Readers have different reading habits on different devices, and if you can discover those reading habits, you can better market your book to specific reading behaviors. It's a tough thing to know and there isn't much data that I can find overall on this, but I've started to dig into this with my own readership and use what I find to tweak my marketing outreach.
The basic approach is an adaptation of how any marketer will adjust a marketing campaign to focus energy on what is working as the campaign moves along. In its simplest form, what I mean is that if you find you are selling more eBooks, focus your marketing efforts on getting more digital copies out there, and the same for any other device or format.
1. eReaders
A lot of authors ask me whether they should publish an eBook or a print book first. My answer is typically to do both. One reason for this is simply that different people prefer to buy a book in different forms. But I also think there are some advantages to marketing one or the other more aggressively. When you launch your book, all pistons are firing. But after a few weeks, you'll see some trends. If you find that your book is doing best on Kindle or iPad, or that the eBook in general is selling more across devices, you can shift your focus to free giveaway programs like the Kindle Lending Library or Smashwords to go after a larger readership there.
2. Print
My book does better in print. I find that people respond well to live readings or to having a copy passed to them from a friend. For that reason, I've focused my time on doing readings and having print books available there. I've also started selling my books as 2 for 1 in person so that the reader can have one to pass on to a friend if they like it. The theory is that then the friend will pass it on, etc. and that will spread the word of mouth in person and generate sales.
3. Web readers
Some readers, especially non-fiction or short story readers, discover a lot of new authors through the web. This could be on web writing sites like Wattpad where there is a thriving community of readers looking for new stories to follow, or on literary sites like TheRumpus where they publish stellar writing. If you are publishing things on your own blog and getting a good response or finding success in your blogger outreach, keep at it and look for as many opportunities there as possible.
Have any of you who are publishing found more success in one format than another?
Image courtesy of Cory M. Grenier via flickr
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