Episode 6: Promotion

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Welcome all my beautiful cinnabar moths, or any kind of moth you want to be to another episode of the Writers Triangle. I’m so happy you’re here. Today we’re going to be talking about book promotions, what works and what doesn’t. So there’s a lot of misinformation out there about what works to sell a book, and what doesn’t work to sell a book. And in my experience, we’ve done everything… the full gamut, I think for selling books and promotions, and what we – except for television interviews. That we haven’t experienced, but having interviews in mainstream magazines, having reviews in mainstream magazines, having – being invited to win awards, or to submit to awards to be considered being promoted. On my must-read lists, and we’ve got some really like high end, really prestigious must read lists. With really big websites that are popular and famously known. The reason that I’m not naming the websites is I have like this weird yip. Where I don’t like to talk about people without their permission. And I feel like if you want to know, like, exactly whose lists and what books and all of that, you can check out our Twitter at Cinnabar Moth Pub, because I just run my mouth on Twitter. But I feel like this is this is a more formal record. I feel like on Twitter, I @ them whenever I mention like that a book has made a list or something so that they could on Twitter be like yo don’t mention our list. I don’t think anyone’s bringing that energy. But I just – I don’t know, it’s a habit from the Musicks in Japan that podcast – my other podcast – about not telling anyone’s story, but my own. And I think that comes from me having a strong connection with Own Voices. And so because we haven’t interviewed any list creators, I feel like I don’t really know what goes into creating a list.

I don’t really know… how they pick the books that they choose. I do know how I tried to get books on lists. And so I can talk about my side of the street, but I don’t really know their side of the street. Like, I don’t know, if they’re actually reading the books or just reading the blurbs because some of the lists that we make it on to make me uncomfortable, like the names of the list. And… it’s just, I don’t know. Not all of the lists are named in in ways that are politically correct. And that’s, especially with dealing with identity and disability. And they don’t always get it right. And some books that are on some list. I’m like, I don’t think that book belonged on that list, but I’ll promote it anyways. Because I think it’s great to be on a list kind of thing. And that’s what makes me wonder if list creators actually read the lists that they’re promoting, or do they just see book title, book cover blurb, and what the press how the press has said the book – what the press has said about the book. So for example, if I say that a book has LGBTQIA+ representation, and it makes onto an LGBTQIA+ left now feels good and comfy. But if a book doesn’t have that representation, and it makes it onto one of those lists, I tend to not promote that listing because I feel like it’s a mismatch. Or maybe they meant to do one of our other books that does have that representation. And then same goes with disability. So every single one of our books that we publish thus far features disability, with the exception of Relatively Normal Secrets, so Relatively Normal Secrets doesn’t have disability, and Pixies in the Mist doesn’t have disability.

I don’t think. I think – I don’t know. Read Pixies in the Mist and then tell me if you think Jake has mental health issues. Because I personally feel that Jake has – the main character of Pixies in the Mist has mental health issues. But that’s just me. And that comes out next month. So I feel like with the exception of Relatively Normal Secrets, every book that that we’re publishing in 2021, has disabilities in it. And has mar – has some sort of marginalized population in it. And I love Relatively Normal Secrets because it’s middle grade. And for me, I feel like middle grade doesn’t get its props. There’s some great storytelling happening in middle grade books. And a lot of people are like, that’s too young for me. But I’ll tell you, I absolutely thoroughly enjoyed reading Relatively Normal Secrets. It was a fun book. And it was just so safe. And I feel like sometimes I just need a fun safe book to read, that’s not going to traumatize me, that’s not going to make me think too hard. That’s not going to have something really horrible and twisted and dark in it, that the darkness is going to be manageable. And, for me, that’s how I’ve been promoting relatively normal secrets. I think it’s a great fun one day read, I think it’s really light hearted, but it doesn’t belong on any list about disability. And I think that people have kind of confused Drōmfrangil and Relatively Normal Secrets. And I’m seeing a lot of lists that pair those two together and put them both on the same list. And not always appropriately so.

I feel like some of the lists are aged up, and that Drōmfrangil’s a better fit than Relatively Normal Secrets. And with the disability, Relatively Normal Secrets just doesn’t have that. So that’s what makes me wonder what goes on on the list side of it. And I, I love being on lists, let’s be clear, please put our books on lists, we love it. But I do think the list has to reflect the content of the book to be a successful promotion, if that makes sense. Because I feel like if I read a book, if I’m looking for a disabled main character, and I read a book that has no disability in it, I’m going to then potentially give the book a negative review because it didn’t meet my reader – the reader’s expectation, my expectation as a reader. And that is central to every bit of promotion that we do at Cinnabar Moth.

