Indie Authors, The Truth About Marketing Your Fiction (by Beth Barany)

I’ve enjoyed Beth’s blog for a long time, and I’m really thrilled to feature her guest post on my blog today. Read on and enjoy!

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I should call this article abut the truth of marketing MY fiction because I want to reveal what I’ve done and what I think works, doesn’t work, has yet too work, might work, I wish would work. Okay I’m being a little silly, a little outrageous. Because I’ll state outright that no one really knows what sells fiction. We have a lot of theories in my house (my husband is a fiction writer, too), and some things works and other activities fall flat.

One thing that does seem to have an effect is marketing. Lots of writers think all they need to do is write a good book, upload it to Amazon and wait for the royalty checks to flood in. Well, if it were that easy… You know it’s not that easy, don’t you?

Essentially, marketing is sharing about your books to people who don’t already know about your books.

Authors need to do a few things to get attention for their books. Firstly, they need to highlight what’s unique, unusual or special about their books. For example, my novel, the award-winning YA epic fantasy, Henrietta The Dragon Slayer, has a strong young woman heroine who truly kicks butt. I highlight this on much of my Twitter, Facebook, and blogging promotions. Why? Because it is an essential element of my story, connected to my main theme of empowerment, and is a trend I want to capitalize on.

Two, you need to have a compelling book description that describes your main characters, their main characteristics, the conflict, and the consequence or stakes of the conflict. (This is often summer up in the “elevator pitch” or logline.) The big question readers have in their minds is “Why should I care?” To make them care, make your book description fully of action and emotion, and mention the key specific elements that readers of your genre look for.

Third, key to marketing your fiction is persistence, and secondary to that is trying different things.

Here are some things you can do to market your fiction ongoingly or over time — I’ve done all of the activities in this list, and continue to do many of them.

• A blog tour

• Tweets on Twitter.com and Facebook.com posts that you draft and schedule ahead of time using a service like, Hootsuite.com

• Contests

• Giveaways

• Book club interviews

• Guest Blogging

• Maintain your own blog

• BlogTalk Radio chats and interviews

• Talks to groups in your community

• Teach online

• Ask for reviews

• Market your guest posts

• Market your new reviews

• Have a Goodreads account that’s up-to-date

• Use Shelfari to have a presence for your novel(s)

• Donate books to worthy causes that relate to your book’s theme, or to your mission as a writer

• Use Pinterest to post pictures that relate to your book and your book’s world

Also key to your fiction marketing are the below activities — these I have yet to do:

• Release your next book

• Create a media kit

• Create a book club Q&A

• Get local media attention

The truth about marketing fiction is that we don’t know what will work until we try it. I’m constantly searching for new tools to reach my audience. Because key to all of this marketing is searching and then finding your audience. I have to admit that I’m no expert in it. If I were I’m sure my novel would be a bestseller. (Well, I can hope!)

I have to add a final component, kind of elusive to marketing your fiction, and that is momentum, that sweet spot when enough people are sharing about your book via word of mouth or word of mouse, and when, as my husband says, your book sells itself.

Since I’m writing a series, I have to believe that by the time I get the third book out in my series, I’ll have achieved that momentum. So you could say that final piece of marketing for me is the hope that I will sell more books in the future. But that’s not what keeps me going, actually. What keeps me going is that I want to know how my story ends; I want to offer my readers, however large or small the group, the satisfying and delicious experience of reading my novels, and disappearing themselves into the wild and exciting world of Henrietta The Dragon Slayer.

About Beth Barany:

Beth Barany is a novelist of the award-winning YA fantasy, Henrietta The Dragon Slayer. The second book in the series is due out Spring 2013. Sign up for Beth’s newsletter at her author site: http://author.bethbarany.com, and enter her current fun Giveaway.