I have a history in traditional publishing and so have a background for the kind of thinking put forth in this essay. I also have a growing body of evidence that this essay proves why the traditional publishing industry is losing its grip on the avidly reading public.
If you think book marketing doesn't work or can't be decoded, you haven't broken marketing into its separate parts.
Marketing is the umbrella term for a group of behaviors, and so if it is used as a synonym for a single aspect of the marketing process, it would be pretty confusing.
Public relations, media planning, pricing, distribution, sales, customer experience, and advertising all combine to create marketing.
Using one term at the expense of all the others is kind of like going to your doctor with stomach pain and being told, "Your health is bad." And being told we have no idea what marketing behaviors lead to success is like that same doctor saying, "We have no idea why you're sick."
The truth is more reassuring. Just like every component of health can be tested, every component of marketing can be tested. Sometimes the path to success is as frustrating as the path to revived health, but to the one who searches, answers are available.
As with diet and its impact on overall health, advertising tends to be the marketing behavior with the most dramatic, visible benefits so it's typically the lever most heavily pressed, but it's also the most costly, and leads to the most heart break. After all, if you advertise a turd to enough consumers, some of them will buy so they can feed it to their pet beetle.
Other arms of marketing cost less and produce compounding effects over time. Lift weights for a lifetime, avoid osteoporosis. Post on social media for a lifetime, build a loyal following. Every day you take off, you lose some compounding effect. Do you know anyone who posts or lifts daily?
There's obviously a ton to unpack on this subject, but I found the thesis of the essay to so misrepresent the truth about marketing that it was worth speaking.
While it's true we can't control the genes we were born with any more than we can control the market our book launches into, we can control enough of the variables to market our way to becoming a household name. Most of us aren't willing to do the hard work of figuring it out though.
I agree with you! This one essay can’t represent or decode all of marketing and I also think that with enough time, effort, and money many could figure out exactly what works for their book(s). But few—authors and publishers included—have the time, energy, and money to do that. It’s possible! Just not often probable or feasible.
That is the truth. I think most of us aren't willing to do the work to figure it out, and I wonder if it might make sense for publishers to adapt because of that. Many traditionally published authors are given very little education to try all the varieties of marketing that could improve their chances of finding the success.
Publishers could create a department for this, have the best resources in the world, and share the effort, but not only do they have no resources, but they put the burden on the authors to learn from scratch.
Publishers look to MFA programs for relationship building but MFA programs teach nothing about marketing.
Authors who want to learn have to pay course-makers to learn, and the cost on them is hugely challenging. It's a bit sad, the way it all has happened.
This exchange really surfaces the different variables, and I find it as helpful as Kate's initial post. Kate is making a solid point about how interest in a book can compound over time, something that's hard to track or repeat. But it's also true that a lot of sophisticated thinking goes into marketing and PR at a big publisher. The biggest trouble, as Jody notes, is the cost on authors — that's the nub for any of us writing book proposals or trying to figure out how to market our work to fewer book readers than ever. I do wonder, for instance, how much input Gabrielle Zevin had on the innovative marketing for *Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow* — very much not another bottle of Coke :-)
Pricing, distribution, PR and sales don't fall under the marketing umbrella in many industries, especially those bigger than book publishing. But if that is the case within publishing, then could this be part of the problem - and why it's so confusing for authors?
Feel free to fact check me. Marketing is marketing no matter where it’s done. Pricing is a huge aspect of marketing and PR may be the number one key to marketing.
I've supported sales and marketing teams globally for two decades. Calling out even these linked functions as being the same thing would have led to ridicule and cost me my job. Major CRM platforms like Salesforce make a clear functional distinction. For example, the sales funnel is a very distinct feature which marketing activity precedes or is even peripheral. See this simple primer: https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/sales-and-marketing
We don't have to get tetchy here, friends. In publishing, the marketing department does not set the price of the book, but those that do price it (mostly editorial with a mix of production) heavily consider how the price will affect the overall marketing of a book. Book prices are relatively set so this isn't as big a marketing factor as in other industries. PR (or we call it publicity) and marketing are different departments in most publishing houses, but they work closely together. The overlap there is often blurry.
I'll site my sources just this once, because I don't want to get into a spitting match, but I also think you're choosing a condescending and didactic tone at a really bizarre moment.
3. Here from The Marketing Society is a clear discussion of the function of PR within Marketing: https://www.marketingsociety.com/the-library/should-public-relations-be-part-marketing At least in this case there's some discussion of whether PR and Marketing are separate kingdoms, but if we look at the definition of terms, the overlap is clear.
