Sticking in Pins -- Susan Price

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bad-Girl-Susan-Price/dp/B08F6RYHJF/

My brothers put me on to Pinterest which, being artists and hooked on visuals, they are scrolling all the time. You probably know it yourself:- a website where people 'pin' images on 'pin-boards'. Some people keep their pins private, their principle purpose being to keep ideas for their kitchen refit or garden make-over in one easily accessible place.

But others pin images connected to their hobby, or favourite place or interest, whether that's cooking, classic cars, scuba-diving or whatever and make them public. It's a pictorial blog. Creative types use it to share their latest art-work and writers set up boards for each of their books.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1532756879

A visual image is much more compelling than words, whether written or spoken. Sorry, writers, but it's true. I suppose that's why we try so hard to create a vivid visual image with words. If you want to remember a pin-number or a shopping list -- or, indeed, every one of Shakespeare's plays, in orrder, turn them into ridiculous, cartoonish visual images. This dominance of the visual is why publishers pay for book covers and every magazine has its own distinctive cover lay0out..

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wolf-Sisters-Susan-Price/dp/1984075330/

Pinterest lets you create a Pinterest pin-code, which you can embed in your website, so that people can easily find all your pins. You can also create a pin for each board/book.

https://www.pinterest.co.uk/price1151/_saved/

Each pin has to conform to a Pinterest template, so I set one up in Photoshop. The simplest pin is the book's cover, dragged into this template. I've 'pinned' the covers of most of my books, together with the 'destination link' which is the book's Amazon page,

But on each book's 'board', I add other things -- links to other books or images that inspired me or helped my research; and books by other authors in a similar genre. I add images of relevant products, such as educational toys with picture books or packs of tarot cards with collections of ghost stories. This means that someone searching for  these products may also come across mine.

 

I pin quotes from the book and art-work inspired by it. I was reminded of this by Wendy H Jones' blog from earlier this month, where she talked about a 'marketing challenge' she'd taken part in. Every day for a month she had to post images to 'show my book', 'show my inspiration', 'show my characters' and so on. This is very similar to what I've been doing with my boards, but Wendy's approach is more targetted, so I shall be taking some ideas from her -- thank you, Wendy!

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Nightcomers-Susan-Prices-Haunting-Stories/dp/0992820456/

Just as with Twitter, you follow other pinners and they follow you back, which makes your pin-boards more 'findable.'

Has it been worth the effort? I think so. Sales haven't increased hugely but they have noticably increased and a wider range of my books are selling. For instance, I can count on copies of all four of my Ghost World books selling now, every month, whereas previously only the first, Ghost Drum, sold. All three of my ghost-story collections are selling, as are more of my fantasy novels.

 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghost-Song-World-Sequence/dp/099282043X/

And I enjoy making the pins, so I shall keep on doing it.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Ghost-Dance-Book-World-Sequence-ebook/dp/B005O546JM