Claire McKinney, Author at Claire McKinney Public Relations, LLC

Marketing Fiction: Beyond Book Reviews

Posted on May 11, 2021May 14, 2021 by Claire McKinney

At the recent Pikes Peak Writers Conference (PPWC) I gave a presentation on identifying major and minor themes that can help with marketing fiction. Let’s face it. For indie authors, book reviews in any traditional sense are difficult to come by. We all want to end up in the New York Times, but there are over 1 million books published every year and only 52 New York Times Book Reviews. Even with a publicist who knows people at the Times who make editorial decisions, by the numbers it looks like a long haul to getting that review in the paper.

The Problem with “Book” Marketing

Many writers think of their books as singular products, referring to them as my “novel”, “mystery series”, “fantasy”, “romance”, “coming-of-age novel”, etc. I have been working on marketing fiction for twenty-five years and I can honestly tell you that trying to sell your book to a reviewer based on, “this is a great new novel” is not going to cut it in our competitive world.

One Solution to Fiction Promotion Challenges

There are many strategies you can use, like digital pr, but the one I suggest first is dissecting your book to go beyond book reviews. In my presentation, I described the process using a book we all know, The Great Gatsby. I analyzed it through a more comprehensive lens–digging deep into any promotional angle I could find. Here is an outline of the process you can try on your book(s).

The Deep Dive for Marketing Fiction

Open a blank document or take a clean sheet of paper. Write the title and genre of your book at the top.
Make two columns, one called “book assets” and the other “my assets”
In the “book assets” column write a list of the locations in your book; any topics that it covers (in Gatsby the list included Prohibition and Class Wars); and anything particularly interesting about the characters.
In the “my assets” column make a list of things that pertain to you and your brand, such as where you live and where you grew up. Add items like what you do beyond writing; any parts of the book based on your own personal experience; why you wrote what you wrote; and any additional interests, hobbies, or skills that you have.
Now make a list at the bottom of the page of where you can imagine finding interest in the items in either list. Is there a story in the media that relates to your topics? In addition to being a novel, does you book include anything of interest to health care, psychology, or business? If your book is a mystery, note mystery outlets that you would target online and in print.
Finally, pretend you are a reporter and write some mock headlines based on your list of angles and outlets. The Great Gatsby in today’s world might inspire a headline like “Class Divides in New Novel Mirror the Culture of Celebrity and Billionaires vs. Everyone Else”; or “New Novel Explores Whether Class is Defined by your Market Value or by Knowledge and Manners.”

Thank You English Teachers

Remember English Class? Yup, this process has some similarities. The exercise will help you think about marketing fiction in a broader way. It will also help enhance the number of opportunities it will have in the media. Marketing fiction is always a challenge. The first step to getting more press and attention is to see how many latent themes and topics your book can address.

For information on marketing fiction, see Case Studies #3

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Movie Review: The Social Dilemma

Posted on March 9, 2021April 5, 2021 by Claire McKinney

After watching The Social Dilemma, I was inspired a few months back to write a blog post What is Your Social Dilemma: Symptoms and Insights for an Internet Culture. In the post, I discussed different “symptoms” of our sometimes dysfunctional relationship to social media and the internet. I don’t usually dwell on documentaries and it is the very rare book or movie that stays with me these days — I’m a bit picky. So this week, I’m sharing an informal review of the film. (Disclaimer: I’m not a professional critic, but like everyone else, I do have opinions).

Frankenstein and Facebook

The Social Dilemma directed by Jeff Orlowski, features various former executives of Big Tech including Google, Facebook, and Instagram. At first they appear a bit nervous about the interviews to follow, even though their attorneys have assured them they are ok to “talk”. And really, what they say in no way defames any of their former employers. There is a feeling of wonderment from these people that reminds me of the classic horror flick, Frankenstein featuring Boris Korloff as the “monster”. The mad scientist is overcome by an obsession to prove his point by bringing a creature to life, only to find that he’s made a terrible mistake. I guess it’s just collateral damage of progress.

Teen Addiction to Social Media

The most interesting part of the film is the scripted narrative of a “basic” family with kids who are connected by their phones to the cyberworld. The son, Ben, who appears to be in his early teens is particularly attached to his device. Behind the curtain of this story is a trio of “masterminds” who come up with ways to keep Ben engaged. These three, like the witches of Macbeth are sinister and diabolical. They devise all kinds of ways to keep alerts popping up on Ben’s phone. There is one bit where they manipulate him with a girl he “likes” by artificially creating notifications. For marketers, this might remind you of multi-channel marketing. This example is like when a store automatically sends a text about a sale when a customer enters its doors.