4. The Oxford Dictionary defines marketing as the following: "the activity of presenting, advertising and selling a company's products or services in the best possible way." The same dictionary defines PR as follows: "the business of giving the public information about a particular organization or person in order to create a good impression. The overlap is undeniable even from the most cursory glance that you can't have a company without having something or some service to market.
I understand there are distinctions, but the issue with your presentation is that you are claiming distinction as separation, and it isn't. Biology teaches us that the hierarchy of taxonomic categories is kingdom, domain, phylum, class and so on. The same applies to marketing.
You can't sell without marketing so we know sales fits inside of the marketing hierarchy. You can relate to the public without selling, so we know PR fits higher on the ladder. You can market without relating to the public which is why marketing comes higher still. (The way we know you can market without public relations can be illustrated in two key ways: 1-Word of mouth can happen for businesses that don't exist. 2-Brand never dies.)
Since you can market without relating to the public, but you can't relate to the public without marketing, it makes reasonable sense to call marketing the kingdom and PR the domain.
Salesforce and other CRMs have functional distinctions for a good reason, and if you look at my initial or followup posts, you'll see I never claimed otherwise. In fact, I based my comments on that very concept. But the same way you can have whales, pigs, and chimpanzees in the same kingdom you can have distinctions in processes that all roll up to the same umbrella activity. No one would fire you or anyone for saying that, Johnathan.
"You can't sell without marketing so we know sales fits inside of the marketing hierarchy."
Hmm, I guess everything is a marketed nail when one is only capable of wielding a marketing hammer. I'll just cover over the embarrassing hole being dug with a final statement and then depart this self-constructed nonsensical argument:
Billions of commodity products are priced, distributed and sold every week globally without any marketing whatsoever, be it books, drugs, vegetables or utilities. Your argument denies this possibility and therefore obvious business reality.
The paucity of predictive and prescriptive data in the publishing industry drives me nuts, but I think there's just too many variables to tease apart (or else some company would have already done it and deprived Nielsen of a pot of gold).
Just maybe, when fed decades of sales and other pertinent customer data, an AI will recognise these subtle patterns and be an unlikely saviour for authors, agents and editors.
This rings true for me. Any beverage maker trying to take a little market share from Coke would face the same predicament. People rarely make a purchase the first time they hear of a product/book/brand/author, but hearing the same name again and again with positive associations might encourage them to buy eventually. This makes book (or brand) marketing a long game.
This was a heartening read and just the right time, thank you. I have a platform or two and it's still a massive mystery. I like the closing advice to think more closely as authors about what works for us as readers/buyers. There is something about reputation and word of mouth for me especially and recurring exposure in front of my eyes! haha. I rarely buy books as soon as they land or on pre-order (though I did with Glynnis's book! read it and finished it on the day it launched ha) but I do add them to my lists and get round to them at some point. Anyway, very useful, thank you!
It’s weirdly comforting to know everyone is as confused as I am. Thanks Kate. I had a complete breakdown crying jag on vacation last week over just this. I don’t mind working hard (I actually *like* working hard) but when the output creates no predictable results, it’s just so exhausting.
I love your newsletters so much! (I think I won a subscription from Sally! ) I pubbed a book last year with St. Martin's. You'd think I would know who would embrace this book and who wouldn't, right? Nope. The group I thought would embrace - and I put years of work into - didn't as much as I hoped, and other communities not even on my radar stepped up and just gave it warm hugs and a life. So, if I can't figure it out (and I hold the audience in my head while I write) than how can I expect a publisher to get it? LOL I mean I wish that had, but really, no one knows and so much of this is luck.
I was at the Texas Writers League Agents and Editors Conference a couple of weeks ago and attended a panel of self published authors who have gone traditional for their last or last couple of books. One said her income has gone WAY DOWN (as in she was just about at 7 figures a year before going traditional), but she was going to give it a little more time. From an online class I took from her earlier in the year, she said basically you have to decide if you want to have the local bookstore book launch and see your book on the local bookstore shelf, or if you want to make money.
Another author said his inability to control the price of the book (as in the $1.99 sales through Book Bub or Goodreads) was severely curtailing the income from the book, but he couldn't convince the publisher (a university press) to try the strategy the author had been successful with as a self-published author.
Other comments I heard from other panels were that once an author signs the contract with a traditional publisher, the author loses all or most of the control of the book as far as the cover art or even the title.
It seemed to me like Traditional says we know everything, leave it to us - but they are completely out of touch with how people consume books. As someone who reads a lot, if it isn't on Kindle Unlimited or a $1.99 special, then I consider those books "library" books.
I actually wrote a post about recently about the disparity between what readers want and what traditional publishers do leave everyone poorer because readers that read a lot can't afford traditional publishing prices for books.
