It must depend on where they’re printed; the experiences I’ve heard have been books where the pages fall out on their own even without reading the book, or something along those lines, I don’t remember exactly. (I have no personal experience on the subject, I couldn’t pay for shipping anyway, it’d end up costing at least three times the price of the book.)
Yeah, I’m a millennial thank you very much! 
Actual boomers. I have never done facebook marketing since ive never work with any company that target that demographic. But anyone from millenials onward are not using facebook so targeting them on that platform is a waste of resources. Barring some exceptions such as local food selling from homes.
That’s so odd. Almost the entire old school physical gamebook author community prints on demand, and I’ve literally never even heard of a copy like that, much less gotten one myself. My shelves are full of print on demand content from Amazon, Lulu, Lightning-Press, etc… Never had a single page even threaten to fall out, not even after mishandling.
Every Millennial I know uses Facebook as their primary social media. But maybe that’s because I’m on the older side of the generation? I don’t know. But I know for a fact that it’s still quite popular with people in their early 40s and some late 30s. Some Millennials are in their mid 40s now, depending on where you consider the cutoff to be.
Thats surprising to be honest, may i ask if you are in the US? I literally do not know anyone that use facebook as their main social media. Most only keep it around for older family members. But i know that facebook is more popular outside of US. For the record, im a younger millenial, although ive mainly work with and targeted gen-z and younger millenials.
I live in Canada (Ontario, specifically.) But I was born in Connecticut, and many of my old high school friends from the US still use Facebook as well. My friends (all of whom use it for varying degrees on a daily basis) are aged between 36 and 53. Early Millennials and late X-ers.
Interesting, i get gen-xer might still use it. But i didnt expect 35-40s to use it. Might be a demographic differences. I mainly work in area where the people we market to are highly online, social media savvy groups so they move pretty fast in the online space. So much so that facebook tends to be the bottom of the barrel for us as a platform. We post on facebook but ita more of a “we already made the content/post for other platform might as well throw it on facebook as well” kinda thing.
What platforms are important for promotional purposes these days, then? Instagram? I guess TikTok?
My issues with these platforms have always been that they’re heavily based on flashy visuals. I loathed Insta from day one because I couldn’t fucking post anything without adding a picture to it. Nobody on there cared to actually read anything. TikTok, from what I’ve seen in a few nightmarish forays, is even worse vapid pointless horseshit.
I mean, we’re authors? I genuinely don’t understand how to market on a platform that seems to genuinely loathe long-form text. Bring back LiveJournal. Fuck.
Edit: Yes, I do know how ‘boomery’ I’m coming off. Now get off my lawn, lol
Instagram is the default for most these days, even for authors imo. Put a pic of the cover or a reel showimg a spicy scene or something for books would be my way of doing it off the top of my head. Marketing is all about following the customers where they go not where we want to go. Tiktok has potential but its weird because its all about creators/influencers. So if we want to be successful on tiktok then either we become the influencer or hire them. Twitter used to be the big one but now most companies wouldnt touch it with a 10 foot pole. Except the one with a very particular and very specific target that like Twitter. Facebook for older people of course.
Edit: short form content is king.
Whaaaaaat I don’t know a single millenial who doesn’t hate Facebook, but I am on the younger end (31). Also in Canada (BC specifically).
Though maybe they all are secretly on there and I don’t know it because I hate the platform so much.
That said, everyone has messenger and marketplace, and just ignores the rest.
Pretty much.
Any good examples? Cause whatever CoG is doing doesn’t seem to be it. Their Insta gets barely any traction.
I can only post the cover so many times, right? Like… am I supposed to commission art every day so I can post? And where is this spicy reel supposed to come from every time I want to update my readers? It makes no sense. No wonder so many people are using AI…
This isn’t from an authour’s perspective FYI but talking from experience… TikTok promotion is like rolling a dice if you don’t know what you’re doing, and success is like a flash in a pan.
High sales in the short term (months to several years) with dedicated people buying large quantities of your company’s product, without really creating any new loyal customers. Once the hype dies down the new customers move on as they see this as ‘this thing is dead now’. Pre-hype loyal fans might still be around, or may have left after feeling alienated by the new community.
Short videos of reading an excerpt, memes, jokes, with catchy trendy audio. Tie your books/games to trends. Teasers for characters. Dont have to post every day, but posting consistently will net you beyter results. You can have what i call leader posts, once a week/fortnight/month, something high effort that will have people do what you want (i.e. click link, buy book/game/signup, etc…) and then fill the in-betweens with less important stuffs just to stay relevant.
