And over the last 6 months Transit TV started playing book trailers in Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Orlando, Atlanta and Chicago. That’s 10 million viewers per video. UCF is working with schools and libraries to put kiosks in high schools to show book trailers. YA authors have got to love that! Digital opportunities, whether video or audio, continue to grow in venues and popularity.

I heard recently that there was a book store/chain somewhere testing out using book videos in their store(s). I can’t remember where I heard that, but it made sense to me. If the book video is well-done, then the odds are that you could have an advertising opportunity in a KEY location with an audience predisposed to buy. It’s not going to guarantee a sale, but if it drives a reader over to the section to pick up the book, it ups the likelihood of a sale, and that’s critical.

Book videos might not seem to have effect, but if they’re informative and provide enough info about the book, they work just like a movie trailer. But they have to be well done to even make a reader want to click through, and that’s something I need to figure out how to do. Setting the video up so that it takes the viewer right to the

I think book stores will eventually use book videos in the same way Blockbuster, Best Buy, etc. use movie trailers to pique people’s interest. It’s one of the reasons why I buy full licenses for all my music and photographs and check restrictions. Eventually COS will get my business when I can justify the cost. Their videos are well done.

You can do your own press release and have it put on a newswire service for free here- http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/about_us.php

It seems that most of the readers here don’t care for book video, but Google search loves it and it absolutely helps your SEO ranking. And over the last 6 months Transit TV started playing book trailers in Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Orlando, Atlanta and Chicago. That’s 10 million viewers per video. UCF is working with schools and libraries to put kiosks in high schools to show book trailers. YA authors have got to love that! Digital opportunities, whether video or audio, continue to grow in venues and popularity.

There are a variety of tools out there for online marketing. Find one you can believe in. Find one you enjoy doing. Why invest in anything that takes the joy out of what you love? IMHO

I just got an error when I tried to submit this, so if it shows up twice I apologize.
Gotta love technology. ;-)

It would also seem advantageous to read hefty excerpts in a selection from an author of various genres or subgenres, in the event a different voice or tale might appeal more.

As MaryK indicated, short stories can offer a sample of voice and plot development…the shorter the short, the harder to get right.

Kris Eton mentioned reviews; one review on a high profile site that I know is aligned with my tastes will influence my decision, similar I imagine to Jill A. Whereas, reviews on Fictionwise and Amazon mean nothing to me, an author can ask 50 friends to post 5 star ratings and excellent comments.

Ms. Veinglory knows of what she speaks, I see Emily everywhere and have long visited her blog. She receives reviews due to name recognition and consistently great writing, and I am certain Emily must work every hard at both.

I’m not into trailers at all. They’re like tv commercials to me and tell me nothing about the quality of the book. I know they’re the rage, and might give a boost to name recognition, but I’d never buy a book based on a picture, moving or otherwise.

I always look for Fictionwise reader reviews as a more likely way to gauge quality. Sort of like Amazon. I trust the overall impression of many readers vs. the impression of one reviewer.

Sadly, they tend to pick and choose the books they want to read. And who can blame them? They don’t get paid. It’s all free books for the reviews.

I guess I’d just like to say, don’t write off a book just because it doesn’t have a review somewhere. :-)

I jumped off the cliff and spent some money on an SBTB ad. I didn’t really think about getting more sales out of it. But I saw it as ‘name recognition.’ The number of impressions I am getting is just staggering for little old author me. Whether or not it does any good, I don’t know yet. But I have had a decent number of click throughs and most of them don’t just look at the main page and leave. They click around, read excerpts, look at a couple of blog posts, etc.

I just wasted about 7 or 8 hours of my time in the last week making my very first book trailers. I’ve never bought a book after watching a trailer. However, I was creating them more for website content than anything else. My readers and writer friends will look at them. It’s something different than reading a blog post or an excerpt. I’m all about having interesting and varied content on my website.

As for Yahoo groups, I have sold books by posting to Yahoo reader groups. And for those who don’t know, some NY publishers have promo dates on these Yahoo groups, too. So it’s not just us little epubbed writers who seem to feel we get something out of it.

I still go back to the idea of getting your name out there. The more people see your name and your book titles, the more likely it is you may get a sale from those people one day down the road.

Meanwhile, I continue to keep writing and hoping that I’ll get more readers little by little.

Great topic!

So, good advertsing may build recognition, but just because you do advertise does not mean you are having this result–I think a lot of authors are encouraged to fall for the ‘church of advertsing’ and spend more money than their ebook will ever make in its adverting (IMHO, that’s carzy) as an ‘investment in their brand. If, even taken over many years, the heavier advertiser is not selling more books then they have effectively given away net profit for nothing.

Advertising well on a small budget is difficult. And I beleive that good small budget advertising does in fact focus on immediate sales. Because you can’t guarantee reaching that potential reader ever again with your $100 budget for that book, so you need to soft sell and make the sale in one or two clicks. Brand oriented small budget campaigns only make sense of you focus on a narrow channel with a lot of repeat traffic.

Offer free content on your Web site, geared toward readers and authors.

Free website content is about the only advertising that will get me to buy ebooks. It’s so hard to find reliable ebook reviews and most of the time there isn’t any review, useful or not. But if an author has free short stories on her website, I can clearly tell whether or not I like the author’s style.

