Day 27 - How to Convince People You’re Not a Sleazy Scammer
Selling has an inherent grime to it, doesn’t it. Sometimes you feel like you’re begging people to buy your stuff. While writing social media posts, I think, wow…does this sound gross? Buy now. Enter my giveaway. Blah blah blah. I know a fair deal about marketing, but what I don’t know is how to sound cool; like a cool person who isn’t going to sell your email address to Beelzebub.
I’d wager we all feel that way. I’ve said this before: we’re not sellers, we’re writers. The marketing portion of the game is why so many writers give up after a while. There is a science to selling; to showing people they want something even when they don’t. Mutually beneficial-ness - that’s not a real term, but it sounds good. You get something, I get something. It’s the basic tenant of Dale Carnegie’s book How to Win Friends and Influence People; worth a read if you want to improve your dealings with other humans.
I’ll be honest, I hate posting every day, “Please! For the love of everything, enter my giveaway. Someone? Anyone? Help?” I feel like a used car salesman. I’ll be honest, I thought this final giveaway would bowl everyone over. It’s so cool and I made that awesome video and everything. But I also know that I don’t easily enter giveaways, even if the prize is amazing. Why? I’m afraid I’m going to get spammed. And not just spammed by the person running the giveaway. I’m afraid they’re going to sell my email to highest bidder and I’ll get spammed by a million other sleazy salespeople. What a hassle. There’s still a week to go and who knows, maybe things will pick up at the end of the week.
So how do you convey that you’re a good person without outright saying you’re a good person? My motto has always been: if you have to say it, it’s probably not true. Think about the cool kids in high school. They didn’t necessarily advertise with signs and words. They looked cool, acted cool, lived cool. It was obvious they were cool. Except, the internet doesn’t know what I look like and you don’t know me in person. I may use a pen name, but even if I didn’t. I’m totally unknown.
Selling is mutually beneficial-ness. I provide a service, you get a thing. This is all in my mind, by the way, the sleazy feelings. I’ve talked a lot about selling in the last three weeks because that’s the bulk of self-publishing and I won’t lie: it’s stressful. The novella was written a month ago, it’s over. Now it’s about getting it in front of people, hoping they’ll like it, and will buy the next one. I’d say, self-publishing is less about writing and more about selling. It’s like 75% selling and 25% writing + everything else. I can have the greatest novel in the whole world, but no one will know unless I market the heck out of it.
So what’s the magic tool? I think it’s trial and error. I’m sure if I took an advertising class, we’d talk about mistakes Coca Cola has made, Nestle, Walmart, everyone. And it may not just be trial and error. It’s that frustrating thing called “time.” These things take time and lots of it. I have this icky feeling in me where I want everything to happen overnight. It can’t possibly. I have to remind myself that it’s only been three weeks. Persistence is the name of the game. All I can do is be honest, do my best, and don’t give up.
This leads me into buying reviews. Can you? Should you? Yep and yes. You can do it and it’s probably how a lot of no-name authors get so many reviews. I’ve found several companies that promise legit reviews from legit readers. I’ve looked into them. They look legit. I even joined one to see how it works from the reader’s perspective and it’s a really great idea. Wish I’d thought of it. The concept is that you submit your book, pay a flat fee, and then pay a buck or two per review (good or bad) thereafter. Conversely, a bad idea would be to hire a company that writes fake reviews without even reading your book. These authentic companies claim to have willing participants reading your words. It’s networking, in a way. They act as a middle-man. Readers want to read, writers want reviews. They’re a facilitator. Kind of like a match-making service. If a matchmaker sets you up on a date with someone you’d never meet otherwise, are you cheating at dating? No, you’re asking for help and paying for the go-between.
I didn’t find this information through some online author guru or any book. I found it on accident because no one wants to divulge you can BUY reviews. I just happened to be reading a Twitter thread where someone mentioned he’d submitted his book to Hidden Gems. I was like *ears perk* what’s that? Yes, you can buy reviews and you probably should. The difference here is that these two companies I found will put your book in front of REAL readers. And that’s what you want. Is it skeezy to pay someone to read your book? A little. But then you remember that there are millions of authors selling books just like yours and you need an intermediary. If you published your book the traditional way, your publisher would have someone putting your book in front of readers any way possible.
I think I question morality too much. It doesn’t help The Good Place is back on. I can get into a morality tornado just like Chidi and worry myself sick. I have to pull back. The service exists, the readers are not sitting in a smokey office in Bangladesh hammering away at a keyboard. They’re real readers, right? Let’s call this an experiment. I will be using these services to help promote Lessons in Love and I will post my results when I have some good data to share. Real readers you say? OK. Let’s do it.
By the way, I’m putting together a hand-out which will include ALL the services (secret and otherwise) that I’ve found - and it’s a lot. No one outright tells you this information, not even the self-pub entrepreneur gurus. They want you to believe they are so good at marketing, they sold their work based on merit and a little elbow grease alone. It’s not true. They also want to give you a taste of their secrets so you’ll buy more. I’m going to give the information away because I hate to see people struggle. Sorry gurus. I imagine there is also this sense that if they tell you all their secrets, places like Hidden Gems will be inundated with wannabes. Or… Hiddens Gems will fuel an entirely new market of “pay for real readers” websites and we’ll all be OK. By the way, Hidden Gems’ romance category is currently booked until October 2020. The secret’s out.