While I’ve generally thought about this over the years, in the past two months, I’ve thought about it a lot.
- In which direction do I direct traffic?
- How many directions do I want that traffic to go?
We all have 24 hours in the day, and with busy lives – such as writing that next book – we want our time spent marketing our books to be efficient and effective. We get bonus points if we do one action for a book and it has a ripple effect for other times during the book’s life cycle and for our other books already published and books we will publish.
When it comes to book sales, when books are reduced to entice readers to buy, obviously, we want to direct traffic to the sale page, be that Amazon or another vender, so a click or two later, the book is sold.
But what about other times, when we want to do a simple share of the book and/or its information with the hope of someone buying it? And what about times we want potential readers to learn more about what we do and what we write in general with the hope they will one day buy a book?
This has me thinking long and hard about the many websites appearing in my radar these days.
For example, when I placed a promotional ad for Northern Survival with Awesome Gang (See warning about this site on my Promotional Sites page), the operators of this site suggested I complete an interview and share it with my readers to help promote the book.
After I submitted the interview, I asked myself: Why would I spend my time and my space on my social media platforms to send traffic to Awesome Gang to read my thoughts? Why wouldn’t I send them to my website, where they will not only read my thoughts today but see my past thoughts and my books and, if they like my material, follow me where long into the future, they’ll see what I’m doing? Better to do that instead of sending them to Awesome Gang where they’ll see that one interview frozen in time and nothing more…except what Awesome Gang has to offer.
This is exactly what Awesome Guy wants – for others to share news about them. It’s why they offer the free interview space.
Also, I ‘hired’ them to promote my book, not for me to promote them. My money should go towards them directing readers at my books and my site.
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Introducing author Rita Lee Chapman whose first book Missing in Egypt kicked off her Anna Davies Mystery Series. The series continues with Missing at Sea and Missing in London. Her book, Winston – a Horse’s Tale is a story for horse lovers. The Poinciana Tree, a crime mystery, is her most recent release. She shared a little about this book in Wednesday’s Word.