Just this week, I discovered a new ebook author because she has a short story on her website that I really enjoyed. Can’t remember how I got to her website, can’t really remember her name at this moment; but I have her site bookmarked at home and next time I buy ebooks I’ll be buying hers.

I also continue to be ambivalent about another ebook author I’ve had my eye on. The book’s blurb sounds good, but there are no reviews, and only a tiny excerpt on the publisher’s website. No sale.

No matter how many people say they’re not affected by advertising, they are on a subconscious level. They often don’t even realize it. Everyone recognizes the Clydesdale horses. They automatically know it’s a Busch product (although who KNOWS what the new owner will do with that century old name. Grrrrr). People don’t have to drink beer to perhaps buy beer to serve at a party.

An author example: I haven’t bought a Helen Kay Dimon book yet, but I know her name because I use the little note pad that came with her name emblazoned on the magnet piece that’s on my frig. I see it a lot, because I’m at my frig two or three times daily and I walk by the frig when passing through the kitchen. I don’t necessarily see Helen’s promo magnet every time, but I’ve seen it enough to recognize her name. So the next time I’m in B&N or Borders, and if I see her name on a book, I’m definitely inclined to pick it up to read the back cover. If it piques my interest, then I’ll buy. The promo effort may or may not result in a sale, but the advertising created a continued presence to make me familiar with Helen’s name. While this is a promo item I’m talking about, the same thing holds true for advertisements in magazines and on websites.

Advertising isn’t always affordable for authors, so it’s important to pick where your limited dollars are going to get the most bang for one’s buck. A website with high click throughs is generally a good deal if you’re limited fund wise, but it has to be a steady presence. You can’t do it for one month and move on.

P.T. Barnum offers up the Rule of Seven, meaning that a potential customer has to see the product at least seven times before they’re likely to buy. In today’s current age of advertisement overload, that 7 has multiplied to about 21, but the principle is the same.

The next best thing to Advertising is writing a great book so word-of-mouth does your advertising for you.

I do read reviews on this site, SBTB, and AAR. A good review combined with the story sounding like something I’d like will have me trying to remember the author’s name. Then if I hear more about them, or see them in the bookstore, I’ll likely pick the book up and check it out. That might result in a sale.

Advertising by itself is unlikely to make be buy. That being said, advertising helps to keep an author’s or book’s name in the top of my mind long after first hearing about it on a review site. It also helps to remind me of an author that I haven’t read for a while. With the million other things that are in my mind every day, having my memory jogged can be very helpful.

But you definitely get what you pay for. I’m on an extremely limited promotion budget, and I can only do a teeny amount of what’s really needed. For instance, if I paid for a primetime advertising campaign on TV, backed with a few billboards and radio ads, I know for sure my sales would go up. But there is no way I can afford that, so I do what I can.

My website, and blogging on one of the romance community’s major blogs has done the most for me recently. I don’t blog about my books (well I do when I have a new release, but usually it’s about the state of the market, the books I’ve read etc) and I started doing it because I enjoyed it so much. Sybil is a doll and I love the other people on the site. And I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t enjoy the hell out of the site anyway.

I do other stuff as and when I can. I do a newsletter and write for the group blog for the UK Regency people. I blog with Mavens of the Pen. I’m an active member of a few yahoo groups. I can’t do forums, never got the hang of them and Facebook and Myspace are mysteries to me, although I do have pages there I haven’t a clue what to do with them.

I go to Romantic Times every year. That’s my main expense, but every year I’ve been, my career has advanced a little bit more. Not to mention having a blast every time.

I write and I try to do it as well as I can. That’s what brings readers back, when they know you will give them a good read. That’s about all most of us can do.

For the rest – yes I do contests for free books, I do giveaways. I’m just sorting out my giveaways for Romantic Times next year but I don’t see these as promotion per se. They’re thank you’s and speading a bit of happiness because I love doing what I do and I want to say thanks and have some fun.

The psychology of small ads is that they will tend to work, or not work. Contrary to most fictional accounts, the human memory just dumps most of what it sees out of the buffer after a very short time. It take a huge campaign making multiple impressions over a shortish time to build anything up. (E.g. large brand, large budget blitzes).

Decades of practice have enabled me to read any publication without even seeing the ads.

I once tried to look at a book trailer, but it didn’t work on my computer. I can imagine that they would be fun to create, but I can’t imagine that they would boost sales.

The things that influence me are reviews and comments on sites like this and recommendations from friends. Not ads. I would imagine that the hard part for an author, especially a new author, is getting that review in the first place.

I don’t see a lot of banners or active content simply because it is blocked.

That’s an excellent point, actually, as I’m the same – I don’t even see the ads on my own sites. I’m also pretty good at focusing on content over advertising, and distinguishing infomercial kind of material from the real thing. Which might not be an argument so much against advertising, but for persistence of advertising.

I still think reviews and recommendations are much more important to an author. I don’t think I’ve ever bought a book in my life based on an ad.

I have to say something about online ads. I try to be a safe surfer. I try to avoid overloading my machine with cookies, malware and spyware– hence, I am very cautious about where I go. I browse with updated Firefox with Adblock Plus, AVG Safe Search and NoScript running. I don’t see a lot of banners or active content simply because it is blocked. I have to visit a site repeatedly before I will trust it enough to unblock it permanently. I also have something called Cooliris previews that lets me preview the content of a link without pulling up the entire page.

Putting a lot of scripts and links in an online ad may be making it less effective not more.