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selkies-world · 2 years ago

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See, this is why I keep trying different ways to market my books. This attitude. And it's why my marketing is still all over the place.

Because one of my books is a cutesy one for little kids & for parents to approve of. It's about a baby dragon and found family. It's about finding where you belong and making mistakes along the way, and it's about self-acceptance and self-love. It's about recognising the beauty in being different and realising that actually, looking the same as those around you doesn't necessarily mean you belong with them. Maybe you belong in the place where nobody looks the same as you, but they treat you as their equal, because they don't give a flying fuck if you're a dragon who hops like a bird and flies like a bat and barks like a racoon and headbutts trees like a deer and fishes like a bear and sticks your tongue out like a snake, because that's all you and they love you for you. It's about accepting yourself and your quirks. Yes, it's aimed at queer families and queer kids, and yes, it's aimed at trans kids and trans families. Yes, it's based on how I acted out when I was questioning my gender & denying who I was. Yes it's a paralel of my own experiences because they're the most honest part of myself that I know are the most human experiences a person can have and yes, the best way I know to get that across to kids and families is by dressing it up as a dragon that's abandoned then adopted by a whole forest of queer animals.

But if I say all of that??? Hah. No chance - people scroll past with an eye roll, or they think that's too complicated for a child to understand and turn their nose up at it.

So what do I have to say instead?

"Hey, wanna read a cute story about a little dragon who has always thought he's the only dragon in the whole world, before learning there's a whole land of other dragons and soon learns the value of family and friends when he has to make a very big decision?"

Does it cheapen it? Yes. Does it make me sound like a sales assistant selling reduced sale items that are about to go out of season? Yes.

Does it work? Also yes. Because unless it is about something they are interested in, people do not give attention to long-ass posts.

Meanwhile, my other book is for older teens and adults who read YA, and it's about 2 socialites, 1 with a very public drug addiction & 1 with a future waiting on a silver platter for him to scoop up if he follows in his strict Catholic father's footsteps. It has graphic drug use and implied gay sex scenes & referenced past sex scenes and dozens of sex references. It has pages upon pages of swearing and cussing and anxiety spirals and did I mention the drugs? It's not full of eloquent prose, because one main protagonist spends 95% of his on-page time off his face or in withdrawal, surrounded by other addicts, and the other protagonist is having a crisis over questioning his faith and his sexuality which he's been feeling guilty about for years. And sometimes writing isn't about being eloquent and graceful and poetic; sometimes it's about portraying a character as accurately as possible, and when that character is in his early 20's with everything in his world getting turned on its head while he's off his, that means writing 20 variations of the word fuck across a 250 word spread with different intonation each time.

"But what's it really about?"

It's a book about being newly 20-something and being thrown into the world of adulthood with 0 training, because schools do not teach you how to adult & social media worships youth and surface-level naivity and beauty over information and morals. It's about not knowing shit about anything other than everything you know you don't know shit about, while society rolls its eyes and looks down its nose at you for not magically knowing everything they learned from literal decades of life experience and mistakes that you haven't had the privilege of making yet. It's about love and friendship and toxic patterns and toxic relationships and breaking the cycle of abuse. It's about discovering and exploring yourself. It's about rediscovering the world around you. It's about reevaluating your entire fucking life and values and questioning beliefs you've held your whole life because they're the ones your parents raised you with and it's about separating your own identity from the 2D version of you that your parents and friends expect you to be, and the fact all of that is beyond terrifying.

But if I say that? Nobody cares. Or if they do, it's to say its too much.

So instead, what do I say?

"Hey, wanna read a YA romance book about gay guys meeting at a rave & falling head over heels for each other, having 1 date in a cemetery and practically getting engaged after knowing each other for 3 days?"

"Hey, hey, hey, wanna read a modern, gay version of Romeo and Juliet, with a twist ending?"

Because that is what will make people click to buy the book.

But you know what else sells books? Fandoms.

Anyone who's studied marketing will tell you that the best, most effective way to sell something is to have a community force driving it. In the world of books, that community is fandoms.

It's tumblr goblins and trash pandas and trash puppies and possums. It's people whose one fear is you seeing what's in their doc files. It's people who hyperfixate on a comfort character. It's people who kin. It's people who celebrate fictional characters' birthdays. It's people who dress up as their favourite character for Halloween or cosplay, even if nobody else will get the reference. It's people who, when you ask them what their favourite book is about, break into a soul-deep cold sweat & laugh nervously because they can't describe the plot without either incriminating themselves, exposing something deeply personal or sounding like an absolute whackadoodle.

It's fandoms and stans and everyone you call cringe.

The books that do best are the ones with characters who have been adopted by fandoms. Those are the books that have people writing soliloquy after soliloquy about tiny, miniscule plot details. Those are the books that spread like wildflowers to new readers and gain a life of their own. Those are the books that get more and more traction. Those are the books that get good ratings. Those are the books that are more than a book; they're stories.

Word of mouth used to be enough. Advertising in newspapers and magazines used to be enough. Advertising on TV used to be enough. A poster or banner used to be enough. Simply being placed on a shelf in a bookstore used to be enough. But it's the 21st cursed century, and nobody uses bookstores, and nobody talks to each other anymore.

So yeah, I'll make memes about my books & characters. I'll make my own art and podt it online with tagsyou think are cringey. I'll tag my stuff with fandom-esque etiquette. Because I know - from a life of growing up online and of growing up in those fandom spaces - that the authors who have the comfiest thrones are the ones presiding over fandoms of trash puppies burning garbage in a scrapyard while howling and hissing in 7.5 dialects of trashyard all at once. It's the authors who created characters which people adopted as their blorbos and meow-meows.

So yes, I will market my books as if the characters in them are already blorbos and precious little meow-meows. Because I know I need people to adopt them as exactly that - and for others to see them as problematic faves and soft boys and wet boys and sad boys and babygirls - for my books to do well enough for me to be able to live on those earnings.

Because I don't get paid by the hour, or per word. I don't get paid a set price for every 10k words I write and edit, and I don't get paid per creation. I get paid a percentage per book sold.

And the best way to ensure books sell is to have a community talking about them online across multiple social media platforms.

If that means I have to drag my own blanket and snacks up onto the roof of a car in this scrapyard and throw a Molotov cocktail into a trash can by myself and wait for someone to come over, wondering what the light and smoke is for, then so be it. Because that is what makes people care about a character or a book enough to bother reading posts about them for long enough to get to the author's link. That is what makes people give a rats ass about anything an author creates.

If you you really hate the way authors have to market our books these days, do us a favour and do it for us, because each time our marketing gets complained about, we lose potential buyers.

☆ My Books ☆

Before you bitch about how authors are marketing their books, do this one thing:

Shut the fuck up unless you are volunteering to do all the labor required to market a book, because it's really fucking hard, people don't pay attention to posts about original content 90% of the fucking time, and giving a short, pithy teaser is how book marketing fucking works. Click the links and read the full book description if you want to know more.

Seriously, shut the fuck up.

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