Friday, March 10, 2006

More Marketing & Weekend

This question arises from the responses to yesterday's post on marketing. The majority of respondents voted for the power of word-of-mouth. What I'm interested in is how much of that word-of-mouth was off the Internet. I realize I'm talking to an Internet-savvy audience but even so, have you had any experience of hearing about a book offline? Say from booksellers, friends or reading groups?

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I'm going under this weekend in an attempt to finish the edits on Visions of Heat. I'm working on paper so I still have to enter the changes into the computer but that takes comparatively little time after the thinking stuff is done. Wish me luck!

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And just because it's Friday (or will be soon if you're in a different timezone), what would you do and where would you go this weekend if money and time were not an issue? And who would you do it with?

Personally, I think I'd fly off to some deserted island off the coast of Fiji, find a beach and collapse in a happy pile of utter relaxation in the warm sunshine. My travelling companion would of, course, be Paolo the Pool Boy! :)

Photo courtesy of the Fiji Visitors Bureau

9 comments :

Anonymous said...

Hmm...I find new books I want to read online. Mostly because my friends here don't read so no word of mouth.

Lynn Raye Harris said...

I think I hear all my news online. That goes for buzz too.

Hmm, all I need are for the clouds and rain to go away and, voila, vacation paradise. Though if money were no object, I'd fly to Maui and stay at the Grand Wailea Resort. Wailea, Maui

meljean brook said...

I don't know many romance readers offline -- so all of the word-of-mouth for me is online.

Josie said...

If money were no object...and I lived in a universe where I could simply wish for things and they'd appear before me...then I'd find myself in Tahiti with Sean Bean as my travelling companion.

Anonymous said...

Nalini,

Check out MJ Rose's blog. She has some good ideas and suggestions.

Also look at Allison Brennan. She didn't do much promotion except her website and a lot of web presence (she's fairly active on RWClist and RWA) and created a lot of buzz because she's debuting w/ RS, which many people said was more or less dead.

There's another writer....who's also generated a lot of buzz...but didn't care for her books all that much. Something just didn't click for me.

Nalini Singh said...

(I'm not on the internet. I'm working. This is my evil twin.)

But if I were online, this is what I would say (^v^)!

Kendra, Lynn, Meljean - What did we do before the internet?! Does anybody remember? Living where I do,I get a lot of my book recomms off the web as well.

Lynn - completely jealous of you in Hawaii. I wanna be there!

Josie - Sean Bean? Really? I never would've guessed *G*

Angelle - thanks for the website recommendation. I have dropped by MJ Rose's website several times. She's a very smart cookie.

Emma - you can do whatever you like. This is fantasy after all!

K.A.S. said...

My in-the-flesh friends and family don't have the same reading tastes as I for the most part. One sister that reads romance, so she and I exchange recommendations a lot. The rest is all online, and occasionally I'll see something in RT that looks good.

But I'd say 90 percent of my exposure is online. And I ignore banner ads, really anything that looks like an ad - I look for word of mouth, and how much "buzz" a book has made in the community.

Online chats, blogs, and forum pressence are great. Quite a few of the authors I've added lately are authors who are active on Romance Divas. The more I get to know an author, the more connection I have to her (him) - and the more likely I am to buy the book.

Not sure if that helps or not ;)
Will you share Pablo? Or does he have a brother!

Anonymous said...

I learn about books online, too, but then I mostly communicate with people online. As for vacation, I'd love to fly to Europe. Paris or London, I think.

Nalini Singh said...

Karen, you know what - I think Paolo has a twin! We can double date :)

Olga - oooh, nice vacation ideas. I want to see Europe at some stage, too.

Thanks for the answers to my question. It's truly amazing me how much of a difference an online presence can make.