Stop the AD-sanity! use some AD-sense!

Do you race through the commercials when you have recorded a program with your DVR? Do you rip through the ads in a magazine? How about ignoring those signs along the side of the road advertising something? Yeah, hands on wheel, eyes on road?
This is a sort of ad, right?

Then why do we keep posting ads on social media?

Have you SEEEEEEEN how many ads are out there???? How many times in your newsfeed or your Twitterfeed have you seen BUY MY BOOK! .99 cents today! Freeeeeee! and even more of an ad telling us the blurb or touting the cover etc.

I get so frustrated at the “pros” who keep saying how to use social media to sell books and this is the result. Listen people, social media IS JUST TO BE SOCIAL! Quit trying to sell someone your book with continuous ads running ad nauseum. If I check out your Facebook page or Twitter page and you have NOTHING else but a list of ads for people to buy your book…well, I am running in the opposite direction.

I want to get to know YOU before I hear that you have something to sell. I want YOU as the author to share things with me that make me WANT to buy something from you. Are you a real person? *tapping screen* are you even in there?

So how CAN you market your book without offending?

Market SMART without ad-vertising

Book marketing can be a tricky trick. In addition to social media, a writer has to find other outlets. I recommend going to conferences, pitching in as a panelist, teach classes (to kids who proclaim they don’t read!), give lectures, hold workshops at libraries, print postcards and hand them out to everyone you meet (including that cute kid at Panera Bread), throw book parties, and anything else that you think will work.

But please, please, please, make a friend out of your social media contacts. You are LOSING sales by doing this the way you have been going about it.

Kim Smith. is the author of An Unexpected Performance, a YA fantasy time travel that she hardly ever advertises.