Pros and Cons Of Marketing e-Books Via Social Media

Anne Lyken Garner will be a contributor to the Brit Writers blog.  

Anne Lyken-Garner shares some insights into the world of social media for the purpose of marketing your E-books.

Over the last 3 months I’ve been doing some research about social media, e-publishing and marketing. Apart from freelance writing and authoring books, I’m a working website editor. I look at what great marketers and pro bloggers have written and can instantly see how I can make it better;  how I can make them say exactly what they meant to say; and how I can improve the structure and grammatical issues of the entire text. This is not to say I don’t make mistakes with my own writing. (I’m blind to my own errors).

The thing is, regardless of my skills, I can’t do my own marketing. I’m rubbish at it. It’s been drilled into me that writers need to establish a platform. In many ways this is true. I believe the accuracy of this so much, I promote my own writing site with this phrase on the home page. However, and this is a big however, can writers like me who’ve spent years building up a platform successfully market their e-books via social media and networking? I did a small-scale ‘experiment’ to find out (this experiment concerns a work I self-published and not my recent  book published by Pulse).

Marketing my e-Books using Facebook

Experiment: I wrote a new update every other day around the same time. I found that the surge of Facebook traffic occurred between 2 and 3 in the afternoon. I don’t know if this is the same for everyone. (I have more than 1,000 writer friends who don’t all work ‘day jobs’). I alternated between general updates about menial things, and updates about my published books. My former updates had multiple likes and responses, while my posts about my work had none – or maybe a tiny handful. This made me conclude the following:

1.  My friends on Facebook don’t want to hear about marketing – even my hundreds of relatives and close friends.

2.  Marketing on Facebook will never be a reality for me because of the time it takes to become good at it. If I want to be a writer – just a writer – I need to spend more time writing and less time ‘socialising’ and pretending I ‘like’ all the mundane things people write on the site.

3    3.  Which brings me to the question: is any writer ‘just’ a writer these days? One of the first things my publisher asked me was about my networking skills, the extent of my platform, and how many hours a day I had free to market my book.

Other reasons why marketing e-Books on Facebook may not work

Facebook tracks your behaviour so only the handful of people you were last in contact with will see your updates (no matter if you have 4,000 Facebook friends). This means that the hours you spend marketing your book there are wasted on people who’ve already decided they don’t want your book, or those who’ve already bought it.

What to try

• Become active in targeted Facebook groups. While this is not a sure-fire way to sell your book, you may get a few sales from people who’re actually interested in you. You’re exposed to more people in communities, groups and Facebook pages, so the chances for a sale are higher.
• If you’re a writer like me, most of your friends are writers. They probably won’t buy your book. If you write about pregnancy, it may be better to join a Facebook pregnancy page or group and give advice there. Soon enough you can casually mention something you ‘wrote in your book’.
• If you’ve got money to spare and don’t mind ‘losing’ a few quid, try the Facebook ads to see if this brings you additional sales.
• Interview big, influential writers on Facebook on your blog. When the blog post goes live, add the link to their timeline. (This is the only time they won’t mind you sharing something on their timeline). Make sure the link goes to a page from which you’ve linked your book heavily. Traffic like this could be good for your sales.

Marketing my e-Books using Twitter

Experiment: I did an experiment similar to the one I did on Facebook. I don’t spend as much time on Twitter as I do on Facebook (I have 5 blogs and do ghost writing as well). I have an Internet time table and have allocated 20 minutes a day to Facebook and Twitter each. This is 40 minutes out of my entire day! As soon as my 20 minutes on Facebook are finished I log off even if I’m in the middle of a discussion with someone. (I do apologise before leaving). My Twitter time is allocated towards the end of the working day and if something else comes up – which it usually does, Twitter gets put on the back burner.

Nevertheless, I made a special effort to spend time on Twitter for a set period, retweeting all the posts of influential people in the e-publishing and e-marketing industry. For every 10 retweets I did, I tweeted a post of my own, and replied to a friend’s tweet about her/his cat etc. In all that time, I had 1% of my tweets retweeted. I don’t feel too bad about this because apparently only about 8-10% of tweets get retweeted in general.

Other reasons why marketing e-Books on Twitter may not work

Twitter is very much gossip and celebrity based. The only things I’ve seen go viral there are celebrity cheating stories, celebrity deaths, celebrity separations – you get the drift. Twitter may not be a suitable place for marketing books because the people there absorb other types of ‘news’ stories.

I’ve yet to see a writer say he/she has sold more books based on the promotion they did on Twitter. This does not include the tweets they made about their breakfast, their dogs being sick or the weather being great – burning another hour of potential writing time.

What to try:

• Apparently only a small number of us actually know how to use Twitter. Any search on the Internet will immediately throw up lots of companies charging you arbitrary amounts to ‘teach you how to tweet’. If you want to go for this, please let me know if it works. 
• Hire a company to tweet posts about your book for you. The amount you pay has to be less than you think you could make from the sales they’ll bring you, so this may be problematic.

The writer is left stuck between a solid slush pile and a mountain of bills. In a time when e-Books are fast outselling hardcopies, how many of us are actually making a ‘killing’? Please share your success story of marketing your e-Book via social media. We could all learn from your research and the tactics you’ve used.

Anne Lyken-Garner is a published author. Her latest book, the inspirational ‘Sunday’s Child’ was published by American urban publishers, Pulse. Anne is also a freelance writer, blogger and editor. She writes for, and manages 4 blogs and edited The Writers Bureau online student magazine for 2 years. Anne specialises in writing, relationships and confidence building. Her other passions include DIY and home improvement.

Apart from writing, Anne works in TV, and is dedicated to raising her 3 young kids. You can make contact with Anne here:  http://www.abloggersbooks.com/p/contact-or-hire-writer.html