Advertising-Promotion-Marketing

From Electric Lit:

I’m going to admit something to all y’all: the best thing that has ever happened to me—becoming a mother—is also the absolute worst. When my daughter was born, I was unprepared for the overwhelming scope of motherhood, the endless fulfilling of needs, the simultaneous busy-ness and boredom, the crushing psychic pressure of being responsible for a new human being, and the stretch-marks that blessed my ever-expanding heart. I resented her and I adored her. My precious girl.

Undoubtedly, mother-daughter relationships are as varied in the Lone Star state as anywhere else on the planet, but in my experience, Texas moms are tough. Maybe because we have to be; a recent survey ranked Texas as one of the worst states for women in terms of economy and well-being, which is certainly nothing new. 

Texas mothers—like the land itself—can be flinty and intense, tempestuous and severe, even as we protect, nurture, and defend our babies. I’m fascinated by the varied ways the women in my life have approached motherhood, and how rarely they match the idealized depictions we grew up with on TV. Perhaps that’s why I prefer to write—and read—about strong women and their complicated, imperfect familial relationships. My latest, The Young of Other Animals, tells the story of Mayree and her daughter, Paula, whose tense proximity has grown more fraught following the death of Mayree’s husband. When Paula narrowly survives a violent assault, the two confront the shared traumas of their pasts, and attempt to save the relationship they hadn’t realized they’d lost.

Here are seven books about mothers and daughters in Texas that illuminate how we’re more likely to be one person’s shot of whiskey than everybody’s cup of tea.

. . . .

Terms of Endearment by Larry McMurtry

This 1975 novel set in Houston is full of crisp prose and fascinatingly flawed characters. The story is centered on Aurora Greenway, an acerbic, eccentric Houstonian widow navigating life and a complicated relationship with her imminently practical daughter, Emma. For those readers who need their characters to be likable, this one—like most of the books on this list—might not be for you. Aurora is indeed often unlikeable, but at least she isn’t uninteresting. She is the sun of her own solar system, around which other characters—her daughter, her housekeeper, her string of male suitors—orbit. But it is her daughter who understands her the best, which seems to contrast the way Aurora feels about Emma, until at the most crucial moment, it doesn’t. 

Dumplin’ by Julie Murphy

This light-hearted Bildungsroman tackles some heavy themes: inhabiting a human body that a mother is compelled to criticize, wanting to love and be loved, and living unabashedly alongside profound insecurities. Willowdean is a plus-sized, 16-year-old, Dolly Parton-loving Texan living with her former beauty queen mother who calls her, not insignificantly, Dumplin’. This is a positive coming-of-self story that taps right into one of Dolly’s famous quotes: “Find out who you are. And do it on purpose.”

Daughter of a Queen by Sarah Bird

Set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, this historical fiction is absolutely spellbinding. It tells the fictionalized story of the real Cathy Williams, a former slave and the only woman to ever serve with the legendary Buffalo Soldiers. Though she was born into servitude in America, her maternal grandmother had been an African warrior queen, and, in her words, “my mama never let me forget it.” When Cathy is taken from her plantation—and her mother—by Philip Sheridan of the Union Army and recruited to work as a cook’s assistant, she recalls what her mother told her: that she was never a slave but a captive whose warrior blood destined her escape from the enemy. To survive, Cathy poses as a man, becoming an outspoken, hardworking, unbreakable soldier posted at Fort Davis in West Texas. Although Cathy and her mother are separated for most of the book, I was compelled by the strength Cathy draws from her maternal heritage and her unwavering determination to someday be reunited with her mother.

Link to the rest at Electric Lit

From Jane Friedman:

If you’re wondering whether press releases are still relevant or important, I’m here to convince you that they are.

Why send out a press release?

Media relations departments from all types of companies—Fortune 500 to startups—use press releases to communicate with the media. Why do billion-dollar businesses bother to send them out? Because this is still how you send information to the media. A press release is a tool that is considered “approved” copy for any media organization, online or traditional, to use to discuss an outside entity.

Here is a simple example in the book world: It is very likely that someone will review or feature your book and lift copy straight from your release, which is exactly what you want. If a media outlet decides to run a story about your book with a price or on-sale date that’s inaccurate, you can cite information in the press release and ask to have it corrected. If there are factual errors in coverage tied to your release, you can easily point to the problem and ask for a change. 

If you want to include a blurb or endorsement, or include a quote from an expert cited in your nonfiction book, a media outlet understands they can use it. If Michelle Obama endorses your book, wouldn’t you want to have her name and her words in your press release? This is an extreme situation, but it illustrates my point. 

