Authors Playing “Follow the Leader”

Many of us have a tendency inculcated in us from our school days to regard someone as a subject authority and to follow whatever that person says. We authors seem especially prone. Before I show you how, let me tell you of how this works in general based on my past experience.

In 1994, I taught myself HTML coding and began designing websites, using my years of experience in art and publication design. At that time, using images was the new big thing, so I avidly created images for my clients’ websites (including the Social Security Administration and the U.S. Postal Service). I could always tell when some subject authority put out a new notice on what to put on a site or when some big company used a new feature on its website. The tables feature was a big one. A couple months after I began that next phase of my career, everyone was using tables on their sites, and most were miscoding them, usually forgetting that end of cell code (</td>) or end of row code (</tr>). Some even forgot the end of table code (</table>). A few months later, animated .gif images were the rage. Fortunately, by then, I was being more discriminating in what to use, assessing if there was really a need for that new feature. Sadly, many website designers had not learned this, so blinking images were everywhere. As HTML coding got more complex and more features came along, this trend to “follow the leader” in using such features, needed or not, grew and continues to grow.

The same thing is happening with authors on social media as they seek success in promoting and selling their short stories, books, etc. Certainly, I don’t blame them for doing what they can in that regard, but it is rather comical to watch. The authors who are playing “follow the leader” stand out, and it makes me wonder about their writing.

Some things these authors are following along rather blindly on:

• Doing freebies on Amazon with the hope that it will spur sales (the jury is still out on whether this works or not – see my commentary below)

• Keeping your sentences, paragraphs, and chapters short, your plots simple and/or formulaic, and your characters rather simple and also formulaic (small wonder a lot of new literature is so pathetic)

• Getting other authors to do a guest blog post on your site and let you do one on theirs (I consented to this for the first time ever and the other writer got mad at how I linked to his site from mine – sigh! Never again.)

• Doing lots of retweeting/reposting of other writers’ works to show how you aren’t all just about your own work

• Doing short videos to promote your work

• Being interviewed on some podcast no one ever heard of

I stand wholly opposed to this “follow the leader” mentality because many are following advice that often doesn’t fit their work and just plain doesn’t work. Yes, authors need to try various things to gain attention for their writing, but they need to assess what those “leaders” are recommending.

About Those Freebies

As for those free giveaways, I want to tell you a bit of a story, and all true:

A few years ago, I was supporting a tea company with its social media and website. I was being paid for my expertise in these areas. That means the company owner should have been coming to me for advice before making decisions or referring people to me who were flooding him with sales pitches and offers. Instead, he kept making decisions that conflicted with my efforts, such as signing up a firm that started putting out contrary social media posts to the image of his company that I had been crafting.

But the worst was when he agreed to provide prizes for a contest. The outcome worked out exactly as I told him it would:

People stopped ordering from his site. Nada. Zip. Zero. They were waiting to see if they won one of the very pricey pu-erh teas (that retailed for hundreds of dollars) that he had put up as prizes.

It took six months after the contest ended for sales to resume. It was a total disaster for his company.

The same is happening in literature. When you do your freebie offer, readers who are by now accustomed to such offers, will flock there for a copy. They will get a copy, possibly read it, and then look for the next freebie. If you think they will then buy your next book, well, a few might, but overall, these people are what I call the “freebie crowd.” They just scout for the next offer.

You need to appeal to readers who will indeed want your next book in that series (one of the tips I have seen with which I actually agree is to write a series). One way to get that is to offer an excerpt instead of a freebie of the first book in the series and then discount that first book. You could also offer a bundle – buy the first book and get the first chapter of the second book for free. Another is to have some kind of subscription arrangement. Anyone who buys the first book gets a discount on the second book. And the buyer of the second book gets a discount on the third book. Unfortunately, I don’t think Amazon has the ability to do this. But you can set it up on your author site.

Bottom Line

If you are a new author just getting out there online or even if you have been online awhile, think carefully about what advice you follow (even this article) and make sure it is right for you.

But again, that is my opinion. Your thoughts always welcome.

Please check out my works in progress (WIPs). And thanks for reading.

Disclaimer: I get no compensation for links in this post or on my site to other sites and/or products.