We try to set and meet readers’ expectations. And I think so far, we’re doing a really good job with that, from looking at the reviews that come back because reviews really let you know that – reviewers don’t hold back. They will let you know whether or not you have met their expectation where the book disappointed them, where the book made them happy. And that’s another thing that we do behind the scenes as sort of pre-promotions is we do beta reviews. So if you’re, if you look at the Cinnabar Moth Pub Twitter feed, you’ll notice that there’s a lot of reviews. But if you go to Goodreads, you won’t necessarily see those reviews. And that’s because we have contracted beta reviewers for every genre that we publish. And they’re genre specific reviews. So we don’t have somebody who doesn’t like middle grade reviewing middle grade. We have somebody who’s like me who enjoys reading middle grade, reviewing middle grade. So that tends to set the expectation for the reader. Okay, this is what I know about middle grade. There’s not going to be any sex, there’s not going to be any profanity, except maybe every once in a while there’ll be a damn or a darn or shoot. And for some people, those are expletives.

And those will be in there. The characters are probably going to be young, almost always young, in the middle grade age group. And it’s probably going to have some sort of family dynamic where they’re going to have some sort of conflict with their parents that they’re trying to resolve or they’re going to have some sort of exit from their family. And with Relatively Normal Secrets, it is a portal fantasy book, and it does fall under the heading of conflict with with parents. And it ticks all of the boxes. Middle grade is usually a one day read and light and airy and not going to bog you down. Whereas if you look at Drōmfrangil which is a YA book, it’s a little bit darker, and it does cover some really heavy topics. And that’s something that we try to stop the expectation for the reader. And having a disabled main character – what I find interesting is Marcus is on the cover, disabled. The disabilities are, are visually present, the prosthetic and the cane. But yet readers are having a really hard time with that. And I don’t want to spoil why. But we haven’t set the expectation that it has a happy ending. And so it’s – it’s been a mixed reception. For the most part, it’s been more good than bad. So I think we’ve done our job there.

And with Not My Ruckus, it just wrecks you. That’s how I promoted the book is that this book will break your heart in the best way is sort of my tagline I’ve given the boo. It will wreck you. It is not at all meant for YA or middle grade readers. It’s meant for lovers of literary fiction. And that’s why it’s called literary fiction. And it’s family drama, because it deals with things that happen within the family. And then we have Gracie and Zeus Live the Dream, which is something that our readers informed us on – is a romantic comedy. We promoted it as a romantic comedy, and then – we were set to do that. And then our beta reviewers came back and said, this is a romantic comedy meets cozy mystery. And I was like, oh, thank you beta reviewers for educating me a little bit on what genre that should be. And it’s romantic comedy because there’s not a lot of sex, there’s almost no sex in it. But it does have LGBTQIA+ representation. And it also has disability representation.

So when we’re promoting books, knowing the genre, setting readers’ expectations, and having a cover that reflects the content of the book is super important. Having the back blurb make sure that it reflects the content of the book is super important, because all of that goes into setting readers expectations. And that’s what promotion is all about. It’s about wetting their whistle, setting their expectations, and then closing the deal. So with – along the lines of wetting their whistle, we’re really fortunate that we have the most, I think, the most amazing narrators and Ivy Blair, and André Santana, just both outstanding narrators. And so giving of their time and so supportive of the press. They, both of them, create sneak peeks for the book and meet the characters for the books. So we didn’t start doing meet the characters until Drōmfrangil, which I wish we had done it for Not My Ruckus, and for Gracie & Zeus. And we might go back and do them, I’m not sure yet, still kind of on the fence about that. And that sneak peek – those three sneak peeks in particular, allow the readers to get a snippet of the book and really allow the readers to hear the style of narration for the book, with the snippet for just the content of the books, and then the meet the characters, they get a deeper view into the characters and insight into the content of the book and the content of the characters and the narration style.

So I feel that’s really great for promoting all the forms that the book comes in. But especially the audio books, I think that’s really important. And if you want to check those out, you can visit the Cinnabar Moth Publishing YouTube channel. We keep all of them there because we find it nice and tidy and and easy for everyone to find. And if you’re checking them out, now being on YouTube, I gotta do the obligatory give it a like and smash that subscribe button. Which I feel like such a cornball saying But please, like seriously, subscribe. I’d love you for it. I’ll buy you chocolate kind of thing. So that’s what we do for the audio and in addition to that, we do book trailers, which provide five lines, synopsis of the book and imagery of the book to kind of give you the feel – so like Gracie & Zeus has high energy because it’s about the music industry. It has a crowd dancing, high energy, music and snippets about the two characters. Drōmfrangil takes place in a in a forestry scene, and it moves through the forest to give you that sense of danger and excitement. And Not My Ruckus is more somber, and has the – the color scheme from the book to give you the feel that it’s somber, it’s – it’s dark, and the author Chad is like, I don’t think it’s that dark. And I’m like it is nicknamed around the office, the trauma book. It will traumatize you. And every reviewer says that it’s completely worth the journey. It’s completely worth all the trauma that you experience, because it has a happen for now ending so it’s not without, without redemption. And it covers some really important topics, about what happens in families in terms of abuse, and how that abuse can go unnoticed by the outside world.

