Lead generation is basically marketing speak for “how will you initiate interest in your product or service.”
It’s not something many writers are encouraged to think about — there is a mindset, more prevalent in other genres than here in the romance community — that once the book is done, it generates interest simply because it exists, and there’s a sense of frustration when the newly released book (or books) aren’t generating the kind of visibitiliy and sales they’d like.
Truth is, all writers need to generate leads. We call it different things — running a newsletter, building a platform on social media, blogging, generating adds on Facebook or Amazon, newsletters swaps, and putting calls to action in the back of a book — but they’re all predicated on the same idea: get someone interested in you and your writing so you can further that relationship and build a sale.
It may be horrible marketing speak, but I actually like the phrase lead generation because it keeps me focused on high level strategy rather than immediate tactics and tools, which have a tendency to be less effective as more people use them.
In just the last year we’ve seen Facebook adds and Newsletters become a tougher method to use effectively because of changes Apple’s made to the way it handles privacy, while the cost of Amazon ads has increased as more and more authors flock to them. Meanwhile, Booktok and Instagram have become the hot new means of reaching out to authors… but they will grow less effective as more authors flock to those methods.
One thing I will stress — less effective doesn’t mean ineffective. It just means they’re no longer going to have the outsized impact, and you’ll need to invest time and money in learning to use those tools effectively.
Making effective use of your backlist will often come down to three questions:
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Like many of you, I have good weeks and bad weeks on the writing front. This week has been rocky, and if
Welcome to GenrePunk Ninja supplemental, where I occasionally post foundational essays written before I launched the GenrePunk Ninja newsletter, especially if they’re
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Hey, Peter. How does this differentiate from the ‘author brand’?
Ideally, one’s a long-term strategic decision (the brand) and the other is a short-term tactical one (lead generation), although choices in one area will always influence the other.
Or, to put it another way, the emotional resonances you attach to the brand are why people will buy for your, but your lead generation are how they know they have the opportunity to do so.
The why is rarely going to change (unless you’re pivoting from one genre to another and recreating your author persona from scratch), but the how will change depending on resources, available tools, and the sheer amount of content you’ve got to use.
My high level strategy is remarkably consistent, and has been for twenty years: find new readers, pull them into a promotional stream I control, and sell them on additional engagement with my work. How that manifests evolved with time, resources, and the sheer amount of product I had available.
Fifteen year ago, when I was starting out, my lead generation was primarily comprised putting stories in markets where the kinds of readers I wanted were already and pulling them towards my blog (or, gods forbid, my Livejournal) where I’d gradually try and become their favourite author by entertaining them and showcasing new stories as they went live.
I had a lot of time, and not a lot of money, and no real readership to amplify any new publication, so it was the most cost-effective and efficient form of lead generation I could do (and would still do today, were I starting out — short fiction markets pay you and generate leads for you, which is not a bad thing).
Today, the blog is less of a destination and more of a lead generator unto itself — I tend to focus on posts that have shareable content, and put the occasional call to action to the places where I’d like engagement to take place here in 2022 — my newsletter and my Patreon. But I’m also generating leads through paid advertising, end-notes in existing books, offering short-term deals that use a particular book as a loss-leader, etc.
Each lead will have a specific tactical goal — if I’m giving away a copy of Exile, for example, it’s all about getting people to pick up Frost, which will then focus on getting people to pick up Crusade, which will then end with a pitch for signing up for my newsletter, which will eventually try and connect them to my Patreon where there’s more books and content they’ll likely enjoy.
But it’s still the same long-term strategy and brand, and I’m ready to pivot on a dime if need be. If I found myself unemployed tomorrow and needed to live on my writing income a little more than I am right now, you can bet I’d drop the paid advertising in a heartbeat and potentially go back to writing short stories like I did at the start of my fiction writing career. I’d lean a little heavier on free social media content and blogging than I do, and would probably aim to create content that’s a lot more sharable than my current output (which really only speaks to the “lets get nerdy about publishing” aspect of my brand).