Book Promotion Rant
Allow me to complain a little…
When I take part in book promotions, my leader magnets are fully edited novellas or short stories. Fiction and my genre is sci-fi / fantasy.
Recently, I downloaded a lot of leader magnets from various promotions I participated in on Story Origin and Book Funnel. I found that many of them were not edited well, if at all. Some had awkward language or rambled on with too much description. They were so cumbersome to read that I gave up. This is not a good place to be lazy, why rush to get something out there? I don’t understand this tendency in the least. The leader magnet is your first impression, it gives readers a taste of who you are as a writer.
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I am new at building my list, I don’t have a lot of followers. I realize I should be grateful to be included in promotions and not fuss about what others do. But I am wondering how you all feel about promoting authors who offer these poorly written, badly edited works. Do your readers appreciate the promotions regardless? Because, I have to be honest here, after downloading some of the leader magnets in the promos I took part in, I felt sort of embarrassed that I promoted them in my newsletters.
With my limited experience with how funnel promotions work, I see no way to evaluate what the author’s work will be like other than by their cover and blurb. Which can be misleading. For example, I downloaded one writer’s novella during my first promotion (it had a great cover). I got their first newsletter inviting me to join their ARC group for a debut novel. I chose to do that. They had a professional website, landing pages, and cute little advert posts about characters from the novel. Everything looked professional. I was intrigued by their worldbuilding too. Then I tried to read the leader magnet. It was poorly written and not well edited. I couldn’t finish it. I had already promised to be on their ARC team for the novel and was dreading that obligation. But surprisingly the novel was great! It was edited and well crafted, and such a stark contrast to the novella (which I still have not read). I was surprised that they were able to build their list with that offering and I suspect people shelved it and had not read it right away.
The other Leader Magnet disappointments are those that give you a first chapter and then say “Wait for the release of my novel.” Or “Join my ARC team to get a free copy of the book.” I am perfectly happy to do reviews, and I suggest people leave a call to action at the back of their books giving links for readers to do that. But I am always tempted to unsubscribe when tricked onto someone’s list with this sort of offering.
The one I just read was a little too wordy when it came to descriptions, I trudged through all of that because the subject was interesting and the story was leading to a mysterious place. But as soon as the main character entered into the promised unknown… the next page was a QR code to join their ARC team. What a letdown! Will I do that… no. At least the first author mentioned gave me a complete novella which was a precursor to the novel. It wasn’t well written or edited but it was a full story, and well-intentioned. So, when asked in the Newsletter to join their ARC, I was willing, and I gave great reviews in all the places they requested them.
I just want to say don’t trick people into joining your newsletter with a first chapter, it’s not cool, and they will likely not stick with you. Take the time to give them a short story or something complete. I’d very much like to hear any feedback from those of you who have been doing this longer than I have. Maybe you have a different opinion and you can enlighten me.
