Christine Rains: Marketing Different Genres

I'm so thrilled to have Christine Rains here today to talk about marketing. Every writer wants to know more about that. If you been any where in the blogosphere the last few weeks, you're run into her Dice & Debauchery tour. Christine is not only a writer, she's a very busy mother and an amazing time management person. I'm not getting the day off. Please check out my post about planning for April Madness over at the A to Z Blogging Challenge Home. How does she get so much done? Here's Christine:

Thank you for hosting me today, Susan. It's a pleasure to be here.

Marketing is one of the most difficult tasks as an author. But marketing several books from different genres? It can be overwhelming. Some days there isn't enough ice cream in the world to make it bearable.

Over the past several weeks, I've been touring for my contemporary erotic romance series, Dice & Debauchery. This is my first adventure with this genre, and I've had to learn new marketing tactics along the way. At the same time, I've had to continue marketing for my other books.

Two different genres with two different audiences.

There are two ways to do this successfully:

1. Use a pen name. Separate your different genre books with distinct identities. Create independent websites, Twitter accounts, and Facebook pages. It's double the work, but it will allow you to build a solid readership in each genre. This is good to do because sometimes when an author crosses genres, she turns some readers off.

I debated using a pen name when I wrote my Dice & Debauchery series. I went back and forth about it for a few months before I decided to take a chance and use my real name. This is why I went with the second marketing strategy.

2. Market the author instead of the books. What do you do best as a writer? Do you have lovely prose with flowing descriptions or are you clever with twisting the plot? Find that one thing that applies to all your stories and use it as a base for your marketing.

My author tagline is: “Twisting the tropes.” In all my stories, I take popular literary devices and themes and turn them on their heads. I love to surprise readers with these unusual twists and turns.

All my books are character focused and contain romances too. So when I went from urban fantasy and paranormal romance to the Dice & Debauchery series, I still was in a similar realm. I understand that not all my readers will want to read erotica, but there are those that do enjoy my stories from both genres. They're all just different aspects of me as a writer.

If you write in different genres, what type of marketing strategy have you employed?

Blurb:

Geek girl Morgan Reid has been to many conventions, but none that had her wishing it would never end.

 Dressed as their characters from the online game Steampunk Quest, Morgan and her best friend meet the other players for the first time in real life. Morgan's attraction to the gorgeous Dean Bradley is immediate, making it difficult to breathe in her tight corset. Even after a few dice shattering orgasms, she doesn't believe this can be anything more than a con fling. But Dean is making her feel things she's only read about in books. Can Morgan let go of her cool-headed logic and allow herself to fall completely for the perfect geek guy?

 About the author:

Christine Rains is a writer, blogger, and geek mom. She's married to her best friend and fellow geek living in south-central Indiana. They have one son who is too smart for his parents' own good and loves to pretend he's Batman. Christine has four degrees which help nothing with motherhood, but make her a great Jeopardy player. When she's not reading or writing, she's going on adventures with her son or watching cheesy movies on Syfy Channel. She's a member of Untethered Realms and S.C.I.F.I. (South Central Indiana Fiction Interface). She has several short stories and novellas published. The Dice & Debauchery series is her first contemporary erotic romance.

Please visit her website  and blog

You can also find Christine on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, and Goodreads.

 Purchase links:

Amazon    B&N   Ellora's Cave 

Thanks, Christine. There's always a lot of discussion about whether to use a pen name or not. You have the best reasons for not that I've heard. What does everyone else think? With all the social media insights, can a writer hide behind a pen name any more? What is a good reason to use one?

By the Numbers

In an earlier part of my life, I was a real math and science geek. Numbers interest me and stats about anything just beg me to read them. Like most readers, I enjoy print and ebooks. I love my Kindle Fire and read on it a lot. But I also read lots of hardback books that I usually get from the library. I've never thought the ebook surge would drown traditional books or at least wouldn't during my lifetime.

Recent numbers seem to agree with my view. In the numbers from 2014, it seems that ebook sales have leveled off some and traditional books are now holding their sales stats from the past few years. Huffington Post shares some figures that suggest Print books may once again be outselling ebooks. Publisher's Weekly also uses recent counts to propose the two forms of books can coexist and share the market.

Some of the more interesting stuff I read while researching this topic is the small percentage of Amazon's income that actually comes from book sales. Only 7% of their total revenue. Not sure what to even think about that. Then again, I've bought a number of video games and movies from Amazon and my daughter watches for their deals on Crest White Strips and gets them a lot cheaper than she can in a store even with a coupon. This same article in Forbes blames B&N and Borders as much for the decline in independent books stores as it did Amazon.

Those big stores like Borders, B&N, and BAM are struggling even after pushing half the independent booksellers in the country out of business. Why? My local B&N is usually so crowded it's difficult to browse and forget about getting a seat in the cafe. Borders already closed shop. In a few years, perhaps the indies that managed to hang on will be the last booksellers standing.

Not being self-published, I have no personal knowledge of how those sales are going but I've read enough on my friends' blogs and listened at my writers' meetings to know income for indie authors isn't making many people rich. Is it because ebooks sales have evened out?

Don't forget to take advantage of the Goodreads Giveaway chance to win a copy of Alex J. Cavanaugh's upcoming release of Dragon of the Stars.

Christine Rains' newest book, Loose Corset, is now available at all ebook retailers. You can enter a cool contest on her blog

Do you think the indie bookstores will outlast the big box stores? Do you see Amazon as the big bad wolf like discussed in the Forbes article? Did you know how little of their revenue Amazon makes on book sales even though that's how most people think of them? Do you buy anything other than books from Amazon?