Sunday, December 1, 2013

How I'm Using New Media to Reach Readers


Nearly all authors in the pre-Internet age experienced the galling frustration of having a publisher put little or no marketing effort into a book we may have spent years writing. The new media, primarily social media, provide emancipation from that netherworld; we can personally market our books in so many ways that were never before available. In days of yore, we hoped the people reviewing books for newspapers would pick ours to write about or maybe someone would write an article or even that we’d be interviewed on a phone-in radio show. Today, we can reach potential readers with what we hope are intriguing pitches for our books on Twitter, the major resource for my marketing, Facebook, blogs, and web sites like 
Goodreads, where readers gather and exchange opinions on what they've read. I created a website, JosephAmiel.com, which  features all my books and additional material about me and them. 

Everyone with access to a computer can be a reviewer in this new age, and thousands of people with only a love of books as a qualification are conveying their opinions on Amazon book pages and blogs and Facebook pages and Twitter. They are also communicating directly with writers and each other on websites and in online book forums. And just as they can be stimulated to see a movie through trailers, they can be motivated to buy books by watching promotional video trailers online.

To take only one instance of how I'm attempting to use the new media, I’ve always felt that my legal thriller A Question of Proof, a book I loved that received gratifying pre-publication reviews and endorsements (one person called it "a masterpiece of suspense"), was not marketed effectively or vigorously by the publisher and could have reached many more readers. The presence of the new media with its potential to communicate my enthusiasm and belief in my book directly to thousands of potential readers induced me to launch a new edition it in digital and also print form. I updated it so that it takes place in the present and added new material and a personal Introduction to make it as pleasurable for new readers as I believed it was originally. Being an experienced film-maker, I created a video book trailer, which is available both on GoodReads and on my website (and even appeared in it). As I write this A QUESTION OF PROOF is selling prodigiously on Kindle, as well in its new print edition, both with new covers, and it's garnering great reviews, which gives me enormous, if delated gratification.

A similar effort to reach readers via Twitter is expended on my other books now also available in new Kindle and print editions at Amazon: the just-published STALKING THE SKY (formerly "Hawks"), a thriller about America's leading air carrier under siege both from a saboteur destroying its 747s in flight and a corporate raider seeking to seize it; my 3-generation mystery romance DEEDS; my beloved woman's novel BIRTHRIGHT about a strong woman fighting for success in a man's world; and STAR TIME, an TV insider's novel. 

In short the new media is the best tool authors and readers have ever had to find each other.  Please contact me at Joe@JosephAmiel.com and let me know what you think.  And if you enjoy the books, please leave reviews for them here and on their Amazon pages.

No comments:

Post a Comment