Category Archives: Business

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It Never Rains But It Pours: Boosting Your Signal In A Saturated Market

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Congrats! You’ve gotten an agent, sold your book to the publisher of your dreams, and received a tidy little advance.

“So, when’s my book tour?”
“Eh, we’re not going to worry about that. We’ve got this great advertising plan instead. We’re going to advertise on Facebook, GoodReads and Reddit.”
“Um, okay…but how am I going to talk to fans of the genre?”
“What?”
“How am I going to reach into the community that I came from, where people know my name because I’ve blogged for all these awesome sites like Booklife Now and SFSignal and sold stories to all these genre magazines?”
“Well, we’re sending out about 50 review copies!”
“Oh that’s great. Where to?”
“Well, like 10 copies to the New York Times, and 5 to Washington Post and 5 to Times Magazine, and one to the Religion Reporter at–”
“Uh, guys, genre! That’s where people know me and would buy this awesome book!”
“…”

Now, this is based on the experience of two of my clients, amalgamated and exaggerated a little…but not much. It isn’t a hypothetical exercise for my amusement, it’s how the industry works.

Promotions and book marketing are a tricky sport. Profit margins are thin enough when things go well, even for the ‘Big 6’. Publishers need the best possible results for the least amount of money. The best results are, of course, going to be if the New York Times or the Washington Post pulls it out of the towering stacks of submissions and writes a glowing review. That happens just often enough to be worth the resources and effort.

It isn’t just a crapshoot on the higher levels, either. Reviewers and bloggers are inundated with unsolicited copies and requests, and time is limited. Will and skill aren’t always equal, so while there are hundreds of reviewers, not everyone will fit your needs. This is where knowledge and research are vital: Bitten By Books will have no interest in your Sword and Sorcery, while Monster Librarian probably isn’t the best place for your YA fantasy romance. The more you know your market, the better your results will be.

And, too, there is a fine balance between sending out more copies than will be bought, and not sending enough copies out. Send too many out, and you might cancel out your sales. Don’t send enough out, and you may end up hearing ‘wow, I didn’t even know your book was out yet!’. Neither one is desirable.

So, say you’re an author handling your own publicity, or wanting to bolster your publicist’s efforts. What do you do?

1.) Before you do anything, check with your publisher, agent, editor and publicist, or any combination of the above. Every situation varies, but you need to maintain both transparency and communication. Ask your team if you can help, and then go from there.

2.) When you talk to your team, ask them for whatever materials they have: a ‘tear sheet’ with the official info, e-books or NetGalley info, or a press kit. Also ask for a list of places that they are sending your books. There’s no point in sending multiple copies to the same place, it just wastes resources and makes you look sloppy.

3.) Research your market. Tor.com posted an excellent list of review sites, but don’t just go down the list, mailing a copy to each person on the list. Read the requirements. Check the list of books they’ve reviewed.

4.) You should be aware of books similar to yours, and authors in your subgenre. Google reviews of their work, and see who covered them.

5.) If your resources are limited, create a hierarchy. Who do you absolutely HAVE to have cover your book? Who is a potential? Who is just overflow, get’em if you’ve got extras?

6.) Social media is your best friend and your worst enemy. DO NOT follow the advice that so many self-help websites promote. Be genuine. Talk about things other than your book. Limit yourself to, at maximum, two ‘my book is for sale’ posts a day…and that’s your upper limit. Less is more, in this case, and if you power too often, you risk alienating potential fans in a hurry.

7.) Speaking of the ‘learn how to promote your book today!’ sites…avoid. Avoid at ALL costs. Instead, focus your efforts on industry professionals. Do your own research. Don’t fall for cheap mailing lists, or guarantees to get your book on a best-seller list. If it sounds too good to be true, it is. Even the best publicist can’t guarantee you a spot on the best-seller list.

8.) And if you do hire a publicist? Make sure you have a good contract. Specify how much you’ll pay, and when. Leave an escape clause. Err on the side of overkill, because it protects both the author and the publicist.

The book industry throws an incredibly steep learning curve at you, as a new author. It’s a learning curve that doesn’t ever level off much, either.

But, just maybe, with a little luck, a lot of very hard work, and copious amounts of alcohol, you can make it through this ring of hell, too.

On Rebranding a Known Property

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I met Jeff VanderMeer over Greek food, during his tour for the release of Booklife. He personalized the two books I bought with sketches. We all went to a bar and I had a great conversation with his dad before driving the three hours back home, at midnight. I chalked it up to the ‘that was fun’ category and went back to writing.

At the time, I had no idea I would end up doing freelance publicity for him, or good-naturedly threatening him with pandas. All I knew was that he knew what the hell he was talking about and had some really interesting stories about cockroaches. When I started actually working as a publicist though, he was one of my first clients, through Raw Dog Screaming Press. I was working on Monstrous Creatures, one of his non-fiction collections.

My first real brush with the Booklife experience came last year at FogCon, about 2 years after I met Jeff. We wanted to put together a mini-workshop for Booklife for con attendees. We terrified the coffee shop where the workshop was held, cramming 15+ people around one table and commencing very strange discussions. Listening to them discuss how to take the maddening, sanity-destroying world of writing and manage it, even enjoy it, was like three years of on-the-ground experience wrapped up into one neat package. We talked about some things to do with the Booklife brand, but due to busy lives, they fell through at the time.

In January, Morgan emailed me saying, “Jeff has offered us the Booklife website and brand. They’ve got the Weird website stuff going on, and Booklife needs someone else to keep it growing.”

We worked things out with Jeff, and started brainstorming how to do the old incarnation justice, but also how to take it to the next step in its evolution.

How did we do that?

  1. We created a long-running plan. We didn’t just immediately open up and start posting whatever. We debated what we wanted to offer as a group. Long email chains formed on everything from what content we’d post the first week to the choice of website colors. (We finally settled on the colors when Lily, our resident synesthete, said everything tasted good.)
  2. The website was redesigned. We took many elements from the original site and married them to Galen Dara’s unique art style. Jacob and Marlyse rebuilt it to make it clean and easy, and, most importantly, fresh.
  3. Steve and I collaborated on a press release that would go out to select members of the community. This gives us the opportunity to express the changes, as well as inform that we’re open for business again.
  4. I actually came up with a catchy slogan! “Booklife gave you the platform. Booklife Now is your expansion kit.” It’s short, memorable, and perfectly expresses our plans.
  5. We planned content. Knowing where we’re going is half the battle in ensuring that we remain focused and unique.
  6. We defined staff roles, and made sure we had a variety of people.

Now, of course, there are hundreds of little details I’m not mentioning. But in six steps, we took an existing product and made it our own, without losing the history and uniqueness of the existing product.

You see, it’s great to take on an existing brand, especially one as well-known and loved as Booklife. It already has fans, and we’ll be able to tap into an existing market. But at the same time, we won’t be able to carbon-copy what Jeff and his group did. Besides that, we need to be able to show it as a new thing. It’s like rebooting a comic book character: try not to piss off all of the fans, but still offer a fresh new face.