Using the web to promote children’s books

Posted in Publishing by Alex on October 9th, 2008

The Internet and the world of social networking expands daily and, sitting here with a book-specific website, as well as accounts on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Livejournal, Bebo, Blogger, Twitter, Wordpress, I’ve done my bit with regards to clogging up the arteries of Web 2.0.

So, nearly a year on from the launch of the Mousehunter website, what have I learnt from the experience?

(For anyone looking in from outside the impregnable bubble of children’s book publishing, I should probably point out from the off that absolutely no normal marketing rules apply. Unless you have a whopping budget, which very few children’s publishers will have, you will not find a way to directly get your books in front of their intended readers. And this is why you have to think laterally and cannily. Think subterfuge, think contacts, think favours, but most of all, think what you can do for yourself. You have to think, therefore, INTERNET!!)

The blog is and always will be king.

I’m the biggest advocate of blogging, and in all honesty it is the best tool, no matter what platform you opt for (be it blogger, Live Journal, WordPress, whatever). It’s actually probably much more useful than the main Flash-based website that it’s latched onto. With each post you make on the blog, a new set of information pings off towards Google, each time refreshing its searches and, if you’re clever highlighting the name of your book in some way. You can do video, audio, whatever you want.

There’s a whole world of authors and people interested in the writing game out there blogging, and it’s easy to make friends and link to them. You support them, they support you. That’s blogging and it’s wonderful, not to mention a great way to learn from more experienced authors. I certainly would never have had conversations with people in America if it weren’t for my blog.

The traffic you get coming to a blog will make you realise exactly how useful it is. If you don’t have a blog, get one.

After the usefulness of this blog, the next most helpful tool was and is Twitter. It makes a terrific companion to a blog by being immediate. It’s the text message version of a blog, compared to the phone call length real thing. Once again, Twitter is useful for bringing people together - but possibly in a more social, local area way than a blog that will be read worldwide. I’m certain that more people will read my Twitter feed regularly than my blog, so that shows how useful it is.

Next most useful tool would be the Facebook group. Now this is different to just being on Facebook, as that’s next to useless for marketing a book. Okay, you can connect with friends, but it’s not searchable from Google, so it’s a waste of time. The group, though, is something you’d set up within it - like my Pirate Mousehunting Group for example.

Where this is beneficial is that it’s a way of forming a social group specifically around your book - and easily too. Facebook is easy for this sort of thing, thankfully. It’s great as it acts like a mailing list that people don’t mind being on. When books come out you mail everyone in the group. Simple as that. So it’s useful, but its content is not searchable on Google, so it should only run in tandem with other mechanisms, like a blog.

Now, MySpace… I don’t find this easy to work at all, and I have the patience and a little bit of web knowledge to help me learn new applications. I honestly think that MySpace is nice for music, or if you know a teenager who’ll set it up for you, maybe spoken word/poetry. Otherwise stay away. You can do much better with a blog.

Bebo is a little different, in that it’s actively set up for books - and children’s books too. It’s again a little fiddly to manage, and the whole process of getting your book on the front page so that it will be spotted, is much like a normal marketing problem with getting your books into shop displays. Not easy. The other course of action is to search Bebo making friends, but as the main bulk of folk on there are children, that seems a bit of a concern. So Bebo was a no-no for me.

So there you have it. I’m sure there are many things I could have tried, but these are the feelings I have about all the platforms I used. Feel free to put me right on anything, or offer tips, won’t you!