Webinars

Lately, I've been receiving email invitations to attend various publishing-related webinars. If they're free and if the topic is potentially useful to me, I'll accept. Because I keep strange hours, it's even better if the presentation is available to view on demand.

Well, I've been wholly disappointed. Here's a sampling, sans identifiers, of those I've viewed in the past week:

A presentation on A10, which I had no clue about, but it's the new algorithm that Amazon uses to determine book placement and visibility (in a nutshell). If only the webinar was done in a nutshell. Since my books have suffered from invisibility--when my third novel was still titled "The Apple", I once did a search for it and couldn't get it to appear, even when I combined the title with my author name. Seriously, it presented books that didn't even have "apple" in their titles, while my book was apparently impossible for Amazon to find--I was hoping to learn ways my books would populate on the search results screen. 

Immediately, I checked the presentation's length, and it was over an hour. This would be fine if it was chock-full of useful info, but the guy droned on and on about how most people call the new algorithm something else, but he calls it A10, because...(I don't remember why). This ate up about 10 minutes. The deal for me is, it's great and all to know the "why" of something I choose to research, but what I really needed from this guy was the "how". How do I triumph over the problem? What steps do I need to take? I never did find out, because the guy then plunged into book series, needlessly explaining that he created four fake books to demonstrate his point, and that he used to use actual books, but some authors complained and...that's when I lost interest. By now I'd stayed tuned in for about half an hour and I still hadn't heard anything I could grab onto. Maybe the webinar had a spectacular ending, but I'll never know.

Pro Tip: If you don't have enough information to cover a full hour, DON'T make your presentation last a full hour. The one-hour time allotment isn't some unwritten rule, you know. 

Pro Tip 2: Tighten up your presentation! You may love to hear yourself talk, but everyone isn't you.

Next came a five-day potpourri of assorted publishing topics. This was more like it. I could pick the ones that interested me and ignore the useless ones, such as the eleven-year-old who created a publishing empire. (Seriously? I would totally hate that kid. I would have hated her when I was eleven, too.) 

The topic I was really interested in (blurbs) was far too short, while some I was sort of interested in were far too long and meandering. Each had a moderator asking the guest questions, but a few of the presentations came across as something the two of them would be better off yakking about in a bar somewhere over martinis. The viewers were an afterthought.

In order to view these sessions at one's leisure, the marketing firm wanted $97.00. Now, maybe they spent a lot of time lining up presenters and, uh...syncing up computer screens. Maybe the presenters asked for remuneration--probably. (If so, they could have put a bit of effort in, rather than, as one guy did, kicking back on his houseboat.) And even after viewing the content for free, I was still offered the opportunity to pay my hundred bucks to be able to rewatch it.

Later in the week, this same company served up another free event that touted the "secrets to book marketing". Ooh! There are secrets? Well, sure! I wanted in! This time, the presentation was held over Zoom. I don't (didn't) have Zoom, so I was forced to download it. I hate adding new programs to my ancient computer; they slow things down even more than they've already slowed down, but I wanted to learn the secrets. 

By the time I got Zoom working, the seminar had already begun. Call me dismayed. For whatever reason, the guy (owner of the marketing firm) was a tiny blip in the middle of the screen and as I tried to focus on his teacup image, I realized I was watching/listening to an infomercial. "Here's another thing Acme Marketing can do for you..." Wait--these are the "secrets"? Pay us a bunch of money? As soon as I heard the guy say, "We guarantee 200 book sales", I was out of there (or "left the room", as Zoom calls it).

Pro Tip: Don't disguise a sales pitch as a webinar. I'm also not interested in buying a timeshare, but at least those people offer complimentary snacks.

There are tons of other invitations I move to my trash folder: somebody's "heartbreak to healing story". Hey! What about my story? Maybe I'm heartbroken, too! Will the healed person help me sell books? "Copyright registration". Yea, I've pretty much already got that process nailed. "Helping Authors Detect Cyber Scams". Short version--read their emails. Will the presentation say just that, only take an hour to do it? Even shorter version--click "mark as spam".

As someone who is always curious about the "whys" of something, I asked Google what book marketing specialists get out of doing webinars. Of course (duh) it's the same things we indie authors hope to get out of our own marketing: increased sales, brand recognition, audience engagement, blah, blah, on and on. If only an author's potential customers were as gullible as we are when we sign up for one of these presentations.

But just like having a bad book cover is counter-productive, slapping together a poor video presentation can turn someone off from employing a company. The marketing firm whose presentations I tried to sit through would never get my business (assuming I could afford them in the first place). Are they just as slap-dash when dealing with clients? Disrespect your viewers at your peril. 

Pro Tip: Grab an empty conference room and do a dress rehearsal. Have a co-worker handy to tell you where you need to tighten things up. Everyone isn't a natural presenter--work on that. It's a skill that can be developed; trust me.

I received a lot of these invitations before I finally decided to dive in. If I want to be perceived as a professional, I suppose I need to be serious about learning. Now, if only I'd actually learned something.