Thursday, January 14, 2010

Promo - Love it or Hate it

Over the last few days I've been thinking about what promo I should do for when FORBIDDEN hits the shelves, and basically freaking out. Luckily, the awesome Amanda Ashby calmed me down with great advice, which basically amounts to this. Do what you're comfortable with doing, and concentrate on writing the next book.

Strangely enough, Nathan Bransford has a post on his blog today tackling the same question. And basically his advice is this. "do what you're best at. Don't make yourself miserable doing what you think you should be doing, do what you enjoy doing."

Do you enjoy promo? What do you think works/doesn't work? And what do you think of book trailers?

11 comments:

April Vine said...

Hey Christina
I’m without a doubt the world’s worst promo-er. I’ll gladly wait for the potion where readers can magically hear about ones book. But I agree with Amanda, writers should write!
As for trailers, I think they’re a great visual tool and can definitely appeal to readers.

Phillipa said...

Christina, I work in PR so I enjoy writing press releases, blogging, articles, Q&As etc at lauch time and I've even managed to overcome my fear by giving my (jokey) opinion on various romance related topics on local and national BBC radio. But I don't enjoy giving talks unless with a friend and I run a country mile from 'workshops'. I did one once and hated it - a - I am a writer not a teacher and b - how can I teach other people when I often feel I have no idea what I'm doing!

Kaye Manro said...

I do enjoy some of it, but not all. Like you, I'd rather be concentrating on the writing of the book!

Cari Quinn said...

I'm not a huge fan of promo, truthfully, though there are some aspects I enjoy. But it's so true...without something to promote, there's nothing to worry about! I need to remind myself often to put the writing first.

Amanda Ashby said...

Of course I only said that because I'm incredibly selfish and I want you to finish your next book so I can read it - crafty, no???

Christina Phillips said...

I enjoy guest blogging and Q&A kind of things, but going on radio? OMG Phillipa. You're so brave!!

I'd like to say I'd never do a workshop but considering my history as to whenever I say "never" I'm just going to shut up about that side of things!!

Angie said...

I started answering your questions about promo, but being me I just sort of kept going, and at about 875 words I decided to spare you and take it back to my own blog. :)

I'll say here, though, that I honestly don't see the point of book trailers. A movie trailer works because it's compiled out of exerpts from the movie -- watching the trailer for a movie gives you a sample of the actual experience you'll have when you see the movie itself, and if you enjoy that experience then you might enjoy the experience of watching the whole movie.

Watching a book trailer, on the other hand, is a completely different experience from reading a book; whether you're watching still graphics, or animation, or whether the writer sprang for actors, with music or a voiceover or whatever, or even if they went whole-hog and the actors are performing a scene from the book, that's not the experience you're going to get when you read. So how can you tell whether you'll enjoy reading a book, from something you've watched and listened to? It makes no sense.

The summary blurb and excerpt one finds on most printed books is a much closer analog to a movie trailer. It's an partial (teaser) overview of what the book's about -- corresponding to the explanatory voiceover in a movie trailer -- along with an actual sample passage from the book, as the scenes in the trailer are samples from the movie. There's a perfect correspondence there, and it's trivially easy to put together that sort of thing -- a summary plus sample scene -- from your book to use as promo. Doing an audio-visual trailer for a written book makes no sense to me as a reader, and seems like a foolish waste of money as a writer.

Angie

Christina Phillips said...

Hi Angie! You make some very good points about book trailers. I made one last year, but mainly I did it for me - I wanted to master Movie Maker and I enjoyed doing it. I never really thought it would help sell any copies, and it was VERY time consuming.

Thanks for the thought provoking comments!

Phillipa said...

Not brave, Christina - but when that perky BBC producer rings up and asked, how can you say no. And watch out... do you think anyone ever asked me to go on radio before I got published. When your book goes mainstream, I bet you'll get asked too!

Christina Phillips said...

LOL Phillipa, seriously freaking out over here now!!!

Helen Hardt said...

Like others, I'm not a huge fan of promo. I'd rather be writing. But I will say that I've met some great people through blogging and doing the loops, so that's nice ;). I haven't tried a lot fo the more expensive promo yet.