Ben’s health deteriorates as a result of his addiction. Although his family tries to put him on a “diet”, challenging him to put his phone away, he barely lasts a day. Waking up the next morning he is almost hung over from the experience of staring at the small screen. Ben’s dazed and confused state grows and I won’t give away what happens to him. There are two roads to travel, either destroy Ben completely or find a solution to his problem. Watch the film and find out.

Recommended for Parents

In my view, what I learned in The Social Dilemma didn’t surprise me. But I highly recommend it, especially for parents. We need to face the reality of what our kids are up against. The family narrative definitely mirrored my own. My teenagers who are glued to their phones. When it’s clear that whatever is happening on screen is agitating them, I ask “Why don’t you put it away for awhile?” Their answer: “We don’t want to miss anything.”

For other commentaries from reliable sources, check out:

Psychology Today: The Social Dilemma: A Horror Film in Documentary Clothing;

Wired Magazine: Hate Social Media? You’ll Love this Documentary

Fielding: The Social Dilemma: Fact or Manipulation?

Finding the Best Way to Sell Your Book: Non-Fiction

Posted on February 1, 2021March 2, 2021 by Claire McKinney

Academics, experts, spokespeople, business owners–many of them publish non-fiction books. To look at these books as one giant group of promotable content packs is to ignore the fact that there is likely a “best way” to sell your book. There is not a set of “book media” who generically cover anything that is made between paper covers. And there is no giant pool of people who are awaiting the next “book”. There is much more to the story. How the book is structured and what it is about will determine how you sell it. Some books are idea driven, others are more “how-to” focused. Some are both. Do you know which one applies to you?

Selling Ideas

Is it an idea book, a how-to or both? It is one thing to pitch a mystery novel or a book on weight loss. It is an entirely different approach if what you want to sell is a new concept or a new spin on something we all know. Let’s break it down with one of the more difficult “idea” categories using some of my favorite tools from economics class.

Faux Title Study I: Selling The How-to Book

“Dominating the Widget Market for Investors”

Let’s say you are publicizing a book about investing in the widget market. Your book describes the market, it’s history, sample strategies, tips, potential outcomes, etc. It is a prescriptive book that can help people make money from widgets, and in general help them learn more about the stock market.

You would likely employ a strategy that included:

a “top ten strategies/tips” list
soliciting radio interviews
pitching long lead magazines and soft financial publications for the average investor,
trying to get on a morning TV show or other talk show that features self-improvement topics
outreach to digital networks about making money in the market

With this book you have a clear direction and advice you can impart. You are also directing your message to digital and traditional communities that want to know how to improve their financial situations. Now let’s look at the other side of the coin.

Faux Title Study 2: Selling The Big Idea Book

“Dominating the Widget Market in a Changing World”

This book is similar to the first in that the author talks about the market and history of the widget industry. He will also probably share some case studies of investors both successful and unsuccessful as a way of illustrating the changes. Theories of the future of widgets and why things are or are not improving will be in the book. The conclusion may be more gray than black/white and the author will present a picture of what things are going to look like. He may also suggest ways we might adjust to allow for a more (or less) volatile environment.

What Makes These Books Different?

I’m sure you are getting where I am going with this. Title 1 is a clearer “how-to” offering whereas Title 2 is based on a hypothesis and theory based on research and/or data. There may be some takeaways that suggest what to do, but they will be implied rather than listed as “tips”.

Clearly these are simplistic examples, but I run into this all the time. The thing is, we almost always want to try to promote the theory the same way we would promote the prescriptive, and it just doesn’t work. First of all, authors who are writing about theory usually have a combination of academic and applied credentials. They generally don’t want to give people “advice”. The kind of interview where “tips” are the goal is often awkward for this kind of person.

The other author loves giving workshops and presentations about how to do things better. For her topic, how we got here isn’t as important as what we are going to do about it.

It is challenging to make these distinctions, but it is important. If you do, you will be much more focused. You will see your path to selling your ideas and achieving your goals.

Why is Your Digital Personal Brand Important in 2021?

