I've been mugging up on marketing and it seems that all authors are now expected to use social media, respond to emails from readers, blog, tweet, etc.

All very labour intensive and not something I enjoy doing (and I suspect I'm not alone there!). Is there any evidence that it brings in more income in terms of books sold than it costs in terms of opportunity cost of new books not written? In fact, is there any evidence that, particularly for someone with no existing platform, it works at all?

Hi Toast, this is a very interesting question! In answer to your "is there any evidence" question, I suspect the answer is no, purely because no-one has sat down and crunched the numbers.

There will also be a whole host of unmeasurables varying from what kind of writer you are (unpublished, self-published, trad published, big marketing budget, no marketing budget, etc etc etc) to what kind of social marketeer you are (very good, through to very crass and very obviously unwilling)

I would say:

If you are looking for a traditional publishing deal, a social media platform will not make or break said deal.

Yes, if you are publishing a book on guinea-pig dressage and you run the UK's number one guinea-pig dressage blog with 40,000 monthly hits and a newsletter going out to 15,000 members, that is going to make a difference, for sure.

But if you are your average debut novelist then your deal will rest mainly on how good the book is. Which is not to say that a willingness to engage with readers won't help, but 30,000 followers on twitter won't get you a deal if your book is rubbish, and zero web presence won't lose you a deal if your book is genius.

However what is undoubtedly true is that:

* If you are a self-published author, no-one is going to sell that book but you, and social media is a cheap and immediate way to do that.

* If you are any kind of author, marketing budgets are slim to non-existent and building up a relationship with bloggers, readers and booksellers can only be a good thing. The web is a great forum for doing that.

* Writing is a lonely life (sometimes) and reaching out to readers and other writers can be rewarding on all sorts of levels.

* Publishers like authors who are engaged, enthusiastic and willing to muck in. That can be post-publication, pre-publication, web or traditional - but it certainly warms the cockles of a publicist's heart to see their author getting out there and doing their bit.

* "Doing" social media reluctantly or badly is worse than not doing it at all. If someone is on twitter purely to push their book and has no interest in it on a genuine level, frankly that shows. (But, having said that, I suspect a surprising number of authors start tweeting etc because they feel they ought to, and find they enjoy it more than they thought!)

Anyway - long answer to a short question.

For myself, I think responding to emails from readers is absolutely compulsory - and if you get so many you can't manage them, then you can probably afford an assistant . Readers who are enough into our writing to bother to get in touch are to be cherished above just about anyone else except possibly your agent!

On the rest - I know authors on all points of the spectrum. But it's really needn't be the time-sucker-up that people often think of it. I probably spend a total of half an hour a day on Twitter - mix of networking (I've got gigs via twitter) and talking to readers.

And I think Twitter is particularly good if you don't have a platform, because you don't need one - just hang around the edges of the party, joining in where you can, and gradually the network spreads.

I don't use FB for writing stuff, but lots do.

And I've seen relationships establishing on Twitter which have ended up with an agent agreeing (by direct mail) to read an MS...

Blogging's only worth doing if it suits you, I think - as you say, not much use if you don't have a platform and don't have anything particularly blog-suited to say. Even if you do (and mine's very specialist and not really aimed at readers) mine still only takes a couple of hours a week.

Of all the things I do, it really isn't the social networking that eats time that could be writing - it would probably be more when I had a book coming out, but then all promo stuff is more time consuming.

None of it's compulsory. But it's worth remembering that in the slushpile you are up against aspiring writers who can say they know their way round the social networks, and in the battle of the e-book downloads you're up against other authors who are out there and can tweet a link to download there and then...

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Crossed with Flora. She knows what she's talking about...

Hi Flora and Emma - I get those advantages in theory but... I really do wonder if those advantages pan out in practice.

For instance, in the guinea-pig dressage scenario, let's say I've written a thriller, rather than a non-fiction piece involving guinea-pig dressage and that those 40k monthly blog hits and that 15k newsletter represents, say, 20k individuals. How many of those 20k would buy a thriller, given that 230 million books of any kind were bought in the UK last year (about 4 per adult)? Let's call it 1% - that's 200 people from my guinea-pig platform buying my book and let's say I've self-published on KDP and earned 70% of £2.99 which is about £2, then that's £400 from my wearisome blog and newsletter. I would pay £400 not to have to do them; but also, they've probably cost me at least a couple of weeks of solid novel-writing time. I'm not sure that even such a fabbo platform does what people expect.

I've pulled that 1% out of the air, of course, but I wonder if anybody is really mapping their sales in such a way as to have any idea of conversion rates. I'm aware of David Gaughran's blog:

http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/

and Joe Konrath's:

http://jakonrath.blogspot.co.uk/

and hope soon to be wading through more of their back-posts to see if they've got any real detail on this but I suppose the issue is that most authors aren't going to approach their marketing as a quasi-experiment with staged introduction of the different elements of marketing but are just going to chuck everything at promoting the book as soon as it's launched.

