This is going to be AWESOME.
Publishers dedicate marketing and publicity staff to your book, with their biggest push focused around the launch. It's called "event marketing" in the industry.
What that means is that there's one big push, but no long term marketing strategy for the book...and this is where most authors (and some agents) get really grouchy. ("They're not doing anything anymore!")
But before we start Publisher bashing, as is so en vogue these days, consider that just as your book had some launch-time marketing (galleys printed, an ad somewhere, etc.) the next book on that publicist's list has to get the same attention. The publisher has to move on.
Which means that, at this stage, your own marketing efforts have to get more aggressive and your strategy more sophisticated. In post one, we talked about building the foundation of your online presence. On Tuesday, about focusing your online strategy. At this stage, you should focus on marrying your marketing foundation (blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) with specific marketing strategy.
This means getting creative. Your goal should be to keep your book(s) on people's minds in the online space, where attention spans are notoriously short.
This is not done by "selling" your book.
As you've no doubt heard before, broadcasting "BUY MY BOOK" is a quick way to get ignored. Create value for your audience--by being funny, like Maureen Johnson, finding interesting images on Flickr, or marrying your writing interests with something broader, as Sarah Fine does with psychology and YA literature.
Keep them coming back for your digital content and persona (separate from your book) and they'll get your book news (new releases, discounted ebooks, etc.) too. Organically piqued interest has a much greater chance of generating sales and word-of-mouth advertising.
Yes, this "online stuff" takes time. Or money (you can certainly pay some very talented professionals to do this for you). The online space has become a hugely important marketing and sales environment. If you choose to ignore that online space, you risk dooming your book to the "Launch and Fizzle" pattern so many books fall into.
I'm reading a lot lately about how blogging doesn't sell books. Maybe it doesn't move units directly, but it sells the AUTHOR. Love this: "Keep them coming back for your digital content and persona (separate from your book) and they'll get your book news (new releases, discounted ebooks, etc.) too. Organically piqued interest has a much greater chance of generating sales and word-of-mouth advertising." Will RT!
ReplyDeleteI do have a serious question. If advertising helps to sell books, and publishers want to sell books, why don't they have larger advertising departments that can manage advertising for the books they sell?
ReplyDeleteIs it a case of "this is the way it's always been done"? Or just a problem with the economy where everything is getting downsized? (In which case I wonder, why downsize the thing that actually helps you sell your product?) Or is it that's just not cost effective for them to advertise books (ie, advertising doesn't really help that much)?
Suzi,
ReplyDeleteGreat questions, with several different elements that I'll try to speak to--this might be a new blog topic!
Fist and foremost, Publishers could never expand their marketing depts to sustain advertising for the books they sell over the life of the book. First off, some books just don't sell--spending advertising money on a bad gamble (as every book is) is not good sense. Second, to do that the advertising dept would consume all resources.
A publisher is a publisher--not an ad company. Advertising is only one function, and they do it reasonably well.
More than any of that, though, it's that the nature of advertising is changing. It's digitized, often through social media. An ad dept literally can't take that on because social media requires the author's voice interacting with fans to gain any traction.
An author can pay a professional to craft and implement that voice for him/her, but that's a truly handcrafted campaign. It's unreasonable to expect a publisher's marketing department to do that for any author.
Authors, you just have to do this yourselves. It's not the publisher's fault; it's just the environment now.
This is pretty much why agents are looking for an Author with a platform, is it not? Or are there more reasons beyond marketing a finished product?
ReplyDeleteI love this: "More than any of that, though, it's that the nature of advertising is changing. It's digitized, often through social media. An ad dept literally can't take that on because social media requires the author's voice interacting with fans to gain any traction."
ReplyDelete