Writers: Marketing your book-traditional or newer methods? (+BQ)?

[Gemi]

So, I've been talking with my hubby about this interesting way to market our novels online and I was wondering if you guys plan to create new ways to market your books or if you'll use some traditional methods.

The problem non-published writers have is that they have no platform (visibility/reputation of author), for the publishers to work with since they've never been published. So publishers often turn down new writers b/c they don't have a pre-established platform. It's sort of a catch 22 b/c you need a reputation to get published but your reputation as a writer typically comes AFTER being published.

Anyway, the typical forms of marketing (which have irregular results per author/case), are:

A) book signings (which usually prove useless to new authors)
B) speaking engagements
C) submitting pre-written interview questions w/ answers to interested news mediums
D)blogs, author/social networking websites (like facebook or other author's sites).
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1)So would you choose any of these traditional methods? Why or why not?

2) If you aren't adept at public speaking engagements and choose internet publicizing, how would you set yourself apart from others? (Don't need to give actual ideas just what you'd do to be different)

3) Have you thought up an innovative way to market your story?

4) Would you market before you published your book so as to build anticipation or wait until after publication (assuming you already had a deal with a publisher)?

BQ: Have you ever owned a pair of polka-dotted undies?
BQ2: Would you eat hairy spider for $100,000 if the venom was removed?
BQ3: Have you ever felt embarrassed licked stamps/envelopes in front of people? lmao
BQ4: How would you react if you saw someone picking their nose in the lane next to you if you were sitting at a traffic light?
@Joss: It's not a myth. Of course there are exceptions to the general rule. Every author will tell you that you won't hit it big, for instance, with your debut novel but there have been rare cases where this has happened. But as it stands, publishers will be far less inclined to publish a writer if they don't have an author platform or aren't capable of marketing their material (some writers refuse-for instance and many amateur writers expect the publisher to do it all). So for fiction it's also important that the writer has begun to establish a name for themselves prior to publishing (by story submissions in magazines, competitions, etc). This is especially true for non-fiction writers, as you said-because they need credentials to be considered "experts" on the topic they're writing about.

I just wanted to point out that this isn't false. Expectations may also vary per publisher but don't claim this isn't true because the fact of the matter is that it happens a lot. And the reason i
is due to the fact that the book publishing industry is dwindling due to the economic recession, changes in consumer fads (less people reading), etc. So publishers are now more concerned about risk liability in terms of taking on an unknown/un-established author than they were 40 years ago. But if the new author has a platform established already, they're chances just increased exponentially.