So all of our books kind of have a message or theme to them. And getting that message and theme out there is part of promotion for the book. But then also making it sound like a fun ride is part of the promotion for the book. And one of – another way that we do it is we do book cover reveals, which is a book blog tour. And then we do a book blitz, which is an excerpt from the books tour and about the author. And then we do a month long tour, that is a mix of reviews and interviews and guest blog posts from the authors. And those are their promotions that we find work in addition to doing free advanced reader copies or arcs, on BookSirens, and we usually do BookSirens for about a month and a half to two months before the book comes out to generate reviews on Goodreads and to generate reviews on Amazon. And we find that that allows readers to know what to expect and really helps with pre-sales of the books. A lot of people once they get their arc, they’re like, hey, I’d really like a physical copy of this book. And also gets people who do reviews are interested in reviewing the book, which is – reviewers are the lifeblood of promotions because we don’t pay them. We’re not affiliated with them. And they just give their honest opinion of what this book’s about.

And so GoodReads is really, really helpful if you want to know what a book is about. And interesting to me is that sometimes I’ll just read all the bad reviews. And I find that I’m like, but this sounds like my cup of tea. And so for me, I’m a little bit different than authors, I think because it’s not my book. I find value in good and bad reviews. And I think bad reviews still sell books, provided they say why they don’t like it. So giving a one star… not helpful. Giving a one star with at least a paragraph explanation of why you don’t like the book is really helpful. And I advise every – I don’t advise – I heavily encourage everyone who is doing reviews: if you’re gonna leave a one star review, please just write a paragraph. The thing with the five star. Any stars, if you’re reviewing a book, just whip out a paragraph of the book. That would just really be awesome. And then there are some reviewers that go in that I love that do like how many stars for different sections of the books, those reviews are tasty. And then we have book bloggers who do reviews and announce their monthly reviews in advance. And that’s been really exciting to see our books turn up on those lists and know that reviews are coming. That’s just like, oh my gosh, I’m so excited. And I’m always really careful to promote every review of the books.

Any website that reviews one of our books, gets promoted on our Twitter and will be promoted in our e-zine. And our e-zine website, which is launching very soon. And it’s Cinnabar Moth Literary Collections. Just as an added sort of thank you of like, hey, here’s cross promotion, here’s search engine optimization, and we really appreciate it. And we also promote every book blog that interviewers – that interviews – that reviews any of our books on our Cinnabar Moth Publishing website. Again, that great juicy search engine optimization, and promoting readers to go check it out and check out some of the other different reviews that you do. And we always put links to their websites and their social media. So really, it’s our way of saying thank you to every reviewer. And that’s another facet of promotion. And that’s thanking the people who promote you. And I think sometimes we kind of, in the industry, we can – I’ve noticed that we can get a little bit lazy and not do those thank yous and not do those cross promotions.

And I think we’re a young press, we’re coming up on our one year anniversary. So I’m super genki, as we say, in Japan, which means energetic and happy and perky. But I hope I never lose my passion for cross promotion. And I don’t think I ever will because I’m a shameless promoter, which is why I’m head of marketing. I will toot a horn I – and that’s another part of promotion is getting authors used to having their horns tooted. Authors are so modest, and – at least our authors are so modest and really feel uncomfortable with being praised. So one of the things that we do is we talk about books that are going to come out 6, 7, 8 months in advance of them coming out. And part of that is preparing the author for when it’s their time for their book to be promoted. And I have a promotion cycle that I do every day when I go on Twitter. I promote all of our books. And I tweet about all of our books, and sometimes I tweet reviews, sometimes I tweet excitement about a new place that’s distributing it. I’ll be talking about distribution in a couple of weeks. And that’s another way to promote is letting people know where they can find your books.

On our website, we do – we’re kind of – we don’t list everywhere because that’s just too much. But we do like the big three that I think of as the big three. We do Amazon, Smashwords, and Barnes and Noble. And we’re really lucky to also have other books in Walmart and Target as well as local bookstores. And we’re, if you’re on Twitter, and you’re an indie press or an indie bookstore, hit us up. Let us know if we don’t catch that you’re carrying one of our books, at us and say that you’re carrying one of our books. We’ll retweet it, we’ll promote you. We love indie bookstores and indie prices, if y’all are reading our books, let us know we’ll read your books. We do read a lot of indie books, because we have a review thing that’s actually called Actually Indie, where we only review indie books. And we do that because we’re an indie press. And we love being a part of the indie community. And collaboration is huge. It’s huge for the press, it’s huge for the authors, and it’s huge for the books. So, you know, last week – a couple weeks ago, sorry, last week, we had an interview – a couple weeks ago I was talking about collaboration. And that’s a big part a big part of promotion. So those are all of the things that have worked for us.

