Adventures with Advertising

With Godfather Death and the Amazing Diagnostic Machine coming out June 30th, I’ve decided to try to get the word out. That’s harder than it sounds. My social network footprint is tiny. (You finding your way here is a blessing. Glad to have you!) My skill for talking myself up is…questionable at best. So How do I let the world know the greatest steampunk fairytale retelling ever is about to drop from yours truly? (See…that felt weird to say.)

The answer: TikTok

Allegedly.

Why This Advice

First off, I have scoured the internet (mostly YouTube) for advice on advertising a new book. And yes, there are a lot of voices out there, many saying similar things: establish a presence on social media, interact with the communities that overlap with potential readers, let people know you have a book coming out, and let people know a bit more about you. That’s four items that sound like A LOT of work. Where do I start? This is going to take how long? You mean I have to talk about myself?

Katie’s advice was titled “The one book marketing strategy you NEED to be doing”. Yeah, a very clickable title for me. She goes on to lay out a strategy that felt manageable. I can do that! She also wasn’t pushing a course to take or anything like that, just an advertising tool that has been successful for her. I’m not putting all my eggs into this basket, but it’s the basket I’m filling the fullest.

What am I doing?

If you didn’t watch Katie’s video already (heck, I linked it twice), I’ll give you my version of her advice. I’m sure I’ve misinterpreted parts and overlooked important nuances, but you can get the full breakdown from her.

• Make carousels (slide shows) on TikTok. These are images with text.
  • The first slide is a hook/attention grabber
    • Use royalty free images from sites like https://unsplash.com/ and https://www.pexels.com/
    • Pick images that match your book’s theme
    • Katie’s hooks seemed to be 1-2 slides long
  • The last slide is a direct quote (passage) from the book
    • She seemed to suggest you hint at the excitement without giving too much away
  • Use a trending sound that fits the theme of the book/passage/hook
  • Make sure your profile page does a good job of promoting you and the book. (This is my weak spot; I’ll get to why.)
  • Oh, and make sure you use good hashtags!

This felt like a process I could handle. No fancy equipment to buy or awkward performances required, just post some images with text. So I made some.

Okay, I didn’t follow the recipe perfectly. My carousels have a one-slide hook, the next slide starts a quoited passage, the last slide has the book’s cover.

The first carousel I made had the whole passage on one slide. Depending on the size of your phone and the mightiness of your eyes, that could have been tough to absorb. My next few had the quote spread out over 2-4 slides, their text posted either over faded images or carefully curated around the images.

About half the hooks are the same or very similar with very similar images: a cloaked figure with a metal skull for a head with something along the lines of “When a man who was more metal than flesh entered her father’s shop, her life changed forever.” Others get more thematic to the excerpt/images. One scene takes place at a wedding, so the hook is “What better place for an ambush than a wedding?” You get the idea…

Music choices have been a battle between my preferences and TikTok’s preferences (mostly represented by my 18-year-old offspring). My first choice was George Michael’s “Father Figure” which has been hot on TikTok, though that song seems to accompany a fairly specific trend that has nothing to do with books. (My kid also thinks it might suggest the book is spicier than it is.) I made a couple with songs that had been used in a few thousand posts each. I made sure to swing big with a couple of the songs (uses in the millions and the tag “popular”). I have a mind to make a video or two with sounds that aren’t songs, but I haven’t made that leap yet. Are they helpful? It may still be too early to tell.

Alas, the profile page is the weakest link. Speaking of links…TikTok won’t let you have links to external sites (a.k.a. a link tree) until you have one thousand followers. So I’m only 998 followers away from that goal! Yeah, I’ve had a TikTok account, but I was only consuming until this past week. So right now, potential readers will have to find Godfather Death and the Amazing Diagnostic Machine by searching Amazon or even the whole internet for it. Suddenly, that wordy title is starting to seem like a better idea. (I also think it sounds steampunk-y.) This is why I feel like it was important to end with my cover image.