I was also at that conference, plus know the university-published writer and have interviewed the 7-figure author for the Austin Liti Limits YouTube show. Traditional publishing is poorer than their author-published experience. It helps to be traditionally published via an Amazon imprint. But even that has its limits. Those two authors know more first hand about publishing and promoting than their traditional partners. It was especially interesting since they were coming from the two ends of the traditional scale: college press (all about the bookstores, especially via campus) versus very few store sales at all via Amazon. Considering that traditional publishing draws deep from the literary educational complex and its steep tuition investment, the chance of a good author ROI seems slim. Especially in a world where bookstore sales recede every week.
If you see a new subscriber to your YouTube, that's me! I think Roy really nails it as far as deciding what is important to you as an author. And you have to commit to "working it" as a self publisher. Amazon isn't going to do it for you. Basically you have two jobs as the writer and the publisher on Amazon. I have a non fiction book I will be publishing in the fall that is a guide to Austin. I first put up a website about Austin in 1999 (that's not a typo) and have been working on a relaunch over the past year. There really aren't any good guides to Austin out there. Mine focuses on things that should always be there like the Ney, things to see at UT, the museums, etc.., not restaurants, etc. Fodor has a guide to Austin that is combined with San Antonio. It is really slim. I think my book will do well on Amazon. But if I had anyone interested in the fiction book I am working on, I would go traditional just for the chance to be eligible for recognition even knowing that the money would not be that much. I had the chance on Friday night to have an extended conversation with Jennifer Mathieu, who wrote the YA novel "Moxie" that was made into a Netflix movie by Amy Poehler . She is still teaching high school. Of course I wanted to know how much money she made. It sounded like maybe mid six figures. Is that a lot of money? Of course! But these days, not enough to retire on. She was a delight, however. I really enjoyed the chance to talk to her. That was one of the things I enjoyed the most about the conference, though I got a lot out of the panels as well (mostly confirming things I already thought though).
I was at this conference too, Sandra! (Excellent, IMHO!)
This is an off-shoot comment, but something I’ve been thinking about since the conference. As a ‘consumer’ I found myself buying the books of authors who were funny or kind or otherwise endearing on panels, regardless of whether I usually read in their genre. I quickly realized this was pretty much everyone I saw on a panel and that BookPeople would sell out of people’s books, so I just bought books of anyone I whose panel I planned to attend. 😬😉
BookPeople DID sell out of books by several authors. I advised myself, “Self, when you have a book out & say yes to one panel - ask to be on four that day.” I acknowledge this is a slow & impractical way of selling books. But it works on people like me.
Being on as many panels in one day as you can is actually brilliant! I think every book you buy is like a promise to yourself to be smarter, prettier, wittier . . . so many things. But I am 66 and downsized to a fraction of the physical possessions I had previously had just a few years ago. So it's e-books or the library for me. I read (and had to buy) the ebook versions of both of Ed Park's books before the conference. I was really curious what kind of book gets nominated for a Pulitzer. Even Ed Park seemed surprised by his nomination, and since I had read the book, I knew why. Reading that book was like reading a text book for college and not in a good way. The gulf between "enjoyable" reading and "serious" reading seems pretty wide at times. I would be really curious how many people who got a free copy of "Same Bed, Different Dreams" have read it since the conference. Nothing against Ed Park though. He seemed like a nice guy.
Regarding social media followers: "those numbers don’t turn into book sales". Not so sure about that. I know someone who was contacted by an agent because he was a minor (100,000 or so) social media celebrity. He had a trending subject (most do, or they wouldn't get all those followers) and was young and New York. But still... He wasn't even a writer! When he told the agent this, she said, "Don't worry. We'll fix that part." : )
Yes! This happens! But his social media followers turned into a book DEAL. We don’t have concrete, widely applicable data on how many of those people will buy the book when it goes on sale.
Thanks Kate. We may not have data on how social media affects sales (and this is weird, just compare with against without), but fans are book buyers. It only makes sense celebrities have a baked-in sale.
It's just a fact of life. Great writing, admirable in and of itself, will not lead to success. Even Hemingway, possibly the finest prose writer of all time, pumped the hand of every insider he could find
YES, Sean! As the CEO of a book publicity firm with decades of experience, I hear this exact line from authors every day: Writing the book was the easy part. Getting people to know about it and buy it is the hard part.
One is in your control (writing the book). The other (marketing), well--you can do everything right in terms of marketing, promotion, social media activity, author brand development, ideal publication date, price points, retail plan, etc. and still not reach your goals.
Book marketing does work but it will not work for crap books.
As for me, I enjoy the marketing as much as the writing. That's why my books (mainly self-published) have sold over 1,100,000 copies and have been published in 22 languages in 29 countries.
