Entries Tagged 'Marketing' ↓

Speaking earlier of promoting your book, sometimes there isn’t much you can do when the marketing team decides to promote you as something that you aren’t in order to sell books. This can backfire especially when your target audience will avoid the type of cover that your book ends up having. Whether you want to admit it or not we all judge books by their covers. Diane Shipley wrote about ‘chick-lit’ covers on The Guardian’s blog a while ago. For an example of this take Louise Erdrich’s new novel A Plague of Doves. It is a novel that intertwines different voices and spans generations of Native Americans on one reservation. Topics covered include lynchings, racism, spousal abuse, kidnapping and quite a few other dark topics. Don’t be put off though, it is a fantastic novel but not normally one I would pick up because this is the Australian cover –

   (hardly looks like a plague does it)

Even though the American cover is more appropriate –

Well, Bookninja has decided it was time to turn the tables. He ran a contest for the best made up cover of a previously published title. The results are hilarious (and an excellent exercise in marketing for beginners).

And if you are in serious need of a belly laugh visit  the World of Longmire to see the opposite. She has taken a bunch of existing covers of romance novels and written new titles. Enjoy.

If you want to promote your book but you aren’t quite up to the TV spot stage, Michelle Moran (author of Nefertiti) is guest blogging over on Nathan Bransford’s blog. Part 1 of her guest blog outlines what the marketing and publicity department does and the terms they use so that you can understand what your publisher uses to promote your book. Part 2 covers what you can do to promote your book just before it comes out. Michelle will be guest blogging a few more times so check back to see what over useful stuff she has to say.

Nathan Bransford, over at his blog, wrote a post last week about a new genre of book - Book Club fiction. The sort of book that would make a great book club book is something a little bit commercial, a little bit literary, well-written but accessible and an interesting topic, something that’s going to generate a lot of discussion. Some examples would be: The Kite Runner, Out Stealing Horses, Life of Pi. While I’ve never been in a book club, I have worked in a book store and I know how often people come in asking for a selection of titles that would be suitable for their book club.

He said on his post that "Book clubs are an extremely important market for publishers, so much so that books that would appeal to book clubs often have supplementary material in the back (such as discussion questions), and many publishers provide additional web resources."

Book clubs are such a major part of the book-buying public that it makes sense to think of what would see to a book club when thinking of ideas for your next novel. Anyone got any good ones they’d like to share?

Just imagine if we could get those government ads about being active and staying healthy to include a bit about reading! It certainly doesn’t fit with any health message we have at the moment. But if fighting the ‘war against obesity’ means reading a couple of books then I guess that’s just what I’ll have to do.

Where is all this coming from you may ask? Well, an American study on the impact of literature on obese adolescents has found that reading the right type of novel may help you lose the kilos. The Duke Children’s Hospital asked obese females aged 9 to 13 to read an age-appropriate novel while they were in a weight-loss program. The novel, Lake Rescue, was written with the help of pediatric experts and included specific healthy lifestyle and weight management guidance along with positive messages and role models.

Six months later, the 31 girls who’d read the novel had a significant decrease in BMI (Body Mass Index) compared to the 14 girls who didn’t read the book.

How amazing is that! Maybe there will soon be a new genre of books out there with positive role models eating healthy food and exercising regularly.

Following on from an earlier post about why you need an agent, Richard Curtis has written a brilliant article over at The Writer’s Edge about how necessary editors are to writing. It certainly warms the cockles of my heart to hear that people won’t soon be able to simply publish their blog posts and random scribblings without first going through the editorial process.

And just in case you thought "hey I’ve got both of those, I’m going to sell a million copies of my book" then check out this cute cartoon. It may take a village to raise a child but it takes a few more people then that to successfully publish a book.

Thank goodness for thoughtful agents like Jenny Rappaport.

She is a US literary agent with L. Perkins Agency and she’s devoting a portion of her blog to ‘Book Blocks’ where authors can discuss one of the ‘building blocks’ of their upcoming book, ie characters, plot, theme, writing structure etc.

Her reason for this is to give authors a place to promote their work and to try to teach writers how to grow in their own writing. She wants all interested writers to take part, so visit her blog, Lit Soup for the detailed guidelines and start writing. She wants to give back to the publishing community and what better way then giving writers a chance to submit their work.

Great article from NY Times over the weekend about what actually needs to happen before you get your book into the shops – and selling.

Apart from all the editing and design work, the key thing, in an increasingly overcrowded marketplace, is to create a buzz around your book. Getting the marketing and timing right is vital and helps explain why it can be 18 months between having your manuscript accepted to seeing it on the shelves of your local bookshop. Word of mouth now has an internet focused meaning, with blogs and networking sites creating discussion and interest at all levels of the process. But it’s not just about getting the (potential) reader hooked, you first have to get the interest of the book editor, sales reps, retail buyers, display coordinators…  

Meanwhile, David Rothman over at TeleRead offers a solution to getting your work to the market quicker, whilst still maintaining that all important marketing strategy…