Q&A: How effective is YouTube for book marketing?

QUESTION: I'm hearing an awful lot about YouTube as an avenue for book marketing. I've gotten some quotes from companies who offer to produce a book trailer for $2,000 and up. Is this an effective way of marketing a book?

ANSWER: My philosophy is to try everything. You've got to get your book out there every which way you can, and hope that one-fifth of your efforts pay off.

But there are only 24 hours in a day, and if you're like me, your marketing budget is finite, too. I haven't felt compelled to produce an Internet video yet, for the simple reason that videos generally get far fewer eyeballs than blogs and Web sites.

For example, take my niche, book marketing. Search on YouTube for "book marketing," and one of the top results is this video from self-publishing guru Dan Poynter:



This video was uploaded to YouTube one year ago, and it's been viewed about 2,900 times -- about eight times per day.

How many unique visitors have viewed Dan's Web site during the same time? I'd estimate it's between 5,000 and 10,000 per month.

Conservatively, that's about 175 visitors a day for the Web site versus eight daily views of the video. Also, Dan's Web site is a virtual cash register -- he's selling hundreds of special reports, mailing lists, and e-books there. What is the video doing for him?

So if you're setting your priorities, this is a no-brainer. Get written content on your Web site and everywhere else on the Web. Remember, we're marketing to people who read.

I'm not suggesting that book marketers should ignore multimedia, just keep things in perspective. Don't blow your budget on some newfangled thing just because it's new. Of course if you've already got some video, it certainly won't hurt to upload it to YouTube.

But here's something that's a lot more realistic: podcasting. If you have any recordings of yourself, get them online with a podcast, and get transcripts on your blog or Web site. That way, all those readers can find your audio content.

Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, plans to give away digital audiobooks of his next title to everyone who buys the physical book. An even better idea might be to make the audiobook a free podcast and upload it to every file-sharing service out there.
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Steve Weber is author of Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors

Plug your book with a podcast

It's official: Big publishers are aboard the podcasting bandwagon. Today's New York Times gives another example of the speed of sound. Author Mignon Fogarty, host of the Grammar Girl podcast, took just a few days to crank out an audio file of her upcoming Holt book and rushed it onto Audible.com right before an appearance on Oprah. The hour-long $4.95 audio went to No. 1 on iTunes, and she cashed in on the Oprah publicity even though the book wasn't on the street -- in fact it's not even written yet.

Other publishers also are experimenting with such changes, including Hachette Audio ... which in 2005 released the audio version of Jon Stewart’s “America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction” on Audible and iTunes several weeks before the book.

“Publishers always want to hit the best-seller list at No. 1, and there had been some concern that releasing an audio version first would drain away sales from the hardcover,” said Beth Anderson, senior vice president of Audible, which, along with iTunes, had brisk download sales before Mr. Stewart’s book and a CD-format audiobook were simultaneously released. “But the publisher told us releasing the audio helped to sell the print version, because having the audio out there really helped to build the buzz for the book.”