An Author’s (Hopeful) Perspective on a Changing Book Marketing Landscape
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Views from the Midlist is our ongoing new series of articles from award-winning and bestselling author Chris Humphreys. Chris has published eighteen books over his two decade career, with such illustrious houses as Doubleday, Knopf and Orion. But the fact is that traditional publishing just isn’t what it used to be – even for the midlisters who have found success within the system. Views from the Midlist is a monthly feature in which Chris pulls the curtain back on his experiences in traditional publishing, his adventures in indie publishing, and the craft of writing.
In my last post, I discussed some of the joys, and a few of the terrors, of transforming myself from a traditionally publisher author to a half-trad., half-indie hybrid.
Nowhere is my transformation more starkly shown than in my experience of, and my approach to, marketing.
Marketing—the term itself refers to the literal buying and selling of goods at the market—is an immense and complicated subject. Countless books have been written (and marketed) on the subject, offering to teach you how to do it. People get degrees in it; gurus create cults based on it.
Well, I ain’t a guru. But I can tell you about my experience of marketing in the world of books and how that has radically changed in the twenty or so years since I published my first novel.
So, now that I have set out my stall (see what I just did there?), I’ll show you my goods.
Like everyone who dreams of becoming an author, for years I thought that all I wanted to do was to write a book. Develop an idea, get it down on paper, and write ‘The End’ at, well, the end. But of course I then realized that what I really wanted was to be read (for reasons that are probably deeply psychological and have to do with seeking approval from an absent parent, said reasons having no place in this post).
That’s where marketing comes in.
Now, some of you might say, “Ah ha, what about getting a publisher to publish your book in the first place?” But, of course, to do that, you need to make them want to buy it. You need to market it to them. And many of the principles in marketing yourself are the same as those that you will apply throughout your career. The same ones Farmer Tom uses when lining up his apples on his stall. Like him, you are one of several farmers chasing a limited amount of customers. Like him, you have to make your goods look…more enticing than the next farmer’s.
Twenty-odd years ago when I began, the received wisdom was this: get an agent. The middle person between the apple grower and the supermarket. Someone who likes your goods (or at least sees their commercial value). Someone who knows the buyers and can sell even more of your apples.
I found an agent. I wrote her a catchy letter. In its first sentence I mentioned a successful author she represented who I said I was similar to. An author who already made her money. I then hit her with my three-sentence pitch, made up of USPs: Unique Selling Points. Why my novel was so utterly different from anything else out there that she’d ever read. That actually all she had to read now was the one-page synopsis I’d included (stuffed with more USPs) and then go on and read the first chapter so overloaded with USPs (you are getting the idea) that she would be hooked like a trout to the most alluring fly ever cast upon her waters.
There then followed a month of silence while she received scores of similarly crafted pitches. So then began the stalking. OK, not actual stalking but…one day, I just walked into her office and, while she was feeling for the alarm button to summon security, I hit her with more USPs…and she took me on.
Three months later she had the book sold to Orion UK in a two-book deal. That novel was The French Executioner.
It was a good early lesson, because the basic principles of marketing a book—to an agent, a publisher, or a potential reader—are still the same today. From the marketing departments at Penguin Random House to first-time self-publishing authors, you will have a customer’s attention in this busy world for a nanosecond, so hit them succinctly with the USPs. (And try to keep the stalking to a minimum.)
I could fill another blog post with evergreen techniques to make your goods draw the eye—the vital importance of a great cover image, the shout line (I think I have a bit of knack for those and often write my own), or the back cover blurb (where you’ll encounter nonstop USPs). A different post may well detail how you identify and target specific audiences. These are all things you can glean from those manuals I mentioned previously, from the courses you are encouraged to take (often at great expense), or from the coaching of professionals like those at FriesenPress. But what I’d next like to discuss here are the changes in the book marketing landscape over the course of my professional career.
The changing marketplace—how books get into the hands of consumers—is obviously another huge topic and really above my pay grade. A certain “South American river” may have something to do with a lot of it. Amalgamations like smaller publishers being gobbled up by bigger ones is another factor—there are simply fewer stalls in the marketplace today. But how that translates to an author like me (and this series is called View from the Midlist for a reason) is the difference in how I am treated now as compared to twenty years ago. What is expected of me now as opposed to then.
The truth is that marketing and publicity departments at traditional publishing houses have been slashed. Those who remain are usually dedicated and caring but they are massively overworked. In the UK, over 180,000 books are traditionally published every year. That’s an average of nearly 500 per day. Except, of course, they are not spread out over 365 days, but bunched together in certain windows of time when readers buy more. The same principles apply in Canada and the United States, so how can those few diminished departments get attention for each book?
They don’t, of course. They might love your book (if they’ve had a chance to read it, that is), but the truth is they are in the selling business. Their bosses want to see profits and the biggest profits are made from front-list authors like your Stephen Kings and Margaret Atwoods. So the marketers spend 90% of their time, and 90% of marketing budgets, on those front-list authors. (The figures are approximate, but I bet they are not far off. In fact, I may be underestimating!) Don’t get me wrong, they are terrific authors. But the combination of spend and lack of time, of publicists chasing the same few news outlets for all those big books, means only one thing for the midlist author.
You have to market yourself.
This has been the biggest change of all in the twenty years I have been in the business. It began with a suggestion—“Your own website might be nice”—and has become: “Sorry, but how many Twitter followers do you have?” You build and pay for your site. You chase the bloggers. You buy and run the ads. You post, tweet, ’gram and podcast. You countdown and you deeply discount.
If I am completely honest: I would rather just write my books. I would love to pay someone with the knowledge and skillset to do everything else. But…I’m an author and some months can be challenging to make ends meet let alone hire a publicity team.
However the other truth goes back to what I said at the very beginning: I write to be read. To achieve that, I could rail against the world’s injustices and lament the changes…or I can just get on with it and dive into the business side of the work as well. Regard it as a business as much as a craft. And indeed, find the satisfactions in that. For there are many, many smart, kind people more than happy to help you. To pool knowledge and give advice.
The final truth is that when someone buys your apples (you knew I’d get back to them, right?) you get a huge buzz. Yours were more attractive than the next guy’s. You sold them better. You are being read by one more person who did not know of you when they woke up this morning. You are still making a living in one of the toughest yet most rewarding industries in the world. Plus you are not simply a drone in the machine. You are the machine itself—and its beating heart, too.