I agree that if you get an email from a reader it's rude not to reply but argh...

Also: I think I'm influenced in my thinking on this in how I as a reader think about my favourite authors.

I want to leave them alone so they can write more books! I don't want them wasting time talking to me. I'm assuming they'll know I and others think they're great because they know their sales figures.

I guess this is another side of the question. What percentage of readers care about having any contact with authors and are influenced to buy their books because of that contact? I think the percentage would be vanishingly small - if it's as high as 1% I'd be amazed - so why chase that 1%? Even if they all are such massive fans that they persuade nine more of their circle to buy, that's still only 10% of your sales and if they're that keen on you anyway, are they going to not buy your next book because you don't have a blog or aren't tweeting?

That's a genuine question, by the way, not a rhetorical rant!

The thing is Toast, there's really no point in seeing it as X hits + Y posts + Z tweets = N sales / H amount of hours spent on social media.

That's not the point - and anyway, it's not quantifiable in those terms.

If we're talking about whether the hours of work = an acceptable rate of pay then let's face it - none of us should be writing anyway, bar a select few. We should all be retraining as plumbers.

If you're friendly with a network of bloggers on twitter, are they more likely to give you a review (and a good one at that?) Yes, human nature being what it is, they are.

Will that review convert into sales and if so how many? Who knows. Because the crucial thing is, it entirely depends on how good the book is.

If you want to reduce it to quasi scientific propositions, then how about this:

Amanda Hocking spends a lot of hours on marketing.

Amanda Hocking sells a lot of books.

There are several million other authors also spending a lot of time on marketing who do not sell a lot of books.

What is the % likelihood of me being Amanda Hocking?

Answer: get out your crystal ball mate.

No-one can tell you how many sales (if any) will result from you doing social media because it depends on factors which are unmeasurable - how good your book is and how good you are at interacting with people.

Do it because you want to and because you want to interact with readers and have fun.

Don't do it with a mental spread sheet in your head because it doesn't work like that.

It sounds like you are asking for permission not to do social media.

In which case - I hereby give you permission! If you don't want to do it, you don't have to do it - honest.

Hi Flora - I'm afraid my spreadsheet is inbuilt! I am a massive nerd.

For me, X hits + Y posts etc. really is the point. I want to write my novel anyway so getting money for it would be a bonus, not a compensation. But I don't like social media, hence the need to know if it's actually worth it. On the one hand, the use of social media is very much against my natural inclination; on the other hand, a lot of people on the net are arguing very strongly that it's something that we should all be doing and that we can't expect to market our books successfully if we don't do it.

So, if there's good evidence, I'll make myself do it, and probably we all should. If there isn't, then it's a judgement call and I take all your and Emma's points about the factors that should go into that.

the use of social media is very much against my natural inclination

You do realise this is social media and you're doing ok?

I hope this doesn't sound sarky because it's not meant to be! I mean social media is just interacting with people online and building [on] relationships.

It's not about cheesily tweeting your latest review or begging people to click this link to buy (although admittedly, a fair bit of that goes on, and jolly painful it is too, by and large).

I think what some writers think of, when they think of social media, is hard, direct selling, and most of us are crap at that, and find it cringeworthy. But that's not really what it is or should be - at least not in the main.

I truly don't think you can spread sheet it, unfortunately.

It would be a bit like trying to choose whether to buy a pair of jeans by plotting a graph of cost vs pulls by previous wearers. The information might be there, and you might be able to put it into table form, but the end result would tell you everything and nothing.

She knows what she's talking about..

Just saw this Emma and am tres flattered

Hi Flora - I was hoping that no-one had noticed the glaring contradiction of my using one form of social media to moan about the others but I guess not! But the difference for me with those others is really about pressure to post and pressure to respond, which I don't feel on an online forum. Here, I only post when I feel I've got something to say (which usually isn't very often online, though I've hardly shut up this evening).

Ah, now, jeans-buying based on cost vs pulls of previous wearers: indeed that would tell me nothing in the same way that individual authors' anecdotes of sales after blogging/tweeting etc. tell me nothing because there's no control condition. If we had data from a shop of the pull rate of women according to which style of jeans to which they had been randomly assigned, then we'd be talking. The nearest we're going to get to that in terms of real-life authors is if some huge geek like me has deliberately set up an experiment on their own marketing, or at the very least has tracked sales figures after various marketing attempts.

I gather that authors on KDP get monthly sales figures so would have the means to do this. I read on Joe Konrath's blog that, based on his sales figures, he doesn't reckon that his (massively, hugely popular) blog doesn't generate thriller sales for him and that neither did his existing platform (he was traditionally published before he went with KDP) - he says that what drives his sales are pricing tactics such as dropping his price to 99 cents (or free?) for a day and having his book rocket up into the Kindle bestsellers list for visibility, so that his sales figures are actually his marketing.