I have come up with 75 to 100 of my own unique "marketing" techniques that 95 percent of authors and so called "book marketing experts" are not creative or smart enough to come up with. I have used similar unique "marketing" techniques to get over 111 books deals with various foreign publishers around the world. These "marketing" techniques involve what my competitors are NOT doing — instead of what my competitors are doing.
Here is the bottom line: A book will not sell by itself. I have come up with 75 to 100 of my own unique "marketing" techniques that 95 percent of authors and so called "book marketing experts" are not creative or smart enough to come up with. I have used similar unique "marketing" techniques to get over 111 books deals with various foreign publishers around the world. These "marketing" techniques involve what my competitors are NOT doing — instead of what my competitors are doing.
Just a note that my "How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free" was self-published in 2003 and still sells well over 10,000 copies a year. It has now sold over 460,000 copies. What's more, my "The Joy of Not Working" was first self-published in 1991 (over 30 years ago) and still has sold an average of over 1,500 to 3,000 copies a year for the last 10 years. Very few books have that staying power in the marketplace. A lot of this has to do with my 75 to 100 unique book marketing techniques that the vast majority of authors and so-called book marketing experts are not creative or smart enough to come up with. Of course, the most important marketing tool is still word-of-mouth advertising which means you must have a remarkable book (one worth making remarks about).
Here are words of wisdom from much people smarter than me that have guided me over the years:
"It's better to do a sub-par job on the right project than an excellent job on the wrong project."
— Robert J. Ringer
"Even the most careful and expensive marketing plans cannot sell people a book they don’t want to read."
— Michael Korda, former Editor-in-Chief at Simon & Schuster
"A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one."
— Henry Ford
"Good isn't good enough."
— Mark Coker (owner of Smashwords)
"Very Good Is Bad — It's Not Good Enough!"
— Seth Godin (My favorite Marketing Guru)
"The shortest and best way to make your fortune is to let people see clearly that it is in their interests to promote yours."
— Jean de La Bruyére
"In the arena of human life the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action."
— Aristotle
"Books work as an art form (and an economic one) because they are primarily the work of an individual."
— Seth Godin
"Writing is the hardest way to earn a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators."
— Olin Miller
"Your success and prosperity are too valuable to depend on crowd funding or lottery tickets."
— Seth Godin
"Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity."
Thank you for this! And I fully endorse this from the author side - I've done 4 novels with my publisher and have many author friends, and the house really does want to sell the book. And no one actually knows how to do it. It's all throwing spaghetti at the wall.
I found this very interesting because it reminded me of something. Mt eldest daughter worked for a record company in Artists and Recording, A&R. At that time her firm had hired a senior Silicon Valley entrepreneur to try to digitise their selection and marketing of new bands. Long story short, he gave up and went home. The core problem was the nature of the product unlike Coke or any other mass marketed product you can mention music and artists are complex Success hinges on a bewildering number of interrelated factors like novelty, style, emotional and intellect content ( does the music excite or sooth you, do the lyrics tell an interesting story) then there’s the aesthetics of the artists, personal and as a band, do they firm, own or lead a genre. This witches brew has all got to come together in a unique and fresh way to work and then never change, because once a new artist or band works, fans just want more. I think books and authors occupy the same complex space.
Kate: I enjoy your newsletter and perspectives. You make many valid points, but miss a few things here, in my opinion. Most of my publishing career has been in marketing, promotions, publicity, but also in other things. In one of my courses at George Washington University's graduate program in publishing, I mention that no marketing plan is foolproof; you can certainly do everything "right" and work hard at promotion and publicity, and crickets from media and from your audience. And, on occasion, a book seems to take off without much effort at all (although usually there is considerable effort by marketing and sales, even when not apparent). But one sure thing is that your chances of making an impact with a book or other publication are greatly improved with a concerted, coordinated, and comprehensive marketing plan. The planning and execution are a lot of work; it's difficult and sometimes impossible to measure exactly what works, but most successes do come with a coordinated effort between marketing, publicity, and sales; the author's help is, if not essential (the author may be deceased, or unwilling or unable to contribute, for various reasons), certainly beneficial.
I have a history in traditional publishing and so have a background for the kind of thinking put forth in this essay. I also have a growing body of evidence that this essay proves why the traditional publishing industry is losing its grip on the avidly reading public.
If you think book marketing doesn't work or can't be decoded, you haven't broken marketing into its separate parts.
Marketing is the umbrella term for a group of behaviors, and so if it is used as a synonym for a single aspect of the marketing process, it would be pretty confusing.
Public relations, media planning, pricing, distribution, sales, customer experience, and advertising all combine to create marketing.