Posted on January 5, 2021March 2, 2021 by Claire McKinney

Why should you care about your digital personal brand? It’s not just your reputation, it is also the 21st century platform that enables you to work, socialize, sell a product, and plan and achieve goals. I was speaking with an author recently who publishes a book every year. Prior to 2017 he says his books would sell 2,000 + copies in paperback. Since then, he is lucky if he sells 200. What happened? Did his fans abruptly change their minds about his books? Was he blackballed from Facebook? Since he is a self-published author, his primary means of selling was online, but somehow it was as if he had disappeared from cyberspace.

How do you disappear in cyberspace?

Sometime in the last five years between changing algorithms, and a critical mass of over three billion people on social media, the rules changed. When once you could post a few times a week on a platform, build a reasonable audience, and become more popular, now you have to have a brand and a plan. Enter CoVid, the constant stream of bad news and politics, stores shut down, and more people online than ever before, doing everything from work to school to entertainment. Do you think this is temporary? Nope. Even when more of us venture outside of our homes, experts say the move to digital was fast-tracked by necessity, and much of it is here to stay.

How does a digital personal brand work?

Imagine that you are a high school science teacher by day and host a podcast on sci fi entertainment by night (or any other time). As a teacher you go to school, see students, engage with colleagues and parents, and have a reputation as an effective educator. You tell people about your podcast and you gain a few downloads from your connections, but nothing that will justify the time it takes to put your shows together. How can you solve this problem and make your podcast successful?

If you had a digital personal brand with a presence on social media platforms and a business page for your podcast, you would have a base from which to start growing an audience. You could utilize Instagram and Facebook to post your audio and link to iTunes and other streaming services. You could research people interested in your topic and connect with them to get listeners as well as potential guests and topics for your show. As you build your audience you could offer promotions and incentives for them to provide content for you to repost, tagging the original user. Then you will show up in that user’s network with exposure to all of their friends and followers, and so on, and so on.(Anyone remember that Faberge commercial for shampoo?)

Why do you need to put YOU first to get noticed?

The science teacher may think creating her podcast is the hard part, but it isn’t. The first step is having the content. Then she needs to plan on how she is going to be in front of people who are spending time in the digital space. Brian Solis says that we have become a society of digital narcissists. To make that premise work to your advantage, you will need to figure out who you are; who you want to be; what you are promoting; and how you are going to communicate all of this in a consistent, branded manner on digital media.

Social Media 101: 4 Reasons Why Buying Followers is a Bad Idea

Posted on February 5, 2018April 9, 2018 by Claire McKinney

A recent article (February 1st) on BuzzFeed said that the Newsweek Media Group has been buying followers and manipulating traffic on some of their websites, and that they are being accused of ad fraud. The ad fraud part of this story is not my area, but I do have something to say about the other part—buying followers—as it relates to marketing and branding using social media platforms.

There was a time when having 200,000 Twitter followers looked impressive to the naked eye, but those days are long gone. Now it isn’t very difficult to look through someone’s following on various platforms to find out that many of those 200,000 are spam bots and other kinds of cheap “friends”. In fact, the people who have more modest numbers of active followers, who engage with them, and build more solid relationships over time, could have the upper hand in social media marketing.

Here are some reasons why buying followers is a bad idea:

The internet is not an alien universe. The people using the internet and social media are just that—people. And the rules of engagement apply just as they would at a cocktail party or a business conference. If you want to grow as an influencer on social media, your audience needs to feel like you are a real person —not a virtual identity with no substance, which brings me to the next point.
Trust is more important than ever. The internet, the very tool you want to use to market your products and ideas, has eroded trust in its own population. This is partly due to the “bad apples” in the bunch who have figured out how to buy and sell cotton candy entities and canned content. If someone takes more than a cursory look at who is following you and they find porn (true story) in the form of bots, it will not make a good impression (unless that is what you are selling).
Relationships rule! When there is trust, the chance for a relationship to grow increases. In a relationship with good communication, the other person believes what you have to say, appreciates your advice and counsel, and may even talk about you with others in a positive way.
Protect the brand. Would you wear dirty clothes to a job interview? Why sully your brand with ineffective and questionable marketing practices, like buying a fake community?

Perhaps we think that, because we are typing on a keyboard or a phone in our own private spaces, that our anonymity allows us to behave in any manner we want. Well, it doesn’t. Companies who engage in buying followers or traffic in order to beef up their potential advertising power may not be doing something illegal, but it is certainly unethical. If an individual wants to be an influencer, it needs to be clear that community and engagement are a priority. If bots are all we see, we assume that you aren’t real either.

Check out our other social media blog posts here.

Author: Claire McKinney