What I'm reading: The Search, by Nora Roberts
I came home from RomCon with lots of swag. I'm sure the authors spent a lot of money on it. But Does It Sell Books? I don't know. I've offered my excess swag to anyone who asks for it. So far, no takers. (Check the Deals & Steals tab)
At the RomCon reader forum, the discussion of book trailers came up. While many of the readers raved about some of the trailers they'd seen, not one said that they'd ever bought a book because of a trailer.
Nowadays, whether you've got a print deal with a traditional publisher, or are publishing yourself, marketing and promotion become part of the drill. Note: if you're a best-selling author, the publishers will probably handle much of this for you, because they're going to want to earn back that huge advance they gave you. But for the rest of us, we've had to become our own promoters.
This not only takes away from writing time, but it can cost money. As they say, it takes money to make money. But, in most cases, it's really tough to know how effective marketing attempts are.
I'll go out on a limb and say there aren't a lot of book sales via the social networking sites. At least I haven't seen any uptick in sales when I've used them to point out sales on my books, or other marketing deals. And if all you use the social media sites for is marketing, you'll probably turn off readers more than you'll increase sales.