Using one term at the expense of all the others is kind of like going to your doctor with stomach pain and being told, "Your health is bad." And being told we have no idea what marketing behaviors lead to success is like that same doctor saying, "We have no idea why you're sick."
The truth is more reassuring. Just like every component of health can be tested, every component of marketing can be tested. Sometimes the path to success is as frustrating as the path to revived health, but to the one who searches, answers are available.
As with diet and its impact on overall health, advertising tends to be the marketing behavior with the most dramatic, visible benefits so it's typically the lever most heavily pressed, but it's also the most costly, and leads to the most heart break. After all, if you advertise a turd to enough consumers, some of them will buy so they can feed it to their pet beetle.
Other arms of marketing cost less and produce compounding effects over time. Lift weights for a lifetime, avoid osteoporosis. Post on social media for a lifetime, build a loyal following. Every day you take off, you lose some compounding effect. Do you know anyone who posts or lifts daily?
There's obviously a ton to unpack on this subject, but I found the thesis of the essay to so misrepresent the truth about marketing that it was worth speaking.
While it's true we can't control the genes we were born with any more than we can control the market our book launches into, we can control enough of the variables to market our way to becoming a household name. Most of us aren't willing to do the hard work of figuring it out though.
I agree with you! This one essay can’t represent or decode all of marketing and I also think that with enough time, effort, and money many could figure out exactly what works for their book(s). But few—authors and publishers included—have the time, energy, and money to do that. It’s possible! Just not often probable or feasible.
That is the truth. I think most of us aren't willing to do the work to figure it out, and I wonder if it might make sense for publishers to adapt because of that. Many traditionally published authors are given very little education to try all the varieties of marketing that could improve their chances of finding the success.
Publishers could create a department for this, have the best resources in the world, and share the effort, but not only do they have no resources, but they put the burden on the authors to learn from scratch.
Publishers look to MFA programs for relationship building but MFA programs teach nothing about marketing.
Authors who want to learn have to pay course-makers to learn, and the cost on them is hugely challenging. It's a bit sad, the way it all has happened.
This exchange really surfaces the different variables, and I find it as helpful as Kate's initial post. Kate is making a solid point about how interest in a book can compound over time, something that's hard to track or repeat. But it's also true that a lot of sophisticated thinking goes into marketing and PR at a big publisher. The biggest trouble, as Jody notes, is the cost on authors — that's the nub for any of us writing book proposals or trying to figure out how to market our work to fewer book readers than ever. I do wonder, for instance, how much input Gabrielle Zevin had on the innovative marketing for *Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow* — very much not another bottle of Coke :-)
This is a really helpful analogy. It does give some hope, knowing it’s possible for a weak link to be identified and built up.
Pricing, distribution, PR and sales don't fall under the marketing umbrella in many industries, especially those bigger than book publishing. But if that is the case within publishing, then could this be part of the problem - and why it's so confusing for authors?
Feel free to fact check me. Marketing is marketing no matter where it’s done. Pricing is a huge aspect of marketing and PR may be the number one key to marketing.
I've supported sales and marketing teams globally for two decades. Calling out even these linked functions as being the same thing would have led to ridicule and cost me my job. Major CRM platforms like Salesforce make a clear functional distinction. For example, the sales funnel is a very distinct feature which marketing activity precedes or is even peripheral. See this simple primer: https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/sales-and-marketing
We don't have to get tetchy here, friends. In publishing, the marketing department does not set the price of the book, but those that do price it (mostly editorial with a mix of production) heavily consider how the price will affect the overall marketing of a book. Book prices are relatively set so this isn't as big a marketing factor as in other industries. PR (or we call it publicity) and marketing are different departments in most publishing houses, but they work closely together. The overlap there is often blurry.
I'll site my sources just this once, because I don't want to get into a spitting match, but I also think you're choosing a condescending and didactic tone at a really bizarre moment.
1. Look up "the 4 P's". Start here: https://www.ama.org/marketing-news/the-four-ps-of-marketing/#:~:text=The%20four%20Ps%20of%20marketing%20is%20a%20marketing%20concept%20that,price%2C%20place%2C%20and%20promotion. The American Marketing Association should have enough authority for you.
2. Here's more of the same from Investopia: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/four-ps.asp
3. Here from The Marketing Society is a clear discussion of the function of PR within Marketing: https://www.marketingsociety.com/the-library/should-public-relations-be-part-marketing At least in this case there's some discussion of whether PR and Marketing are separate kingdoms, but if we look at the definition of terms, the overlap is clear.
4. The Oxford Dictionary defines marketing as the following: "the activity of presenting, advertising and selling a company's products or services in the best possible way." The same dictionary defines PR as follows: "the business of giving the public information about a particular organization or person in order to create a good impression. The overlap is undeniable even from the most cursory glance that you can't have a company without having something or some service to market.