I don’t know if anyone has chased the book down yet. It doesn’t launch for another 5 days. It’s available for presale on Kindle, but that’s it. Either it’s impossible find out how many preorders there are or I don’t know how to figure it out. I guess the third option is that there have been none, but that would be knowing how many (zero is a perfectly good number, just not preferable in the wallet).

What am I definitely doing wrong?

I may be making several mistakes that I don’t realize, but there’s one I’ve definitely fumbled. Katie say to get a few “burner accounts” to post from as well as your main account. I haven’t done this, mostly because I don’t quite understand what the nature of the account should be. If the profile page is important, then what’s on the profile page of my burner? Some fictional reader that is allegedly posting fan-art for the book? Are they all supposed to be new vids or should these burner accounts be reposting the originals? I couldn’t wrap my head around that, so I haven’t made that leap. I’m 48; this is already a little overwhelming for me.

Am I reaching people?

Not as many as I’d hoped, but maybe more than I legitimately expected.

My first carousel (the one with the whole excerpt on one slide) has the most views and the most likes (261 and 7, respectively). Most of those were in the first couple hours. None of the others have topped 200 views.

The least-viewed is the wedding one, which has a female cover of “In the Air Tonight” that has been used over 100k times. I had expected the most interest in that one. My intention is to make some adjustments to that one and try posting it again (may change the song, but I like the fit). My research has suggested that there are a lot of variables at play for how many people see any given post, so reposting duds is a fair strategy.

These numbers don’t sound like a lot. They are well below the ones Katie cited in her video. I think established accounts have better reach. That’s why I’m not going to throw in the towel just yet. I’m hoping the needle will move by the end of July.

What else have I tried?

I mentioned that I dipped a toe into YouTube. What I really did was post my one outreach video as a Short.

Yes, I did make a video for TikTok that wasn’t a slideshow and wasn’t an ad for the book. This was a “What is Steampunk?” video. Please hold for my great shame: I made the video with PowerPoint.

Hey, I’m a teacher and I am very good with PowerPoint. Use what you know. I promise, my kid has thoroughly skewered me for it.

Anyway, this video analyzes steampunk as both an aesthetic and a literary genre. It’s about a minute. (I had to speed my voice up a little; noticeable but not terrible.) I do need to improve my audio recording skills; there’s a slight echo. The video ends with the book’s title and release date. There is a link to the Kindle preorder in the video description.

So was this little video popular? Not on TikTok. It’s neck-and-neck with my wedding carousel. On YouTube however? Just over 2000 views, 18 likes. (That’s almost 1% like-age…not sure if that’s good…doesn’t sound awesome.)

What’s next?

For now, I’m going to keep working the system. I’ll either pull some more passages from the book or repackage the ones I’ve used with altered hooks, songs, and/or images. Every time one gets 100 views, that’s more eyes (some new, some repeating) that see the book. The repeat views are possibly the most important since I heard somewhere recently (might have been Katie?) that it takes 8 exposures to a stimulus before someone takes action.

I’m also going to experiment with turning some of the carousels into videos (still the slides but they cycle for you). TikTok is a largely passive platform, so maybe it will hit differently. Remember the one video I did post didn’t get many views, but it also didn’t have a viral sound attached. This way I can also hit YouTube with them.

I’ll put some of this on Facebook too. I’m not an Instagrammer, so I’ll avoid that.

Is it worth it?

The labor end of things has been fairly mild (picture hunts were consuming but also fun). Honestly, I’m hoping that being in a niche subgenre like steampunk will help this book along. And If someone is looking through steampunk books and sees a cover they recognize, that could be the difference between them buying my book or someone else’s. Maybe something like this will help get enough of a bump to make a dent on the Amazon top sellers list for steampunk. Or maybe this whole exercise will just help me grow my TikTok footprint enough that the next publication’s ads (and there will be more) will have a little more reach.

Oh, don’t take my word for all this. Make sure you check out Katie Wismer’s video. And please, if anyone here has experience with this kind of advertising that could help me or others, please share it in the comments!