Tech-Savvy Author Interview - Gary Val Tenuta

While going through our BookBuzzr site and widget statistics the other day, our team came across a book that has been receiving a phenomenal number of page views and reader interest. So we tracked down the author - Gary Val Tenuta - to find out how he's driving all this traffic to his site and to his book-preview pages in BookBuzzr format. This interview will be valuable to anybody looking for ideas to market their book on the Internet.

BookBuzzr: Gary, tell us about yourself.
Gary: In addition to being a writer I'm also a graphics illustrator and I create book cover art for other authors. I've always been fascinated by ancient mysteries and paranormal phenomena and anything that generally comes under the heading of the "unexplained". My articles and illustrations have been published in Fate Magazine in the U.S. and Beyond Magazine in the U.K. I'm currently working on a new novel, an occult/mystery/crime/thriller, called Ash: Return of the Beast. The cover art and some teaser information can be seen here.


BookBuzzr: Tell us about your book - The Ezekiel Code
Gary: The idea for The Ezekiel Code came to me a little more than 10 years ago while sitting in an all-night diner with my lady friend, Julie. We were talking about the UFO phenomenon and it reminded me of something I had noticed many years earlier when, ironically, I was teaching Sunday school classes. While reading the book of Ezekiel in the Bible I was fascinated by the prophet's detailed descriptions of the object that came down from the sky and with which he had extensive encounters. Ezekiel referred to this object as "the Lord". However, it struck me that what he was describing seemed much more like a mechanical craft than any sort of spiritual entity. Here was a man living in ancient times, thousands of years ago, whose only notion of technology was limited to something as advanced as a donkey pulling a cart. It was clear to me that if he did encounter a truly advanced technology he would be terribly limited in his vocabulary when it came to describing this thing. But when his words are read through modern eyes it seems obvious to me that he was doing his best to describe what today we would call a UFO or an extraterrestrial craft. So, sitting there with my friend in the diner, it occurred to me that such a scenario would make a great sci-fi movie. I knew I had no way of making such a movie but I was pretty sure I could write a novel somehow based on this idea.

This was back in the 1990s and I was also aware, at that time, of the approaching end date of the ancient Mayan calendar on December 21, 2012. I thought this would be an interesting subject to somehow weave into the plot of the novel. I was also, at that time, well into some personal research into the possibility that the English alphabet might be either naturally or artificially endoded, if you will, to correspond with the numbers 1 through 9 and that it might be used in the same manner as the ancient Greek and Hebrew priests and mystics used their respective alphabets in an encoding system known as gematria. I was also very much interested in the phenomenon of "synchronicity" and how some physicists related that phenomenon to some recent speculations in the field of quantum mechanics. All of this, then, eventually came together to form the story line for my first novel, The Ezekiel Code.


BookBuzzr: We notice that you're getting plenty of interest and views on BookBuzzr. Our stats show that a number of people are coming to your website and clicking on the BookBuzzr book-widget. What are you doing to drive traffic to your website? What can an author do to sell more books?

Gary: Oh, man. As just about every novelist will tell you, if you think writing the book was a time consuming process just wait until you put on your marketing hat and start the promotion process. If you're serious about wanting to sell your book you need to be ready spend a lot of time getting the word out there. Sure, now it's published and it's available on amazon.com but so are millions of other books. How is anyone going to know your book is among those other millions? If you're like 99 percent of the authors I've met over the past couple years, you're probably not among the well-to-do with money to burn. Print advertising in magazines can be very expensive and you should be aware that a 1-time ad in a magazine is probably not going to have much (if any) impact on sales. If the ad runs many times in consecutive issues then it might begin to catch the attention of the magazine's readers and may eventually seep deep enough into their subconscious that they will actually remember to buy the book. Most authors now have turned their attention and their promotional energies to the internet. In many cases the ad rates are cheaper and much of what you can do to promote your book on the internet is virtually free. It is essential to have an official website for your book. There are also many "ning" sites for writers that you can join (I belong to at least a half dozen of them), where you can create your own promotional page and blurb about your book in some of the forums.

Another promotional strategy is to target your market. For example, my novel, The Ezekiel Code, has the 2012 element woven into the plot. I knew there was a growing number of people interested in the whole controversial subject of the end of the Mayan calendar in 2012 so I googled "2012, mayan calendar" and came across a website (www.december212012.com) that was ranked number 1 in google searches for that topic. I went to the website and was happy to find that they accepted banner ads for any product that had anything to do with the 2012 issue. Their fee for the ad space is extremely affordable and I know that the vast majority of the hits to my book's website are coming from that one low-cost banner ad which I've been running continuously for over a year. So if you can figure out your target market and can find a website which caters to that market and which sells ad space for a reasonable fee then you might want to consider taking advantage of it.

Oh, and don't forget about Twitter! It's becoming a very popular marketing tool for authors. Millions of eyes are on Twitter. They might as well see your book tweets! Here are a few examples of the kind of thing I "tweet" on Twitter:
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Only a handful of novels have approached the 2012 phenomenon. The Ezekiel Code is unique among them. Video trailers: www.ezekielcode.com
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An ancient prophecy, a lost scroll, a secret society, a baffling code, and one man's quest to save the planet. www.ezekielcode.com
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NINE IS THE KEY=144=THE SECRET KEY ...2012 is coming...The clock is ticking...The code must be deciphered! www.ezekielcode.com
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BookBuzzr: You've also been very generous in that you've given away 12 chapters of your book for free through BookBuzzr. Do you think it's important for an author to give away more of their work in order to drive interest and demand in the book?

Gary: First, I want to thank BookBuzzer for that neat little gizmo that allows people to instantly read the first 12 chapters for free! That is just way cool.

If your book is in a brick-and-mortar bookstore then, obviously, any potential buyer can pick the book off the shelf and browse through it. That way they can decide if it's a book they'd like to buy. But if it's only available online then you need to have some way for people to get some idea of what it's like, how it's written, etc. A well-written synopsis helps, and it might do the trick, but there's nothing like being able to read the actual work.

BookBuzzr: There's also a very interesting video on your website about your book. How long did it take you to create that video? How effective do you think that video has been?
Gary: I created all of my book trailer videos and I've recently started creating trailers for other authors. The average amount of time it takes me to create a video like the ones on my website is probably about 8 to 10 hours. It might seem like a lot of time but I put a lot of original art and creative thought into each production.

Regarding how effective they've been, I don't have a way of knowing how many book sales have been a result of the videos. However, my videos are posted on YouTube which shows the number of views. So I do know that the combined views of all three videos is now nearly 30,000. Can't beat that for exposure, and exposure is what you want. And it never goes away! It's running 24/7. And it's free!


BookBuzzr: What do you like about BookBuzzr?
Gary: I'm just totally "buzzed" about that BookBuzzr widget that allows visitors to my site the ability to read the first 12 chapters of my book for free and in such a very cool format. It may just be the most valuable marketing tool on my site.

BookBuzzr: What is the one dream feature that you'd want in BookBuzzr to help you market your book even more effectively on the Internet?
Gary: Um.... how about a direct line to film producers! (wink-wink)


BookBuzzr: Where can people buy your book?
Gary: If people go to my website, they'll find lots of information about The Ezekiel Code, including full reviews, video trailers and, of course, the first 12 chapters (free!) courtesy of BookBuzzr. There are several "buy" buttons which will take you directly to the book's amazon.com page for purchase.

Thank You Gary!