I understand there are distinctions, but the issue with your presentation is that you are claiming distinction as separation, and it isn't. Biology teaches us that the hierarchy of taxonomic categories is kingdom, domain, phylum, class and so on. The same applies to marketing.
You can't sell without marketing so we know sales fits inside of the marketing hierarchy. You can relate to the public without selling, so we know PR fits higher on the ladder. You can market without relating to the public which is why marketing comes higher still. (The way we know you can market without public relations can be illustrated in two key ways: 1-Word of mouth can happen for businesses that don't exist. 2-Brand never dies.)
Since you can market without relating to the public, but you can't relate to the public without marketing, it makes reasonable sense to call marketing the kingdom and PR the domain.
Salesforce and other CRMs have functional distinctions for a good reason, and if you look at my initial or followup posts, you'll see I never claimed otherwise. In fact, I based my comments on that very concept. But the same way you can have whales, pigs, and chimpanzees in the same kingdom you can have distinctions in processes that all roll up to the same umbrella activity. No one would fire you or anyone for saying that, Johnathan.
"You can't sell without marketing so we know sales fits inside of the marketing hierarchy."
Hmm, I guess everything is a marketed nail when one is only capable of wielding a marketing hammer. I'll just cover over the embarrassing hole being dug with a final statement and then depart this self-constructed nonsensical argument:
Billions of commodity products are priced, distributed and sold every week globally without any marketing whatsoever, be it books, drugs, vegetables or utilities. Your argument denies this possibility and therefore obvious business reality.
Thanks for this Kate. Excellent take.
The paucity of predictive and prescriptive data in the publishing industry drives me nuts, but I think there's just too many variables to tease apart (or else some company would have already done it and deprived Nielsen of a pot of gold).
Just maybe, when fed decades of sales and other pertinent customer data, an AI will recognise these subtle patterns and be an unlikely saviour for authors, agents and editors.
This rings true for me. Any beverage maker trying to take a little market share from Coke would face the same predicament. People rarely make a purchase the first time they hear of a product/book/brand/author, but hearing the same name again and again with positive associations might encourage them to buy eventually. This makes book (or brand) marketing a long game.
THis is it! This is exactly it!!!
"to buy" - Fingers and edit function seem to be on vacation at the same time. 🙄
This was a heartening read and just the right time, thank you. I have a platform or two and it's still a massive mystery. I like the closing advice to think more closely as authors about what works for us as readers/buyers. There is something about reputation and word of mouth for me especially and recurring exposure in front of my eyes! haha. I rarely buy books as soon as they land or on pre-order (though I did with Glynnis's book! read it and finished it on the day it launched ha) but I do add them to my lists and get round to them at some point. Anyway, very useful, thank you!
I like how this newsletter is so devoted to managing the treachery of uncertainty! But we need it. 😅
It’s weirdly comforting to know everyone is as confused as I am. Thanks Kate. I had a complete breakdown crying jag on vacation last week over just this. I don’t mind working hard (I actually *like* working hard) but when the output creates no predictable results, it’s just so exhausting.
I love your newsletters so much! (I think I won a subscription from Sally! ) I pubbed a book last year with St. Martin's. You'd think I would know who would embrace this book and who wouldn't, right? Nope. The group I thought would embrace - and I put years of work into - didn't as much as I hoped, and other communities not even on my radar stepped up and just gave it warm hugs and a life. So, if I can't figure it out (and I hold the audience in my head while I write) than how can I expect a publisher to get it? LOL I mean I wish that had, but really, no one knows and so much of this is luck.
I was at the Texas Writers League Agents and Editors Conference a couple of weeks ago and attended a panel of self published authors who have gone traditional for their last or last couple of books. One said her income has gone WAY DOWN (as in she was just about at 7 figures a year before going traditional), but she was going to give it a little more time. From an online class I took from her earlier in the year, she said basically you have to decide if you want to have the local bookstore book launch and see your book on the local bookstore shelf, or if you want to make money.
Another author said his inability to control the price of the book (as in the $1.99 sales through Book Bub or Goodreads) was severely curtailing the income from the book, but he couldn't convince the publisher (a university press) to try the strategy the author had been successful with as a self-published author.
Other comments I heard from other panels were that once an author signs the contract with a traditional publisher, the author loses all or most of the control of the book as far as the cover art or even the title.
It seemed to me like Traditional says we know everything, leave it to us - but they are completely out of touch with how people consume books. As someone who reads a lot, if it isn't on Kindle Unlimited or a $1.99 special, then I consider those books "library" books.
I actually wrote a post about recently about the disparity between what readers want and what traditional publishers do leave everyone poorer because readers that read a lot can't afford traditional publishing prices for books.