However, before you email one sentence to a journalist, there are direct benefits you get from writing your own release.

Why am I writing press materials?

You are writing this document because it will help you figure out what your core message is.

The core message is the newsworthy or unique aspect(s) you, your book, and your ideas can offer to a target audience—an audience that is most likely to spread word of mouth and/or purchase your book or services. The core message is ultimately part of your elevator pitch. 

Creating a release also forces you to think about your competition and how you are offering something different than what every other mystery, romance, literary fiction, self-help guru, history buff, academic author, etc. is writing about. In an online world, this is incredibly important, because most likely, the first place you are going to make your mark is online and with search engines.

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for press releases

Having the release available on your website, your publicist’s website, publisher’s website, etc., will help with you or your book appearing in response to search queries. If you Google your book title, you will probably notice Amazon and other big retailers first; your publisher and your own website can appear later. Having a press release can boost this rank in search queries.

Because the competition for ranking is much more competitive these days, you should do some extra work to enhance your release: include keywords or keyword phrases in the text. You can research which ones to use by using Google to search for terms related to your work such as “books about WWII,” “self-help divorce books,” “books about good habits”, “books about joining the circus,” etc. See what comes up in the search window and consider what phrases or keywords will help your press materials rank better in results.

I don’t think paid services like PR Newswire (that publish and distribute your press release) are worthwhile for most books. If you have an amazing news peg, that could be one reason to invest, but there are thousands of releases posted at such PR websites.

Press release structure

This structure is based on how much interesting or provocative information you can share, without overhyping your message. When you introduce the book in the opening paragraphs, you will need to identify it using the entire title with the subtitle; in parentheses include the publication date, imprint, format, price, and ISBN, like this:

The Great Book: A Novel by Bobbie Bobs (imprint name, publication date, format, ISBN, price).

The first paragraph should tell the reader of the release why your story is compelling and what its relevance is to the audience. You will also want to explain why you wrote the book and how your personal story is connected to it.

The next one or two paragraphs should be a short synopsis of the plot if you are promoting a novel, and a list of the main facts or talking points if you are working on nonfiction. You can also include a more in-depth section on yourself and your story as it relates to the content if you believe it will enhance the core message.

Within the release, you will want to mention the book’s title at least two times. In the final paragraph, you need to develop an action statement “Call to Action” (CTA) that will tie up everything and encourage the reader to pick up the book and open it.

Add your short bio under “About the Author” and the specs of the book (the ISBN, etc) below that. Finish it off with the traditional # # # centered on the bottom, which indicates to the media person that all the words preceding the hashtags are approved for the press.

Link to the rest at Jane Friedman

PG is ambivalent about press releases (well, actually not very ambivalent) about old-fashioned press releases(and thinks ISBNs are worthless for indie authors).

If you have a publisher or publicist, they should be the ones writing and distributing the press release (if they think it’s worth the effort).

Ultimately, it’s a matter of the bang for the buck for an author (the buck may represent money or time).

A serious public relations agency charges serious money because their people have longstanding relationships with all manner of people working for all manner of publications, print, online, TV/radio, etc.

A good PR person knows who should be contacted because she/he is interested in stories about books like yours. The PR person won’t make a call or send an email to the sports editor about your regency romance.

Most large places where you would like to have a story about your book to appear have someone or several someones whose job is to spend time every day screening incoming emails, letters and voicemails and delete/destroy 90% of them because their boss has more important things to do. Or they may just rely on their spam filters.

From The Bookseller:

When I worked at a library as a teenager, one of my duties was to unbox and process newly released novels, and I noticed something that has stuck with me.There were some authors who had a book out every couple of months. When I skimmed them, they were well-written, with tight plots and exciting characters. But even then, I knew there was no way an author could churn out a full-length novel at this rate, especially at this level of quality. And to do that while touring the country, giving book readings, interviews, and writing guest columns for various news outlets?

Having written novels myself and worked as a professional ghostwriter, I’ve realised what I guessed back then: these authors aren’t writing the books themselves.

It’s something of a dirty secret in the publishing industry. Some authors — especially big-name writers working in genre fiction — rely on a ghostwriter or a team of writers to help them churn out books regularly. Occasionally, hints of this will come out, and the press will react with feigned horror. The British actress Millie Bobby Brown was criticised for working with a ghostwriter on her novel. Prolific Swedish mystery writer Camilla Läckberg faced her own criticism when a journalist claimed she’d relied on a ghostwriter for some of her novels.