Here’s some of the things that haven’t worked for us that come in huge cost, to the press that I was really disappointed in the performance of. And that is running advertisements in large literary magazines. I’m not going to name any of the literary magazines because this is only my lived experience. And other people may have had a lot of success advertising with them. We did not. We saw absolutely no impact on sales. And it was really a bummer because I was excited looking at their circulation and their distribution. I thought for sure, this is the way to sell books. And if you look at all of the advice online, it says get in those big literary magazines. But even being written up in those big literary magazines don’t lead to people reading your books. I don’t know the relationship between literary magazines and book sales. I – I’ll be honest, I don’t get it. And this is an area that I’m trying to, to grow in as a new press and as someone in marketing because right now, personally, we’re not doing any of those those big name magazines. We’re having more success with doing smaller indie magazines. And I think, for me, my perspective is that it comes down to intimacy, and trust. I know, for me, the independent literary magazines that I read, I have an intimate relationship with the owners. And I have – I know most of the authors, and I enjoy what they’re publishing.

So when they recommend a book, or when I see advertising for a book, I think, okay, I get what this book is about. I get what the level of writing is going to be and the quality of writing is going to be because I know the quality of the literary magazine. And I feel like with the bigger magazines, there isn’t that intimacy, like, I don’t know, anybody at these magazines. And they will advertise anything. And I find that the indie magazines don’t just advertise anything. They have to believe in the products or advertising because they have more on the line. And maybe that impression is what’s going on with other people as well. I don’t know, like hit us up in the comments, or hit us up on Twitter if you have a different take on this. Because that’s sort of my take on why that doesn’t work. And then I can’t remember the last time that I purchased a book because I saw it on a talk show. That’s never been my bag. And I tend to not trust talk shows at all. So for me, with reading a book, it comes down to trust, like I trust GoodReads because I can read so many different points of view. And I can click on the reviewer and be like, okay, this person always gives this type of book one star.

So it gives me insights into – or this person always gives this type of book five stars, or this person only gives three stars and lower. I’m able to find out about the – the reviewer rather. I keep mixing up interviewer and reviewer. You’re able to find out about the reviewer and that creates intimacy. And with the… TV ones, especially, I don’t know, I feel like A Million Pieces, the James Frey, I think his last name is or James Fry scandal just really put me off on that. Like, I can’t trust these huge book clubs. And these huge TV shows because even if the presenter has read the book, I just feel like there wasn’t any research done. And with the indie presses, I feel like the research comes in knowing each other and knowing what each other is about, and knowing the authors. And we’re only doing fiction. So it’s not like is the story true or not? Story’s not true. It’s fiction.

But the quality of it, I feel like I can trust and it’s down to like minded people, I feel. And I don’t feel as though I’m like minded with necessarily talk show hosts or newspapers. And we have a really good friend who’s done some write ups. And in newspapers for us and trade magazines. We’ve been written up in a couple of trade magazines. And I find that the trade magazines are really great for drawing authors to us but not necessarily great for selling books. So we’ve sort of stuck to our recipe that we feel works for us. And what that recipe is, is book, trailer, cover reveal, book blast, month long book tour, interview on the Writers Triangle, cross promotion in magazines, promotion on the website, promotion on Twitter, and just having really good solid distribution. So that we’re in small indie bookstores as well as large book chains and global distribution. We’re on every continent – we sell books on every continent except Antarctica. And I’m trying to figure that one out. Everyone in the office is like your obsession with Antarctica is off the chain. And I’m like maybe our books are on Antarctica because people who are being stationed there are bringing our books with them. And that’s my fantasy. That – that’s what I’m into. I want to be on every continent. And I want to be sold in every continent.

So that’s basically book promotions for us and – and how we do book promotion. If you found something that works for you, please hit us up and share with us leave it in the comments or hit us up on – on Twitter. And we’ll definitely promote your comment. And share it because we love authors, we love books, and we want to make sure that books are sold, right? We want to sell our books and we want authors to be successful and selling theirs because we think the world needs more good stories. And that’s just something I’ll always believe. Thank you so much for giving me your resources, which is your time, energy, and attention to this week’s episode of Cinnabar Moth. We love all of our beautiful cinnabar moths or any kind of moth you want to be can even be a butterfly, but I’m not Mariah Carey, so I’m not stealing that bag. I look forward – we hope you enjoy the interview next week, and I’ll talk to you in two weeks. Bye.