I was also at that conference, plus know the university-published writer and have interviewed the 7-figure author for the Austin Liti Limits YouTube show. Traditional publishing is poorer than their author-published experience. It helps to be traditionally published via an Amazon imprint. But even that has its limits. Those two authors know more first hand about publishing and promoting than their traditional partners. It was especially interesting since they were coming from the two ends of the traditional scale: college press (all about the bookstores, especially via campus) versus very few store sales at all via Amazon. Considering that traditional publishing draws deep from the literary educational complex and its steep tuition investment, the chance of a good author ROI seems slim. Especially in a world where bookstore sales recede every week.
If you see a new subscriber to your YouTube, that's me! I think Roy really nails it as far as deciding what is important to you as an author. And you have to commit to "working it" as a self publisher. Amazon isn't going to do it for you. Basically you have two jobs as the writer and the publisher on Amazon. I have a non fiction book I will be publishing in the fall that is a guide to Austin. I first put up a website about Austin in 1999 (that's not a typo) and have been working on a relaunch over the past year. There really aren't any good guides to Austin out there. Mine focuses on things that should always be there like the Ney, things to see at UT, the museums, etc.., not restaurants, etc. Fodor has a guide to Austin that is combined with San Antonio. It is really slim. I think my book will do well on Amazon. But if I had anyone interested in the fiction book I am working on, I would go traditional just for the chance to be eligible for recognition even knowing that the money would not be that much. I had the chance on Friday night to have an extended conversation with Jennifer Mathieu, who wrote the YA novel "Moxie" that was made into a Netflix movie by Amy Poehler . She is still teaching high school. Of course I wanted to know how much money she made. It sounded like maybe mid six figures. Is that a lot of money? Of course! But these days, not enough to retire on. She was a delight, however. I really enjoyed the chance to talk to her. That was one of the things I enjoyed the most about the conference, though I got a lot out of the panels as well (mostly confirming things I already thought though).
I was at this conference too, Sandra! (Excellent, IMHO!)
This is an off-shoot comment, but something I’ve been thinking about since the conference. As a ‘consumer’ I found myself buying the books of authors who were funny or kind or otherwise endearing on panels, regardless of whether I usually read in their genre. I quickly realized this was pretty much everyone I saw on a panel and that BookPeople would sell out of people’s books, so I just bought books of anyone I whose panel I planned to attend. 😬😉
BookPeople DID sell out of books by several authors. I advised myself, “Self, when you have a book out & say yes to one panel - ask to be on four that day.” I acknowledge this is a slow & impractical way of selling books. But it works on people like me.
Being on as many panels in one day as you can is actually brilliant! I think every book you buy is like a promise to yourself to be smarter, prettier, wittier . . . so many things. But I am 66 and downsized to a fraction of the physical possessions I had previously had just a few years ago. So it's e-books or the library for me. I read (and had to buy) the ebook versions of both of Ed Park's books before the conference. I was really curious what kind of book gets nominated for a Pulitzer. Even Ed Park seemed surprised by his nomination, and since I had read the book, I knew why. Reading that book was like reading a text book for college and not in a good way. The gulf between "enjoyable" reading and "serious" reading seems pretty wide at times. I would be really curious how many people who got a free copy of "Same Bed, Different Dreams" have read it since the conference. Nothing against Ed Park though. He seemed like a nice guy.
Regarding social media followers: "those numbers don’t turn into book sales". Not so sure about that. I know someone who was contacted by an agent because he was a minor (100,000 or so) social media celebrity. He had a trending subject (most do, or they wouldn't get all those followers) and was young and New York. But still... He wasn't even a writer! When he told the agent this, she said, "Don't worry. We'll fix that part." : )
Yes! This happens! But his social media followers turned into a book DEAL. We don’t have concrete, widely applicable data on how many of those people will buy the book when it goes on sale.
Thanks Kate. We may not have data on how social media affects sales (and this is weird, just compare with against without), but fans are book buyers. It only makes sense celebrities have a baked-in sale.
That is a bit disheartening to those of us who are writers! And have invested in learning the craft over many years. 🙄🤦🏼♀️🤷🏼♀️
It's just a fact of life. Great writing, admirable in and of itself, will not lead to success. Even Hemingway, possibly the finest prose writer of all time, pumped the hand of every insider he could find
Really interesting. It seems that writing a book is the easy bit.
YES, Sean! As the CEO of a book publicity firm with decades of experience, I hear this exact line from authors every day: Writing the book was the easy part. Getting people to know about it and buy it is the hard part.
One is in your control (writing the book). The other (marketing), well--you can do everything right in terms of marketing, promotion, social media activity, author brand development, ideal publication date, price points, retail plan, etc. and still not reach your goals.
