Yesterday I wrote a check for $25 to one of those electronic services that promises to distribute information about my book, Trompe l’Oeil to 500 bloggers and various social media sites. To be honest, as a form of advertisement, I suspect I might just as well have written the title of my book on bits of confetti and dropped the pieces off a tall building during New York’s Macy’s parade. But $25 isn’t an enormous sum and I love a bargain. One women offered me the same distribution for $7,500.
I admit she probably had connections and felt those connections were worth the price. But she offered no guarantee that my book would receive any attention, so $25 struck me as a better deal.
What I’ll probably get for my money will be solicitations from other promoters as my name gets sold from company to company. Eventually, I’ll have to change my email address and start over again, looking for a miracle.
The truth is, no one knows what prompts a reader to buy a book. I learned last week that a friend has just purchased my second novel, Gothic Spring. It’s been out for three years. When I see her I’ll ask, “Why now?” I hope she won’t be offended. It’s a serious marketing question, one that’s on the tip of every writer’s tongue. Discovering what motivates book buyers is a little like breaking Germany’s WWII’s Enigma Code.
Enigma machine courtesy of
http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/en/enigma.htm
