Promoting your book online is like screaming into an empty cave and every so often a stranger walks past and says, “Stop screaming into the cave, nobody cares. Oh, and I hate you.”

My first book, Bright Lights and White Nights, came out in 2015 and my new one, The Thing Is, was released earlier this year, both published by Proverse, a relatively small publisher. At each launch party, I flogged around a hundred copies to friends, family, and acquaintances, which was great. It’s the bit after this which is tough, though; trying to get people you don’t know to buy your book. If you have a modest marketing budget — mine was £0 for book one and £200 (courtesy of an overdraft increase) for book two — invariably one of your best outlets is the frustrating, hostile, often utterly futile, and annoyingly addictive minefield of social media. Here are a few things I’ve learned…

Facebook

Setting up a page is definitely worthwhile. It’s a good place to share book updates and blog posts etc. An issue is the majority of people who like my page are friends and family members who, if they are going to buy the book, would have done it by now. I tried to find new readers by pumping money (£20 — if that constitutes “pumping”) into promoting my page twice and the results were meager; a handful of new likes from people in the Philippines with anime filter profile pictures.

Trying to promote your book in the author groups is a waste of time. People who have joined a group to promote their book are unlikely to buy your book. It took me a while to figure this out.

Sharing blog posts and book excerpts in relevant groups (e.g. a bit from my book about living in Hong Kong in a Hong Kong expat group) is a much better way to go and I’ve generated a lot of views and some subsequent sales this way. Obviously, it’s good manners to engage with people who make nice comments about your stuff but I’ve never felt comfortable following this up with a hard sell; “If you liked this, you’ll love my book!”

I’ve spent about £100 on sponsoring posts on my page and it doesn’t really work. Here’s some feedback from a pair of friendly, well-adjusted chaps:

Book giveaway competitions are a good idea. I set up a “Comment and share to enter…” one and posted it in a local group. In the first ten minutes, it was going wild and I thought I’d finally cracked book promotion. Five minutes later, the dream was over. “Admin” had deleted my post for being self-promotional. Bloody Admin. I was informed I could self-promote on Thursday, which I duly did, and found my giveaway was drowned out by local mechanics and clairvoyants. Overall I got 40 entrants. One was my wife. One was me. Neither of us won.

Sharing videos of readings from your books/giveaway competition details etc. is a good idea and tends to get more engagement than text posts.

Receiving notifications saying, “You haven’t shared anything for a while…” is infuriating and also makes me think, I haven’t written anything in a while. Will I ever write again? My writing career is over. Cheers, Zuckerberg.

Twitter

I don’t like Twitter but this is almost definitely because I’m bad at it. Although I’ve written two books and enjoy writing blogs, I find it impossible to think of a witty tweet. I have the same problem if asked to come up with a pub quiz team name. I console myself by thinking anyone who does write witty tweets and/or has a big following must spend too much time on Twitter. But I’m on Twitter while I’m thinking this.

All I’ve done in terms of book promotion is tweet links and blog posts, sometimes to famous people in the ridiculous hope they might retweet it. This is probably boring, self-indulgent and annoying and has done nothing to grow my modest follower count.

I imagine Twitter would be good (if you can think up a witty tweet) and dedicate the time to engage in conversations with people who might be interested in your book. Basically, do the opposite of what I’ve done and you might have some joy.

Reddit

Posting book links on different message boards (subreddits) relevant to my books made me deeply unpopular among “redditors.” One gentleman called me a “link whore.” I gave him an example of the white-hot wit he could expect in my books by replying, “Gary Linkwhore?” then spent a few minutes pondering whether Linkwhore sounds enough like Lineker for this to work. I don’t think it does.

You can only post on Reddit once every 12 minutes (I think) which is understandable as it doesn’t allow you to spam your book stuff in different subreddits. Sometimes I want to spam book stuff though and I find the minutes waiting go slower than when you’re on a treadmill or waiting for a microwave meal. You also have to do a lot of those infuriating captcha things, too; I can’t tell if that’s a traffic light or a tree FFS.

Similarly to Facebook, posting blog posts and book excerpts in relevant subreddits can be worthwhile and I get a lot of views and some positive responses this way. I also get a lot of abuse. After posting a blog about my book being released, one man, I’m assuming it was a man, kindly took the time to lay into me on Reddit, then also go on Amazon and rate my book as 1* His review came complete with a personal message, “Shut up Andrew.” I considered contacting him to say he’d missed a comma. If you spot a grammatical error, you think you’ve won. However, you then realize you’ve taken joy from getting one over on someone you’ve never met on the internet and realize you haven’t won. There are no winners here.

Instagram

Although it makes me feel less beautiful, entrepreneurial and worse at yoga than everyone in the world, I quite like Instagram. It’s easy to use and you can apply filters to make yourself, and your book, look better in seconds. My second book is autobiographical so I dug out a bunch of old photos and shared them alongside the relevant passages from the book. This was a fun nostalgia trip and generated a fair bit of interest.

You can send direct messages to anyone you follow which is a good option. However, I’ve spent entire lunchbreaks sending messages about my book to A-List celebrities then feeling genuinely disappointed that Leonardo Di Caprio hasn’t replied.

There is a community of people called “Bookstagrammers” who review books and post photos of themselves reading in predominantly exotic locations. I sent hundreds of direct messages to these guys seeing if they wanted a free copy of my book in exchange for a review. The majority of Bookstagrammers seem to be Harry Potter fanatics and, as my books have nothing to do with youth wizardry, it was difficult to find takers. Eventually, around 20 people agreed to accept a copy and from these, 6 wrote reviews and posted out to their followers (a couple had 10,000 + followers.) Getting any kind of book review is extremely difficult so I’d class this as a good result and recommend giving it a go.

A photo of my baby, sitting in a plastic box, shouting, has been considerably more popular than anything to do with my book.

My overall success is impossible to measure and I have no idea how many books I’ve sold as a result of my social media efforts. I still have a steady stream of sales which I imagine would stop if I didn’t bother at all, though. Social media is a free tool that can reach masses of people so it would be daft to neglect it if you’re promoting anything. So long as you’re relatively thick-skinned, providing interesting content, and not annoying too many people, you’re not going to do your book sales any harm, are you?

Right, I’m off to share this blog on Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and Instagram…

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