Spam or Commercials? Selling Books Through Social Media

I just finished a library tour of twenty libraries and one of the most popular topics I covered was selling books through social media. The way I usually start this presentation is this: How many people here sit through five beer commercials during a football game and think nothing of it? Most people raise their hands. Or how about pickup commercials? Or Viagra commercials? We literally get hit with the same commercials back to back. And we think nothing of it.

But on the internet a curious word was created...spam. What does that even mean? Ok. Now why would companies put on so many commercials of the same product back to back? Because they know that humans pick up on things through REPETITION. Sales 101. You have to keep repeating the same message and then people start to pick up. Or IMPRESSIONS. You need to have X amount of impressions before someone buys.

Our new television is the internet. Sorry but it is. And we are marketed to in the same way. Repetition. Commercials. But people cry out they are being spammed. Really. No you are being advertised to in the same way you are getting smacked over the head during your football games. The price of the internet with all that free content is the advertising. It always has been. So to all you book marketers I say this: Spam is something you eat.

Get to work.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher
 

Publishers and Social Media

I am doing a speech on Selling Books Through Social Media tomorrow and it occurs to me very few publishers really understand Social Media. Take Simon and Schuster who paid a guy six figures for his tweets that were supposed to be the ruminations of a guy on an elevator with the Masters of the Universe. You know Wall Street Guys. Problem. Turned out he lives in Texas and made it all up. But S and S will go ahead with the book of his tweet hits.

So that shows they don't get it. Social Media is ephemeral and not quantifiable. It is an effort to throw a pebble down a mountainside and see if you can get an avalanche going. But there is no certainty a pebble or a boulder will get the landslide going. Think of it as a Sonar Ping going out into the ocean and hoping it will hit something and that ping might then come back with information and maybe something that will lead to sales.

But to take the ping as evidence of a pending sale is wrong. The ping is the ping. And even if you have a million pings that does not mean those people pinging back will plunk down money on a book of tweets. The leap is mighty. But as the saying goes there is a sucker born every minute and that guy in Texas has to be laughing his ass off.

www.williamhazelgrove.com
The Pitcher....sometimes a dream is all you have