After a busy convention weekend, I’m tempted to take today off to be my “weekend,” but I have that proposal to work on and I got copyedits back on the last book.
While I rethink my marketing approaches, conventions are high on the list of things I’m reconsidering. I think they helped when I was brand-new and getting my name out there, but there’s some sense of diminishing returns now. I get to see some friends and existing fans, but I don’t think I’m selling more books because of my convention presence. In this case, I had about a 40-minute drive each way, and it ate up half of Friday, all of Saturday, and half of Sunday, and it left me so exhausted that Monday is iffy. I may have had exposure to about 20 people who seemed entirely unfamiliar, and I don’t know if any of them will end up looking for my books. I probably would have been better off doing an intensive writing weekend and spending that time working on my book proposal or writing a story.
And that was an in-town con where I got to come home at night and didn’t have to pay for a hotel room. This is why I’m not doing out-of-town conventions where I pay my own way for marketing purposes anymore. I go to professional development and networking events, and I’ll go if I’m an invited guest whose expenses are being paid. I will probably keep doing the local event I’m part of (and the current hotel is less than 15 minutes from my house), but I may back off on the other local event for next year.
The word at the convention this year from a few people is that video is the next big Internet thing, and I was told that I could probably get some mileage out of doing videos since I’m “animated” (as they put it). I might give that a shot. I’ve got the skill set. I don’t watch a lot of online video, and my instinct would be that video might not be the best way to reach people who read, but then I found a bunch of fan-made videos about Rebel Mechanics, so I might be wrong about that.
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