Marketing Resources for Horror Writers

by Donna Huber

Some genres are easy to find promotional outlets to market books, while other genres are more difficult. Romance writers can find hundreds of thousands of blogs that cater to the genre. The horror genre is the opposite, at least in my experience. While there may not be as many blogs that focus on horror there are other resources available to horror writers. I will share 3 resources I ran across when I was organizing the blog tour for Night Chill by Jeff Gunhus.

1. Blogs

Many general book bloggers include horror among the genres they review, yet horror is only represented in a small portion of their reviews. They may do a feature in October highlighting books from the genre. I did run across a few blogs that were horror bloggers.

Ginger Nuts of Horror
Wag the Fox: Gef Fox's Den for Dark Fiction
The Geekdon of Gore

2. eZines

While searching for horror bloggers, I ran across several ezines devoted to the horror genre and many of them seemed quite active. Perhaps for dedicated horror readers, ezines is a more popular medium. If you are trying to reach your target audience, it wouldn't hurt to look into them. This site lists a number of ezines.

3. Groups

Again, maybe horror readers are not really into blogging like romance or fantasy readers. I found a couple of active groups; it is were I found the blogs that I pitched Night Chill to as well as some of the ezines. Goodreads has an active group - Horror Aficionados . BookBlog.ning also has an active group - Horror/Occult Reads. Please remember that groups are rarely about pure self-promotion. They are for building a relationship between readers and authors. Use the group more in the way that a reader would use it - talk about your favorite horror authors, make recommendations of great horror novels, etc. By doing this you will build your network and after being part of the community for a while (about 2 - 3 months) then you may be able to reach out to individuals who you have built a relationship with to ask about promotion assistance.


I hope you find these resources helpful. In the past few months, Girl Who Reads has featured more books in the genre since it is one of Claire's favorite genres. Visit her Facebook page for recommendations and possible review of your book.