Have you ever seen actors promoting a movie and it’s clear that they’re just over it? I’m not talking about big spots, like when they’re on with Kimmel or Fallon. I mean when they’ve obviously had a long day talking to random reporters for magazines you haven’t heard of and everybody is asking them the same question over and over. And they’re just through.

As an author — and I think I can speak for all of us on this one — we get it.

So as I wind down toward the release of THE MISFIT SOLDIER in eight days, I thought I’d share some thoughts on promoting a book.

Let me say up front, if you’re an author and you’re here looking for me to tell you what works…I don’t know. Nobody knows. I mean, maybe that guy that shows up in youtube ads and tells you that he knows how to sell millions of books…maybe he knows* something. But the rest of us? We have no idea.

*He doesn’t know.

That’s not exactly true. I have seen one thing in this cycle that definitely work. Audible sent a push notification to people who read my past books telling them my current book is up for pre-order. That had an immediate impact. But nobody knows how or why that happens, so I don’t feel like ‘Have Amazon Push Your Book’ is particularly useful advice. But if you can get that, you should definitely take it.

So if I’m not going to tell you about how to sell books, what am I here for? Who is this post for? I don’t know. I have thoughts, okay? I have thoughts and it’s Monday morning and I’m not ready to work on my next novel yet today, so I’m going to share them.

I’m going to break things down into the type of promotion, and tell you what I think about each one.

Let’s start easy.

Podcasts and video interviews. If you’re a podcaster or do a…whatever it is they call video podcasts…and you want to talk to an author on your show, look for authors with books coming out in the next couple of months, reach out to them, and ask. Because I’m here to tell you, it’s a really easy yes.

“But Mike,” you say. “I only get forty listeners for an average show. How can I get authors to come on?”

Easy. Because you do all the work. It’s an easy yes because it’s such a small commitment. All I have to do is show up for 45 minutes and talk about books? Yes please. I honestly don’t care how big your audience is, because that’s easy. I like talking about books, and you’re not asking me to write anything, so it doesn’t feel like work.

Now…will I go out of my way to approach podcasts that reach 40 people? Probably not. Because while it’s easy and I have a good time doing them, there’s no indication that we’re going to sell any books. So while I’m happy to come on if someone asks, or even if I see an open invite, it’s not something I go look for. It’s not because I’m mercenary and only here to sell books (although that’s not unreasonable). It’s because I feel like I need to be trying to sell books during the run up to my book launch, and it feels like I’m not doing my job if I’m spending a lot of time applying to do these sorts of things.

Should authors apply to podcasts with larger audiences? Probably. But bigger platforms usually plan their stuff way in advance, and speaking for myself here, I’m just not organized enough to book something six months out.

But I can’t stress this enough…if you have a podcast and want to talk to authors? Ask. You’re going to get more yesses than you think.

Guest Posts and Written Interviews. This one is more complicated.

First, let me talk to the writer side. If you’re a writer and you want to do a guest post on a blog somewhere, ask. You’re going to get more yesses than you think. Why? Because at the end of the day, most blogs are looking for content, and you’re offering to provide it for free. Will every blog say yes? Of course not. Popular spots have more people willing to offer up that free content than they have space to run. But for an average site? Ask early enough, and they’ll probably get you in, assuming you pitch something that fits with the interest of their readers.

“Why you should buy my book” isn’t a great pitch. Think about a guest on a talk show. Yes, they’re there to promote their movie, but they also usually come with some entertaining stories or something else to make them a useful guest. So look at what the site does and pitch something that seems like a good fit. The bigger the audience, the better the pitch has to be, as a rule. Sorry if that’s offensive, or again, if it seems mercenary. Doesn’t make it wrong.

So how do you pick your spots, if most places are going to say yes? You only have so much time and so much to say, and you’re not going to sell a ton of books, even if the site has good reach. If you convert 2 or 3 out of a hundred viewers into buyers, you had a really successful day. So it’s hard to get motivated for that. Here’s what I’d offer: don’t look for sales. I say that, because you’re not going to get them, so it’s kind of pointless to make that your metric.

I look at two things: Audience, and content. Content is easy. If it’s something I want to write anyway, then I’m going to do it and not worry about audience. So let’s talk about audience.

It’s not all about numbers. For example, I can write post here on my own blog and get maybe 200 people to see it on average. So in theory, I shouldn’t spend a lot of time doing posts where fewer than that will see it. Except that’s flawed thinking. Because it’s not the number of people, it’s who they are. Say I only get 100 views somewhere else, but those 100 people are different than my 200. Because my 200 are, for the most part, similar to the 200 people who read my last post. If they’re coming to my site, they probably already know about my book coming out. So reaching 100 new sets of eyes might be more valuable.

