Scott Sigler as Marketing Genius
Recently marketing genius, New York Times best selling author, FDO and all around scary psychotic person Scott Sigler blew through my town. Well, technically it was a bit north of me but you get the idea.
Scott is now known for INFECTED and CONTAGIOUS, major hardcover thrillers from Crown Publishing. But he didn’t get there through traditional methods. After enjoying some success with a couple of gaming books Scott started seriously pursuing a fiction career in 1991. He tried the normal , traditional rout and shopped around his books looking for a publisher/agent. In 2005 he decided to podcast EARTHCORE.
Tee Morris.com gets credit for being the very first to podcast a novel with Morevi: The Chronicles of Rafe & Askana. Quickly followed by The Max Quick Series by Mark Jeffry. But Scott made a splash by being the first to do a “Podcast Only” novel. Listeners couldn’t peek at the end. We had to wait until Scott brought us our weekly episode. Forcing us listeners, known as “Junkies”, to hit refresh over and over each Sunday afternoon waiting for our Sigler fix.
On a side note, that is when my husband gave the the title “PodcastJunky” because my all around podcast listening habits seemed to be so similar to the Sigler “Junkies”. Always updating looking for my next podcast “fix”. Remember that was in the days where the number of podcasts was in the low hundreds, not the thousands of options we have today.
Scott built a large subscribed audience of 10,000 by giving away the podcast EARTHCORE. Next was ANCESTOR with 30,000 listeners. After giving it away as a podcast it was published in book form by a small independent press. Scott was again the first to “Make a run on the Amazon.com charts”. His fan-base was so strong that even though we already had the free audio version ANCESTOR still reached #1 in Horror, #1 in SciFi, #2 in fiction, (Harry Potter held the #1 spot) and was #7 overall.
Scott has been a relentless self promoter. But very little of it has been through traditional marketing. Scott has used New Media, twitter, FaceBook, his own site, etc to build a community of rabid fans who will step up and do all we can to promote his work. He talks with his fans via these social networks. He doesn’t just spew his message, he builds relationships and trust, and we reward him for it. We forward links, we retweet, we spread posters and postcards, here I am writing yet another post on him. It’s about trust. We trust him to bring us good fiction that will scare our socks off and make our skin crawl. He trusts us to be there for him and spread the word about his work.
It’s working! He caught the attention of Crown publishing who published INFECTED in 2008 quickly followed by it’s sequel CONTAGOUS which rocketed right into the New York Times Best seller list. INFECTED has now been optioned by Rogue Pictures and Random House Films, the movie version is currently in the planning stages.
Scott Sigler at Book Soup CONAGOUS Reading
He recently brought his “Sigler Stank” tour to So. Cal.
There was the traditional reading, Q & A and signing of a traditional marketing plan. But after the traditional part was over, Scott did his signature “pub crawl” Hanging out with fans, talking, enjoying some food and drink in a local establishment. You won’t see that in a traditional authors marketing tool box. He is building the trust and relationships that make his fans hard core “Junkies”
Scott hanging out with fans at LA Pub Crawl during Sigler Stank II
Mark Jeffry, Megan Enloe, Mathew Wayn Selznick
