I spent a lot of years in the advertising industry. In that time I’ve tried to convince you to order weird new kinds of pizza, drink more soda, drink more beer and booze (like you needed the encouragement) eat more chips and pick up a Slurpee. I’ve written radio for casinos, TV for nooks and crannies, and created a whole lot of promotions to get you to eat more chips. Sorry about that.
I thought I was out and done. I thought it was behind me. But it wasn’t enough. I still feel I need to make amends. So, I’ve decided to use my powers for good. To that end, my wife (also an ad vet) and I are going to use our nefarious advertising voodoo to help readers find new favorite reads by helping independent authors sell their books.
Recently I’ve been doing something I never wanted to do again—reading marketing research. It made my eyes bleed, but we found some pretty astounding things that indicate that all of the things we authors have been pouring our energy into (blog tours, promotions, tweeting the hell out of twitter, interviews, begging reviews, etc) are some of the most ineffective things we could be doing.
I want to spend my writing time writing new books and my social media time being social.
Anyone else feel that way?
We’ll be launching the new endeavor very soon.
Thanks for reading,
ben
Sounds quite interesting Ben. Can’t wait to hear more.
Steve
Thanks Steve. We’re pretty excited to get started and I’ll be sharing more soon.
Okay, this does sound interesting! We authors spend so much time on the social media thing (for me, it’s usually Facebook). I’m looking forward to seeing what you turn up! More productive advertising = more sales = more writing time.
You gotta love that!
Thanks, Anne.
I know there’s a better way. And a way that doesn’t burn readers out on the incessant pitch tweets. Hopefully we can please both camps.
Ditto on the pitch tweets. For the most part, I’ve shied away from them for that exact reason.
I’ll be waiting . . .