HOWTO do writerly self-promo in the 21st century

Here's some great self-promo advice for writers in the 21st century from Jeff Vandermeer, excerpted from his forthcoming book Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for 21st-Century Writers:

A writer usually has little direct effect on marketing or sales, but can have a huge impact on publicity. To be most effective, you must:

- Understand your audience and the commercial or noncommercial appeal of your creative project. Selling a thousand copies of a nonfiction collection might be an excellent result, while selling a thousand copies of a mystery novel might be seen as a huge failure.

- Understand the relationship between PR efforts and sales, PR and your reputation. The simple fact is, your PR efforts can greatly enhance your reputation without having as large an effect on your sales. Good PR is as much about setting you up for future opportunities and making sure you stay in the public eye as it is about readers making purchases. Studies show that readers may need to hear or read about a book as many as seven times before deciding to purchase it. Thus, a strong PR effort will influence sales over time, but the primary impact is to position you in other ways.

- Make sure to fit the scale of the PR to the scale of the project. You don't send copies of your saddle-stapled 42-page chapbook on armadillo farming to Publishers Weekly. Nor do you send a techno-thriller to the book reviewer at Armadillo Farming Quarterly. (Except, of course, in the remote eventuality that armadillos play an integral role in the plot.)

Booklife: Strategies and Survival Tips for 21st-Century Writers (via Futurismic!)

[#1 posted by John Coulthart, May 14, 2009 1:59 PM]

And in the interests of designerly self-promo in the 21st century, it's good to see one of my cover designs on BB.

[#2 posted by Alex_M, May 14, 2009 2:54 PM]

I could really go for an armadillo-centric techno thriller.

[#3 posted by JamesStrocel, May 14, 2009 3:08 PM]

It's nice to see books like these coming out. The writing market has changed so drastically in the last few years.

[#4 posted by Bobdotcom, May 14, 2009 4:24 PM]

Misread the title as "Howto do writerly self-PORNO in the 21st century." Guess where my mind is.

[#5 posted by Jahfurry, May 14, 2009 8:13 PM]

Yeah John Coulthart! figures !

[#6 posted by sethasaurus, May 15, 2009 6:16 AM]

I remember meeting Raymond Feist at a book signing. He looked all grumpy as hell, handed a book over and said nothing to me.
The Riftwar saga was great work, but I think that was the beginning of me going off that kind of sci-fi. I sold my signed copy of Talon of the Silver Hawk.
Not long afterwards I met Terry Pratchet, which was a far greater pleasure :)

[#7 posted by pyrmontvillage, May 16, 2009 12:41 AM]

I know this is digressing a little,however will indulge myself I knew a guy, and he was a semi approachable sort of a chap, always good for a catch up chat, when ever he was in the hood, however after he won the Booker prize, that was the end of our association. The man turned into an arrogant ass. lol..life..

[#8 posted by James LaChance, May 19, 2009 4:40 PM]

There's a new book out about DIY marketing called The Power of Small. Anyway, it's all about self-promotion 101 and there are some good writerly examples, like finding the promotional areas no one else is covering-- for example, going directly to the readers who will be particularly interested in your subject and telling them of the book's existence instead of putting ads on websites they might read. It's hard to explain, which is maybe why I suck at PR.

[#9 posted by mdh, May 19, 2009 4:45 PM]

I say that jack at #8 is so perfectly meta- that he be allowed to get away with what I all hope we all saw him do there.

[#10 posted by nosehat, May 19, 2009 4:54 PM]

@#9 RE: #8:

I second that! The meta- quality of his post brought a big smile to my face. Where's the link, though?