But I already said that you’re not likely to convert those into sales…and even if you convert 3 percent, if it’s only 100 viewers, that’s 3 sales. About 3 dollars. Is it worth it? It might be. Because it depends on who sees it.

Let’s talk about it in terms of guest posting here, on my blog (which, if you’re a SF author and you’re interested, you can apply to do that here. Hint: I’m going to say yes.)

Probably a hundred people are going to read that post. Most of them aren’t going to click on a buy link. I know this, because I’m sitting here looking at the stats for previous guest posts. Okay. So then why do it? Well, the demographic that comes to my site to read it is heavily skewed toward readers. And inside of that, it’s again skewed toward SF readers. So it’s an audience that you want. That’s the first thing. Sure. Maybe they don’t buy. But it puts your book in their head so when they hear it mentioned again somewhere, there’s a connection. So you’re fertilizing the field.

Second, you don’t know where the magic link is going to come from. I’ve sold books for other people. If I read a SF book and like it, I talk about it. If I talk about it positively, it sells books. Not a lot of books. Somewhere between 3 and 20, depending on the book and how much I talk about it. Okay, that’s something. But hold on…that’s not the part that matters. How many reviewers follow me on twitter? I don’t know. More than a few. Could me talking about it, or even mentioning it, put it on the radar of one of them? Of course. And you just never know how that’s going to play out.

Here’s how something like that worked for me. With my first book, PLANETSIDE, reviewer Niki Hawkes read it and really liked it. She gave it a great review. She’s a popular reviewer, and if you go to goodreads, you’ll see where at least a few people picked it up because of her review. One of those people was Petrik Leo. For those who don’t know, Petrik is an even more popular reviewer. He specifically responded to Niki’s review and said that he picked it up because of that, which is big, because Petrik reviews a lot more fantasy than he does SF, so he probably wouldn’t have found it any other way. He also wrote a good review, which also led to sales. How many sales did I gain from one reviewer happening to stumble onto my book and liking it? I don’t know. A lot. And that’s just from the connection I know about.

In the end, the best way to sell books is for readers to tell people they know about it. So even if you’re finding just a few readers in any spot, it might end up creating that spark that spreads into a flame.

Now some thoughts for bloggers and web interviewers.

This is the hard stuff. Sure, we do interviews and guest posts, and all the same stuff I said above applied. And sure, I’ll probably do yours if you ask me, so you should definitely reach out to writers and ask. But what you get as far as content depends on a few things.

1. Your audience. Sorry. Just being real. Much like the actor who saves their best material for Fallon, I’m giving my best content to the biggest spots. It’s just common sense, right? John Scalzi is super generous in lending his blog to other writers, so I’m absolutely giving him my best, original material, because that’s where the most people are going to see it.

2. What you’re asking. Here’s where you can help shape your own content. Ask something original. I can’t tell you how many ‘author interview’ posts I’ve done that ask the same questions. And I’ll answer them–that’s the job–but there are only so many ways to say the same thing. But there are ways you can stand out.

Read the book first. This almost never happens, but when it does, it makes for so much better content. I did a written interview for https://winteriscoming.net/ where the interviewer read my book and asked specific questions about it, and it was awesome. I was able to give him original stuff that I hadn’t shared anywhere else before. One question, at the end, was so good I swear I spent forty-five minutes thinking about it. He asked me if I was putting together a suicidal mission behind enemy lines (like the ones my characters try in THE MISFIT SOLDIER) what characters from SF would I want on my team. What a great question! (I’m not going to share my answer, because that post doesn’t come out until the 26th or 27th. If you follow me on twitter, I’ll link to it when it’s live.)

Have an interesting theme. I did a guest post the other day for Marshall Ziringue, which will post soon, for his site What are Writers Reading I loved doing this post, because I got to talk about books I’m reading (and loving.) I didn’t even try to figure out his audience, because I didn’t care. It was something I wanted to write about and he gave me a way to do that.

Combine it with a review. If you’re a review site and plan to review the book, make that known. Even if you haven’t done that yet, it’s motivational. Bonus points if you’ve at least started the book and you think it’s going to be a good review. After all, if you’re going to trash it, that guest post might get a little awkward 🙂

Be someone I know. When someone who I interact with on social media or know from somewhere else asks for a guest post, I say yes. Because then it’s not about promoting myself anymore, it’s about helping out someone I like with content. And right or wrong from a promo standpoint, I’m usually going to do that if I can.

Reading back through all of this, I’m not sure if it’s going to be helpful to anybody. But this is how I think about a month into a promotion cycle, and I thought I’d share it.

If you want to tell me the team that you’d build if you could choose from any SF characters to go on a suicide mission behind enemy lines, I’ve already turned mine in, so I’d love to see yours in the comments.