of the ebook and/or offering them free as means of promotion. Other than a temporary reduction in the price of The Resurrection ebook several years ago, the prices have remained relatively the same.
All that to say, the only real measure I have of how my social media presence and/or blogging affects my book sales is my self-pubbed novels. The reason is,
- I am solely responsible for selling those books. Other than buzz generated by other bloggers / readers, I control the image, presentation, price, promotions, and the amount of time I invest and the technique I use in attempting to do so.
- I have the numbers at my fingertips. Unlike my trad published novels.
Since my website and social media presence is one of the ways I get my books seen / sold, I feel responsible to draw attention to myself. That means, among other things, regularly blogging. I realize that’s uncomfortable for many authors. Tough. Unless you hire a marketing firm or have someone out there championing your books, the pitch falls to YOU.
Even then, there’s scant evidence that any one post / Tweet / Share / Update has pushed someone from lurker to buyer status. Occasionally someone will write and say they “found” me through this post or that, and will purchase one of my books. But by and large, it’s totally incremental. Yes, my blogging numbers are good. My Google page rank is 4 (you can check yours HERE), which is quite good for a personal blog. My Unique Visitors and Subscribers have continued a steady climb. Nevertheless, it’s a slow process, an aggregate of years and years worth of work.
Which is why I subscribe to the “Snowflake Effect.”
Holly Robinson, in her article Does Blogging Sell Books? Not Exactly, but Here’s Why You Should Do it Anyway, put forth four reasons why authors should blog. Her first point was this:
Each Blog Post Is a Snowflake — Your blog post on Tuesday might not sell any books, but if you post blogs for a year and gather followers, eventually those readers will know your name and put it together with the name on that book they see in Goodreads or the NYT Book Review.
Despite never being reviewed in the NYT Book Review, this jibes with my experience.
So does “the burden of responsibility for connecting to readers fall on [authors]”? If you have a built-in platform, if other big name influencers are buzzing about your books, if Hollywood is knocking at your door and publishers are elbowing each other out of the way to contract you, then “no.” Probably not. Pay someone to set up a static website and maybe Tweet once in a while and post pictures of book signings and rabid fans.
Unless, like me, you’re just an “average” writer. If so, a blog can only help.
This is a matter I’ve been considering in recent days. I note with interest that some fiction authors (I will refrain from naming names) experience excellent sales and continue to produce new novels, which are eagerly awaited by fans. Yet, when I go to some of those authors’ blogs, I see post after post for weeks at a time with zero comments (or perhaps only a stray comment here and there). In these cases, it would seem that at least some authors have fans who love their stories but don’t necessarily care about the topics in the blog posts. To their credit, I see these authors diligently fulfilling the conventional wisdom to maintain a friendly web presence, but from the viewpoint of an outside observer, their blogs don’t seem to help nor hurt their popularity or sales. Other authors, sometimes of less public acclaim, manage to draw readers back frequently and garner many more comments. So interesting.
Question for others who read this comment: Some of you are already thinking of a fiction author whose blog continuously lures you back and sometimes to comment. What about that blog makes it especially attractive? Feel free to name author blogs you regularly enjoy, but let’s be courteous and not name anyone whose blog strikes us as less than exciting. 🙂
I follow a lot of blogs, but only a small percentage are author blogs. (I generally find author blogs boring. Fiction author blogs, that is. I follow mostly non-fiction authors. They are in a better spot because their audience is much easier to define and target.
Mike’s is one of the few fiction authors I follow. His blog has become a Christian fiction/specfic “water cooler” of sorts. People regularly congregate and converse, which makes it fun and keeps me coming back.
Personally, I stopped aspiring for my blog to become a water cooler where people congregate. Don’t get me wrong, f it ever evolves into that, I’ll be happy. But realistically, I felt I’d be vying for the attention of Mike’s regular Christian specfic readers and those readers only have so much time, and Mike’s good at what he does, so why reinvent the wheel? That was my thinking at a micro level, anyway.
At a macro level, I gazed across the interwebs and saw so many bloggers are who have established their blogs as “water coolers” within any given community of like-minded people. It gave me a nagging sense that we are at or close to max capacity. Therefore, I’ve ignored some conventional wisdom and dropped my posts down to once a week. Any more and I felt I was overworking myself, wasting my time, draining my passion, yada yada.
I’ve turned my attention more to the snowflake approach that Mike mentions above, because I think it will be important for discoverability in a flooded market–moreso than a three-post a week blog. Drop a snowflake here, drop a snowflake there, wait patiently over the course of years and hope they accumulate rather than melt.
