When you’re a writer, marketing your books is a
necessary evil. (And I’m a horror writer, so I know evil!) There are hundreds,
maybe thousands, of people out there who are only too happy to share their
advice on marketing fiction. Some of these people are relative newcomers who
are still trying to figure out the whole marketing thing themselves, while
others are seasoned professionals with years of experience who offer
tried-and-true techniques. But regardless of where all these people are coming
from, their advice has one thing in common: it deals with marketing a book after it’s finished. I’d like to suggest
that the most important marketing happens before
a book is written.
First, let me tell you a story. Several years ago I
was on a panel at a science fiction convention. The panel dealt with the
business of writing and the panelists were a mix of experienced and
up-and-coming writers. The moderator began by saying that if you’re going to
write, you must treat it like a business, and the other panelists echoed this
sentiment in turn. But when it was my time to add my two cents, I said that
writing is a creative act, and therefore has an artistic purpose at its core.
If writers’ sole purpose was to make money, we’d become doctors or lawyers. I
said it’s up to writers to decide what their goals for their writing are, and
they can write for pleasure, as a hobby, as a second vocation, or as their
primary vocation, but whatever they do, writing is ultimately a creative act,
not simply a business proposition. The other panelists then back-tracked a bit
and agreed that yes, the artistic aspect was the foundation of a writing
career, and the panel went on from there.
My point wasn’t to try to shut down the other panelists.
I wanted people to realize something essential about writing: only an idiot
goes into the arts with the sole purpose
of making money. You’re trying to sell a product – a book, a painting, a song,
a performance – that most people aren’t interested in. People who love the arts
forget that the arts have a very small audience when compared to the total
population. We’re selling a product with limited appeal, trying to sell it to a
small customer base, and we’re competing with all the other artists who are
trying to sell similar products to the same customers. From a business
perspective, this is a recipe for disaster.
The first thing writers need to realize when it comes
to marketing is this:
1. We’re
creating a product with limited appeal, we’re creating it for a small audience,
and we’re competing with each other to capture this audience’s attention.
It’s important to understand this reality from the
start. If you want to sell something, you need to understand exactly what it is
that you’re selling, and exactly who you’re trying to sell it to.
The second thing writers need to realize:
2. You
must decide whether to write what you
want or what they want.
Do you write what you want (an artistic choice) or do
you write what you think will sell (an economic choice)? If you make the
artistic choice, you will be more fulfilled creatively, but you’ll create a product
that may appeal to an even smaller section of the book-reading audience. For
example, horror fiction has a limited appeal, otherwise the bestseller lists
would be filled with horror novels. If you write horror, your audience will be
horror fiction readers, a small group compared to all the readers out there. If
you write a subset of horror – extreme horror, literary horror – your audience
will be even smaller. A few weeks ago on his Facebook page, author and editor
Darrell Schweitzer said that authors of genres with limited appeal should
realize that they are basically selling books to each other, and what’s wrong
with that? I immediately thought of literary fiction, much of it coming out from
small-press publishers with low press runs. Who reads those books? Mostly other
lit-fic authors.
So if you write what you want, there’s an excellent
chance that you’ll have a small audience to sell to, and that no matter what
you do, you won’t be able to enlarge this audience in any meaningful way. My
mother didn’t read much, but when she did, she liked to read romance novels
about nurses. My dad likes to read hard SF and military fiction. Nothing could’ve
gotten them to change their reading tastes, not even having a son who writes in
other genres.
There’s nothing wrong with having a small audience who
appreciates your work, but I think it’s important to recognize this so that your
marketing expectations are realistic. (In other words, you’re not going to get
rich.)
If you’re lucky to love a genre that’s popular, like
Romance (over half the novels published in the USA are Romance), then you can
write what you want and have a much better chance at selling your work because
there’s already a large readership out there.
If you write what they
want, then you need to write in a genre that has a large audience, such as
Romance or Thrillers (or weird porn self-published on Amazon). The pros of this
choice are obvious. Your book will have a stronger built-in appeal for a larger
audience. The cons are that since there are more readers (and thus more money to
chase), you’ll have more competition – and worst of all, you may hate what you’re
writing because you’re writing it for business reasons, not artistic ones.
But whatever choice you make, write for yourself or
write to please an audience . . .
3. Write
the absolute best book you can every time (and never stop trying to write
better).
In other words, create the highest quality product
possible for you to sell. Why would anyone want to buy a poor-quality product
even if they generally like that kind of product? Why would I buy shitty
lemonade when I can buy delicious lemonade? You want to sell something? It
better be damn good. More than that, it better be competitive.
High quality can mean different things for different readers,
of course. Some readers prize literary style and characterization more than
plot, and vice versa. Some prefer fast-paced stories, some more leisurely paced
stories. But while there’s no one-size-fits all definition of high quality when
it comes to fiction, you need to decide what it means to you – and more
importantly, your audience – and strive for that standard.
4. You
need to create an attractive product.
This goes for traditionally published writers as well
as self-published ones – although the self-pubbers obviously have to work a lot
harder at this aspect since they’re going it alone. Intriguing book title, interesting
synopsis, cover art, layout, solid editing, production value . . . Traditional
publishers partner with writers to create an attractive product and then share
in the profits from sales of that product. Self-pubbers need to hire professionals
who can provide these services. Whichever road you choose, at the end of it,
you better have a goddamn good-looking book – outside and inside – if you want to attract readers.
Bottom line: Focus on why you write, how you
write, and to whom you’re writing,
and when it comes time to market your fiction, you’ll be that much ahead of the
game.
Earlier, I mentioned there are lots of resources
available to give you advice on how to market your book after it’s written. Here
are three excellent book marketing resources I recommend:
Guerilla Marketing for Writers
by Jay Conrad Levinson and Rick Frishman.
No Nonsense, No Gimmick Guide to
Marketing Your Book, by Eric Beebe.
Author’s Guide to Marketing with
Teeth, by Michael Knost.
DEPARTMENT OF SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION
