Saturday, March 10, 2007, was the WIW seminar on marketing for writers, and yours truly was in attendance. I have to confess, I wasn’t as vigilant with my note taking as I usually am because I was doing a lot of schmoozing. Despite that, I did manage to jot down some gems, and here they are.
In the first panel of the day, Marketing and Publicizing Your Book: Wisdom from the Trenches, Ann Merchant of National Academies Press shared the two reasons that authors worry about marketing:
- Marketing is the thing that you believe will drive the sale of your book.
- Marketing is the source of most of the horror stories.
She also emphasized some important points that many people don’t truly understand about the marketing process:
- Marketing comes first.
- Marketing drives the product.
- Marketing drives the process.
- Marketing is king.
Now, while I’d like to believe that editorial content is king, I can see her point. Without good marketing, no one will know about a product. And without marketing in mind through the whole process of creating the product, it’s hard (maybe impossible!) to develop a high-quality product that will appeal to the target audience in the most effective way. It’s all about planning and coordination.
Something else that Ann pointed out is that marketing people and the authors they represent are all in it together, and the marketing department succeeds only when they sell the books on their list. And, Ann said, “You don’t have to tell me I screwed up. My boss is gonna tell me,” because every book she doesn’t sell well ends up in her annual review. Nobody wants that, least of all your marketing person.
Ann also shared some screamingly funny examples of good and bad author behavior. No way can I do them justice by recounting them here, but suffice it to say that when you make marketing’s job more difficult, it’s harder for them to sell your books successfully. You need to work with them, not against them. And it helps to be, you know, likable. “I’m not saying that we only work hard for the authors we like,” Ann said, “but it certainly helps!”
Next up was Becky Brasington Clark of The Johns Hopkins University Press, who offered a snapshot of the publishing environment in the US today. She described publishing as “a challenging landscape, but that doesn’t mean you should go home and shred your manuscript. You should hold on to every ounce of [your] optimism, because that will help you sell your book.”
Other things that will help you sell your book include being apprised of your competition, and avoiding these two typical author traps:
- “Nothing like this has ever been published before!” Uh-huh, riiiiight.
- “If we reach only 1% of the market, we’ll sell 10,000 copies!” As much as you’d like to believe it, your audience doesn’t actually include every man, woman, and child in America.
Think about the compelling details of your book, Becky said. How are you going to pitch it? How are you going to promote it? And how are you going to be different from — and better than — your competition? Becky advised that authors to whatever they can to help the marketing department develop short, accurate selling points for their book to help them present it to overworked, overwhelmed book buyers.
Finally, Becky offered some tips on helping your books sell through Amazon.com reviews, which she described as something that “can help sell books that are snubbed by regular reviewers.” So how to do it? First of all, don’t review your own books. People will know. You’ll look stupid. Don’t do it. Instead, ask responsible friend and colleagues to post reviews. Do not ask family members to do it. Everyone knows your mom loves your book, but is that really relevant in a review? Probably not.
W. Ralph Eubanks of the Library of Congress, and author of Ever Is a Long Time: A Journey Into Mississippi’s Dark Past, was next at bat, and he covered marketing from the dual viewpoints of a publicity-type person and an author. He gave four specific tips for helping with your book’s marketing:
- You need to be a partner with your publisher in promoting your book. Be helpful, cooperative, and available.
- Give very serious thought to the marketing questionnaire. Join Publishers Marketplace to get a realistic sense of the media and publicity available for your book.
- If you have specific goals for publicity, think about whether you need to retain your own publicist to supplement the efforts of your publisher, whose goals may be different from yours. If you do hire a publicist, make sure he or she is in close contact with your publisher’s publicity department.
- Be creative about different ways to promote your book. Blogging, placing relevant articles in local and national media, and maintaining a website are great techniques to keep your name out there in fresh, relevant ways.
In closing, Ralph said, “Publishers have fewer resources to promote your book, fewer outlets for review, and media overload. [There’s a lot of] good noise and bad noise. Be part of the good noise.”
Last up on the panel was Gene Taft, who runs Gene Taft PR and has been a publicist for 16 years. Gene is all about the author taking an active role in promoting his own book. “You should be doing at least as much as your publisher’s publicist, if not more,” he said.
Gene stressed that understanding the process by asking questions and listening to the answer is important, and reminded the audience that PR people “aren’t evil, just overworked.” He suggested that using your head, not just your heart, and drawing a clear delineation between hopes for your book and expectations for your book was critical.
He also pointed out that “your publicist isn’t, like, holding back the secret weapon. …Don’t you think if there was some magic formula, publishers would be using it more often than every 100 or 200 books?” Your publicist wants you to succeed as much as you do. Give him or her a break.
When the laughter died down, Gene offered some specific tips:
- Don’t go for the big audience, go for the good audience. Five hundred people who will definitely buy the book is better than 10,000 who won’t.
- Use your resources, both time and money, well. Be focused, be realistic, and prioritize.
- Books have two audiences: general and specific. Don’t neglect either of them. “It’s hard enough to fin a book when you’re looking for it, much less to stumble upon it.”
- Take advantage of all four media: electronic (TV/radio), print, online (“ignore it at your peril”), and events. Regarding events, Gene said, “If you can’t bring an audience, don’t expect one. If you can’t expect your friends and family to show up, how can you expect the general public to?”
- Work with your publicist to boil the book down to bullet points for marketing.
- There’s plenty of work to go around. Help out.
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