I write fiction. I recently converted my blog into a simple author-info page with links to my books.
Bonding with an artist through social media is often disillusioning. You think you’ve bonded because something they wrote or performed moved you… then you find out they’re way more conservative/liberal than you are, or just self-absorbed and annoying.
My experience has been that most people who read my blog were fellow writers. Readers just want me to write the next book. 🙂
That said, I have decided to maintain a Facebook Page to engage with readers, and a Twitter account to engage with fellow writers and publishers (it really is a great platform for that). But I don’t intend to return to long-form blogging. It simply took too much time, with too few rewards.
My experience jibes with yours: blogs do sell books. In my case, the blog isn’t even related to crime fiction. Since 2007 I’ve been the world’s leading (i.e., only) writer on the subject of Bible design and binding. It’s a niche subject that has blossomed since then into a community, and it’s not uncommon for readers there to check out my novels and nonfiction. From time to time, I re-launch my personal blog, too, but I’m nowhere near as gifted as you are, Mike, when it comes to regular blogging.
The challenge, of course, is that no matter how many books a blog sells, it’s probably not going to move the kind of numbers that will make a difference. Those outcomes are an exception, not the rule. If you’re going to blog, you should blog because you love it. (The same goes for writing anything.)
Also, I hope you didn’t take my comment as a dig at the quality of your site, Mr. Bertrand. I just wanted to point out that when I arrived on your site it wasn’t immediately clear to me that you wrote fiction. Knowing that you have your hands in several different areas, though, I appreciate that making everything about yourself immediately clear on a web page is easier said than done.
No harm done. Given the fact that I flipped the switch on a new site last week — which remains a work in progress — the input is welcome.
Mike, I want to be clear that I’m not totally letting publishers off the hook here. They should be bringing expertise into the situation that advises the author on his/her best course of action and educates them on the many ways to get the word out about their books. They should be leveraging their relationships, their abilities, and their knowledge to help the author succeed.
My point, though, was that at the end of the day the burden of success or failure is going to fall on the author’s shoulders. Perhaps not financially in a traditional publishing situation, but in terms of that author’s personal brand. For that reason authors should educate themselves on marketing and business and try to do whatever they can to give themselves their best chance at success.
In my opinion, some kind of central web presence is essential to this. Whether it’s a blog, a static website, a Facebook page, or whatever, there needs to be some sort of information center for people to connect the books to the person. And whatever that place is, readers should be impressed by it. It should look professional. It should stand out. It should be clear that it is maintained.
Is a website the silver bullet? Absolutely not. But it should be a part (in my opinion, a crucial one) of the overall marketing strategy.
As somebody who will probably battle with obscurity all my life, I will tell you that I would have sold close to zero books w/o my blog and Facebook presence. If I don’t write posts on my blogs, my stats go down. If I write posts, my stats go up. If I market my book a little, I’ll sell a couple of books. There seems to be a 1 to 1 relationship. I’m not a big enough name to attract people by my name, but there are people who are willing to take a chance on me if my work is on their radar.
As a previously self-published author, I ditched my own website and dropped my domain name in favour of a free Blogger page because of one thing, money. The cost of a domain name and website hosting only added to the cost of getting a word of my books out there, and it wasn’t even effective. Later when one of my books was picked up by a traditional, yet small, publishing label, I was treated to having a website created for me. A lonely one page affair with a link to purchase the book and no scope whatsoever to connect with readers. I was so glad I kept my Blogger page. So much so that I treat it as an integrated author website and blog all in one. Sure it’s hard to monitor if my blog actually sells books. But it does a better job at connecting, and attracting hits to my site than my publisher’s author page they created for me. I then direct visitors to my official author website for sales, if that’s what they want. Otherwise, by posting at least once a month, on anything from writing advice to my travel adventures down under, I’m at least giving them a reason to return again, other than telling them to buy my book. To me, the blog is better.
In the past 3 years I’ve purchased 17 books (yes, I counted) that I would NOT have purchased had I not read the author’s blog or comments on another person’s blog. I’ve purchased 4 more because they were recommended by a person I had come to know via blogging. Three books I’ve word-of-mouth sold at least 4 copies (each). None of those would I have known about had I not encountered the person via blogging.
I love what you guys tend to be up too. This sort off clever work and exposure!
Keep up the terrific works guys I’ve included you guys to
blogroll.