Edit: hard to give more concrete examples, since i domt know the product well and im not super into the book industry sorry
So I’ve been messing around with YouTube Shorts lately trying to get some eyes on my WIP, and honestly? It feels like screaming into a void.
I’m using CSIDE for the build and I’ve tried the whole “aesthetic teaser” thing with some royalty-free noir beats, but the algorithm seems to hate text-heavy content. I’m lucky if I get 200 views, and the conversion to my Dashingdon link is basically non-existent.
I even tried a “how I code branching paths” video, but that just ended up attracting people who want to learn ChoiceScript, not actually play the game.
What I’ve tried:
Shorts with “vibe” imagery (High-ish views, zero playtesters)
Screen recordings of the text scrolling (Retention was embarrassing)
Static art reveals (People just like the photo and leave)
Has anyone here actually managed to pull a decent audience from YT, or is it a waste of time for IF? I’m starting to think the platform is just too “visual-first” for what we do. Maybe I should just stick to Tumblr and the forums?
I agree with this sentiment.
Perhaps we should try reading portions of our games? Maybe to an aesthetic background and with appropriate SFX? Then, after reaching a cliffhanger, advertise the game?
I’ll admit this format isn’t what the player will see. So, wouldn’t it be disingenuous? Misleading? But how else would you draw attention to text heavy games?
Even with the success the game had the dev’s are not doing very well with a Kickstarter for a sequel (though they made quite a few mistakes with how they went about it). The Suzerain dev’s are having money issues despite their success. Honestly not sure what point I’m trying to make here since I do agree that COG need to improve it’s engine
There is still 8 days left so they might make it, it just looks kind of unlikely at this point unless there is a big boost. They say they will release the game anyways but I’m worried about what state it will be
Professional marketer here but I’ve been playing IF for longer than my entire career lol. I’d say that the biggest problem with COG and IF in general is that people don’t know it exists. And even when people do know, where do they go and what do they buy? That info is just not known unless you stumble on it.
My steam page recommends visual novels and IF to me all the time but I never actually see COG stuff unless I actually search for it. Itch.io as a platform has been relatively successful in crossposting finished games to Steam because it’s easy to navigate and find games you’d potentially like.
COG has the forum but it’s honestly an outdated, manual way to share WIPs and finished games. Steam and itch.io by contrast are much easier to browse. I don’t mean to be negative here or necessarily compare platforms but one huge reason why people don’t buy is just not knowing where to go.
FWIW, I’d avoid visual platforms like YouTube or TikTok for text-based content. Going to forums like Reddit and Substack and Twitter and actively posting there would probably attract more people who prefer to read.
That’s a shame. The Life and Suffering of Sir Brante was peak. I was SO impressed with that game I was literally daydreaming about it for weeks.
My opinion may be very unpopular. But I don’t think it’s really the marketing that’s at fault. There’s so many IF on here that really aren’t that great. They read as if a middle schooler wrote it and some read like a script for a play and doesn’t make sense. Writing everything in 2nd person pov probably don’t help much either. Some people are ok with it, but it took me a while to get used to it. I try to replace the you with I in my head while I read. It’s not very immersive for the reader to say you did this when using I makes it more like I actually did that. Plus cog makes it hard to enjoy a book when they disable saves on their app. It can get frustrating if you want to try out different scenarios before going with the one you want. Or your hand spasms like mine and you hit the wrong button. Now you have to start the story all over again. Some are absolutely amazing, but then you get promised of weekly or every 2 weeks update, they make a patron and then never hear from them again. I’ve got a lot of them bookmarked, following them and waiting to see when they come out. They haven’t been updated in over a year or 2. I’m honestly not a fan of patron or Kickstarter. Plenty of games and books have been made without requesting money beforehand. I’ve noticed people will make a patron, people pay money and subscribe to it then the author won’t make any updates on progress or anything for months. Or they start another project and another project and end up with 5 barely even written stories. I paid for a patron for 3 months, nothing. Not even a sorry been busy. Itch.io is the best in my opinion to get your game out there. Simply because once someone finds your game and likes it. They can add it to their page and anyone who follows them will get a feed update about it. Then they may like it and add it to theirs. Especially if you can get another author on there to recommend it, if they have a bunch of people following them already. People are probably gonna come after me for what I have to say. But I feel like someone needed to say it.