It was almost 2 years back when I wrote about Shobhaa De’s using social media to promote her book, ‘Superstar India’, in this blog.
Much has happened since…she’s even gone ahead and asked for the ban of Dabangg, of all things! But seriously, that effort was agency-led (let me not name any agency…for obvious reasons) and I find many new first-time writers promoting their debut materials mighty impressively, on their own, using social media tools.
The most impressive one, at least from what I have seen, is Amish Tripathi and his book, The Immortals of Meluha. To be fair, I came to know about this not online (that is, socially online), but via media reports and interviews where he talks about use of social media for promotion.
The Facebook Group he has created for this purpose (note…not a Facebook Page, but a Group!) seems to be in existence since February 16th and has been doing a fabulous job of not just promoting the book, but also related topics, with active participation from Amish himself.
A really interesting tactic is a audio/video trailer for the book, with music composed by Taufiq Qureshi! It’s a seemingly simple video with a ominous background and running text, but the very idea of a promo for a book seems interesting. And what better way, but to share it in an exclusive Facebook Group? It sure helps, since Amish is planning Meluha as a trilogy and a bigger group based on the first one will help his sequels!
This attempt, by Amish, is very different from others like Sidin Vadukut or Arnab ‘Greatbong’ Ray using social media – Twitter, in particular – for promoting their debut books (Dork : The Incredible Adventures of Robin ‘Einstein’ Varghese and May I Hebb Your Attention Pliss, respectively). Why? Because, to me it looks like they already had an audience online, listening to them – both are well known bloggers, besides being highly influential on Twitter. So they tapped this captive audience to further enhance the prospects of their books.
Much like Jessie Paul, former Wipro CMO and now the founder of PaulWriter, a B2B consulting firm. She promotes her book, ‘No Money Marketing’ via Twitter, within context – informing people about availability, book reading sessions and retweeting positive twiviews of the book for others to know.
Then there are others, like Ashwin Sanghi, who first self-published his book, The Rozabal Line, (via Lulu.com) under a pen name, Shawn Haigins (anagram of his name!) since mainstream publishers did not find it interesting enough. It caught on and then Tata-Westland found it ‘interesting enough’ to publish it, but this time, in Ashwin’s real name. Ashwin is active on Twitter and has 30,000+ followers to boot. Needless to add, he does promote the book within context from time to time.
Update: Ashwin tweeted to add that he has a Facebook page as well – I searched for his name and ‘Rozabal’ on Facebook, but missed searching for the pen name! And that is the name of the Facebook page! 30,000+ members and fantastic contextual content!
I’m not setting up a chicken and egg situation – do writers need an audience first, online? Or should they start with zero and start promoting the book? Nope. The point is simply this – if you already have a network/influence online, you use it in context so that you better the reach and prospects of your book.
But if you don’t and are starting from scratch, that is perfectly fine too (The Meluha Facebook Group has 1,500+ members), but what one needs to plan is ‘discoverabillity’.
That is why I had mentioned earlier that I did not come across the Meluha Group via a friend online or other online methods – it was a good ol’ interview in a weekly print magazine, where Amish talks about everything, including his promotional tactics online. While numbers are not the best criteria to evaluate the success of the group, 1,500+ in about 8 months is low traction, in my opinion. I do not know if Amish used paid promotional tactics, but a good plan increasing discoverability of the group sure helps.
It is a simple question of content + promotion. Content is a thorough understanding of what one plans to share in the online tool, consistently. Promotion can be done in 2 ways – organic and inorganic. Organic is, of course, PR and contextual push, if you have an existing offline or online network. Inorganic, on the other hand, helps you give that initial bump in numbers that can get your online efforts going faster. The only thing to answer here: I have created a group, but how will people find the group? It could be a combination of Facebook ads, search engine optimization/marketing…in case of Jessie Paul’s book, given the business nature of the book, it may well be ads on LinkedIn.
There is no reason to shun paid promotion assuming it is not part of social media. It sure is. It is not free, like the other tools (which require time, if you consider that time is money!), but it helps you build traction, with the right kind of audience, faster. Just that it needs to be used at the right time, at the right dose. This is perhaps where agencies could help – if the authors are confident and adept at using social media tools and also seem to have time to interact, the conversation part could be handled by themselves. But an informed online promotional plan could be a definite value addition from an agency.