about advertising and reviews…

Ads…

Being ‘old school’ I try not to litter my books with ads for other books of mine, not even if they’re eBooks. ‘The End’ in a book should be the end.

Even more annoying I find long listings of the praises authors have already garnered for the book at hand. Why is that even considered necessary, given that the reader’s about to start the book? Same goes for praise garnered for other books. Why not leave that for the bookseller’s websites? I know that the hope is that in eBooks the reader will be dragged into impulse shopping; provided they liked the book before them. No doubt that happens a lot, but consider the alternative, where the reader likes the book so much that s/he goes to the bookseller’s website and actually buys several books in one go. That would get around running the risk that maybe the reader doesn’t like the next book as much and doesn’t impulse click for another! Marketing psychology isn’t as simple as many people think. Just sayin’… 🤷🏻‍♂️

Reviews…

That annoying extra ad nonsense after or before novels found in eBooks—even more annoying if it appears in print volumes!—of course is also intended to lure the reader into impulse-rating the book. Well, since I don’t do it, I guess I will fall by the wayside in my efforts to get people to write reviews—which they can however always leave at the publishers’ websites. Still, we’re living in an ADHD age, and so that’s probably too much distraction and effort for most.

Am I going to change my mind about some of this?

Well, I may. With the move to the distrubution of my books to Draft2Digital, there may be merit in doing some more work on self promotion that goes beyond letting the story speak for itself. I don’t like it, but it’s a changing world… 🙄