He has published an ebook of all his blog posts and readers' comments which is about 350k words or something and I will be ploughing through it at some point to see if I agree on his interpretation of the numbers. He seems to be quite unusual in being transparent about his sales figures and marketing activities so maybe there isn't anyone else out there with comparable data.

Gosh. Interesting. I do know that being in the top 100 on kindle is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy. Self publishing is very different in that respect though, in that you CAN do that kind of price promo at a whim. And also you can choose to be transparent about your sales figures.

If we had data from a shop of the pull rate of women according to which style of jeans to which they had been randomly assigned, then we'd be talking.

It would have to be double blind though, otherwise the price perception of the label might influence the wearer and pullee.

I think you might also have trouble randomly assigning authors to social marketing strategies In fact, about as much trouble as randomly assigning fashionistas to an unflattering kind of jeans style.

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More seriously though, I don't think you can equate a blog post to a sales spike in that simplistic way.

I mean, I do school visits, and I know that they cause a sales spike on Amazon. How much of a sales spike in terms of my time? That I don't know. And what you absolutely can't measure is the word of mouth, the good will, the people who will go and buy the sequel when it comes out... etc etc etc.

I will never know what % of my sales are in some way related to my school visits. I can tell you what I sold at a given event, and the shift in my Amazon ranking afterwards - but that's only a small part of the whole picture.

I'm assuming they'll know I and others think they're great because they know their sales figures.

Nope. It really doesn't feel like that - not to me, anyway. Interacting with individual readers is one of the highlights of the job. It's the difference between a nice fat figure on your bank statement, and actually owning some wonderful object, or having an amazing holiday.

The thing is that the huge drive for most of us is to feel that we've communicated. I'm sure I'm not alone in just how much someone emailing me to tell me that they loved X or want to know if Y.... is an enormous buzz, just as it is at a reading or an event or even a review. Having someone in the middle of a Twitter conversation about something else say, "And by the way, I loved The Mathematics of Love but I wondered about whether..." is just the best feeling. That's why we do it. If you don't have a way for readers to get in touch with you, then that's never going to happen.

And, even more importantly perhaps, that 1% of readers are going to be the advocates of this book, and the most likely to buy the next book, and so on. They're the core of the potential readership for you as an author over the long term, and any writer who has any interest in their longevity will do what they can to nurture that core, including being friendly and visible.

Also, the maths of networks is much, much more complicated than profit and loss and simple stuff like that. (I said that slightly tentatively to my sister who has a PhD in Combinatorics, and she agreed). You don't quite know where contacts are going to come from, or lead to, but they do lead to things.

There isn't really so much pressure, either. Having built up some followers and so on, if I don't feel Twitterish, I don't. If I do, I do, and soon get back into the swing of it. The blog is more of a commitment, but that feeds my teaching vastly - i.e. the other side of my income - and is more than worth it for that.

True about the pullees!

That's interesting about your school visits - you have at least got some evidence there that they're causing a spike. Pity Amazon doesn't give you (or your publisher) detailed data about how big a spike.

True about not being able to measure the knock-on but if there's no spike in the first place, there's probably no knock-on either.

I'm off for a bath now and then off to bed but thanks for making this such an interesting discussion this evening! I've really enjoyed it and you've broadened out my thinking.

Pity Amazon doesn't give you (or your publisher) detailed data about how big a spike.

On US Amazon you can get your Nielsen figures. That still only represents between 50% and 70% of sales, though. Less, probably, in the sense that direct sales through the school don't count.

The thing is also that it's cumulative. I do a signing in a bookshop, and quite few people come (we all have stories of that one.) But the poster's in the window for a week - there's a listing in the local free sheet - one of the other school mums notices it because she knows I write - and six weeks later, her sister remembers she needs a present for a not very favourite aunt who's very into Richard III, so she buys it. Plus there are various Tweets and a few mentions on my blog, and someone else who follows me in the US because I followed him because he's interesting, sees one of them and buys ithe US edition because he knows that his uncle enjoyed my first novel.

So, which of all those things actually sold those two book? It was actually the signing, because all the rest wouldn't have happened without it. But it certainly won't look like it from any number crunching you could produce.

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Obviously that's a physical thing, but blog tours, FB stuff... it's the same kind of thing. It's how much you're out there in how many connected places, that adds up.

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I blogged about this business of promoting yourself here:

http://emmadarwin.typepad.com/thisitchofwriting/2010/05/several-rabbits-at-once.html

which is relevant. I think the real thing is that you have to do something. The key is to work out which of everything you could do, suits you best.