Writing a book and getting a publisher is my goal. Selling it is theirs : )
Test
Book marketing does work but it will not work for crap books.
As for me, I enjoy the marketing as much as the writing. That's why my books (mainly self-published) have sold over 1,100,000 copies and have been published in 22 languages in 29 countries.
I have come up with 75 to 100 of my own unique "marketing" techniques that 95 percent of authors and so called "book marketing experts" are not creative or smart enough to come up with. I have used similar unique "marketing" techniques to get over 111 books deals with various foreign publishers around the world. These "marketing" techniques involve what my competitors are NOT doing — instead of what my competitors are doing.
Here is the bottom line: A book will not sell by itself. I have come up with 75 to 100 of my own unique "marketing" techniques that 95 percent of authors and so called "book marketing experts" are not creative or smart enough to come up with. I have used similar unique "marketing" techniques to get over 111 books deals with various foreign publishers around the world. These "marketing" techniques involve what my competitors are NOT doing — instead of what my competitors are doing.
Just a note that my "How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free" was self-published in 2003 and still sells well over 10,000 copies a year. It has now sold over 460,000 copies. What's more, my "The Joy of Not Working" was first self-published in 1991 (over 30 years ago) and still has sold an average of over 1,500 to 3,000 copies a year for the last 10 years. Very few books have that staying power in the marketplace. A lot of this has to do with my 75 to 100 unique book marketing techniques that the vast majority of authors and so-called book marketing experts are not creative or smart enough to come up with. Of course, the most important marketing tool is still word-of-mouth advertising which means you must have a remarkable book (one worth making remarks about).
Here are words of wisdom from much people smarter than me that have guided me over the years:
"It's better to do a sub-par job on the right project than an excellent job on the wrong project."
— Robert J. Ringer
"Even the most careful and expensive marketing plans cannot sell people a book they don’t want to read."
— Michael Korda, former Editor-in-Chief at Simon & Schuster
"A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one."
— Henry Ford
"Good isn't good enough."
— Mark Coker (owner of Smashwords)
"Very Good Is Bad — It's Not Good Enough!"
— Seth Godin (My favorite Marketing Guru)
"The shortest and best way to make your fortune is to let people see clearly that it is in their interests to promote yours."
— Jean de La Bruyére
"In the arena of human life the honors and rewards fall to those who show their good qualities in action."
— Aristotle
"Books work as an art form (and an economic one) because they are primarily the work of an individual."
— Seth Godin
"Writing is the hardest way to earn a living, with the possible exception of wrestling alligators."
— Olin Miller
"Your success and prosperity are too valuable to depend on crowd funding or lottery tickets."
— Seth Godin
"Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to continually be part of unanimity."
— Christopher Morley
I’m so interested to read the overlaps here in trade & academic publishing. They are different beasts, but the struggles are very much the same.
Thank you for this! And I fully endorse this from the author side - I've done 4 novels with my publisher and have many author friends, and the house really does want to sell the book. And no one actually knows how to do it. It's all throwing spaghetti at the wall.
I found this very interesting because it reminded me of something. Mt eldest daughter worked for a record company in Artists and Recording, A&R. At that time her firm had hired a senior Silicon Valley entrepreneur to try to digitise their selection and marketing of new bands. Long story short, he gave up and went home. The core problem was the nature of the product unlike Coke or any other mass marketed product you can mention music and artists are complex Success hinges on a bewildering number of interrelated factors like novelty, style, emotional and intellect content ( does the music excite or sooth you, do the lyrics tell an interesting story) then there’s the aesthetics of the artists, personal and as a band, do they firm, own or lead a genre. This witches brew has all got to come together in a unique and fresh way to work and then never change, because once a new artist or band works, fans just want more. I think books and authors occupy the same complex space.
Kate: I enjoy your newsletter and perspectives. You make many valid points, but miss a few things here, in my opinion. Most of my publishing career has been in marketing, promotions, publicity, but also in other things. In one of my courses at George Washington University's graduate program in publishing, I mention that no marketing plan is foolproof; you can certainly do everything "right" and work hard at promotion and publicity, and crickets from media and from your audience. And, on occasion, a book seems to take off without much effort at all (although usually there is considerable effort by marketing and sales, even when not apparent). But one sure thing is that your chances of making an impact with a book or other publication are greatly improved with a concerted, coordinated, and comprehensive marketing plan. The planning and execution are a lot of work; it's difficult and sometimes impossible to measure exactly what works, but most successes do come with a coordinated effort between marketing, publicity, and sales; the author's help is, if not essential (the author may be deceased, or unwilling or unable to contribute, for various reasons), certainly beneficial.