But while these stories make a big splash, and authors and publishers live in fear of them, there’s little evidence that the public cares. Each time the media raised the question of whether the author acknowledged it or issued a terse denial, the book kept selling. Like me working in the library, readers have learned that authors are getting some help, and they don’t seem to care. 

In the United States, ghostwriters have become more public about their work, and it’s accepted that any celebrity — whether they are an actress or a politician or even the second in line to the throne — did not actually write their memoir. Sometimes, they are even upfront about which ghostwriter they worked with. But novels remain a separate class. Perhaps because novels are considered more creatively prestigious than a mere memoir or non-fiction advice book, authors and publishing houses are more reticent to acknowledge the use of a ghostwriter.

There’s no real reason for this, however. While readers often think of a novel as the product of a lone genius working in their study, they are usually much more collaborative than this, as The Bookseller’s readers well know. An author may have a first draft or a few chapters of a novel before working with an agent, but once they have a contract, an experienced editor will jump in. In some cases, editors may suggest considerable changes to the storyline, cuts to entire chapters, or minor but consequential shifts in writing style, cutting unnecessary words or asides that slow down the action. If you want to see how this works most clearly, put the Harry Potter books in a row and see if you can guess when J K Rowling’s first editor stopped working with her. You can tell from across a room because the books are physically thicker as she adds more digressions to the main plot.

Beyond that, publicists and marketing teams will weigh in on the book cover, the title, and how it’s marketed — valuable feedback that will be in the author’s head when they sit down to write their next book. And there’s the audience, who will respond more to certain novels, leading some authors to churn sequels or write similar books while abandoning other ideas.

A team of ghostwriters adds more manual labor to the mix, but the book is still the author’s. An established author, especially one working in a genre, will have created the formula — the type of setting, the tone, the main character — which the ghostwriters then use. Often, the author will set out an overall plot and ask the ghostwriters to flesh it out, or they may do some writing and then hand it off to someone else to finish up.

The author, then, is more like a brand. You buy a Ralph Lauren suit not because Ralph Lauren personally tailored it for you but because you trust the name behind it. The same goes for a thriller writer, mystery novelist, or romance author. You know when you pick it up that it will meet your expectations. The fact that the author didn’t personally write every sentence of the novel doesn’t matter. Does it sound like their other books? Is it a good read? Is it the type of novel you like reading? Those are the questions the reader really cares about.

Link to the rest at The Bookseller and thanks to C. for the tip.

PG says the author’s name is a brand name. It’s not exactly like Cambell’s Soup, but there are more similarities than differences.

Without denigrating authors’ creative talents in any way, a great many people look for books from authors they have enjoyed previously. Agatha Christie is one prime example. James Patterson is another.

PG is highly confident that Agatha did not use any ghostwriter. James Patterson readily admits to using a great many ghostwriters.

——-Content Warning – Major PG Diversion Follows——-

After starting as a copywriter in a large New York City advertising agency, Patterson worked his way up to CEO while writing in his spare time. After he retired. he devoted all his energy to his writing. He supervised copywriters both before and after his retirement.

Undoubtedly, his expertise in advertising and promotion has played a role in Patteerson’s success. PG is not privy to Patterson’s relationship with his publisher, but an intelligent publisher would understand that Patterson knows far more about advertising and publishing than anyone employed by the publisher.

As further examples of Patterson’s marketing and promotion smarts, he has coauthored #1 bestselling novels with Bill Clinton (note that Patterson got top billing on both book covers) and Dolly Parton (Dolly got top billing).

PG isn’t certain whether it was Patterson or Parton’s idea, but in 2022, the year their book was released, she released a CD with the same title. Dolly knows how to market and promote herself very effectively, but that’s another story.

From Helping Writers Become Authors:

Say the word “marketing” to a group of writers, and you’re likely to elicit a groan. Almost anyone with dreams of seeing a book in print can relate to the deflation experienced when it becomes clear that simply writing an excellent book isn’t enough to sell any notable number of copies. Sooner or later, any writer committed to publishing and selling a book will have to accept that learning how to market the book is just as important, if not more, to the book’s success than the book itself. This is often a frustrating experience since, in general, marketing is hard for writers.

Why is this? After posting last month about how my own approach to marketing has evolved over the last sixteen years, I started thinking about why it is that marketing is almost universally deplored by writers. Although some writers are, of course, exceptions, most writers hate the idea of marketing.

Here you’ve just done this incredibly monumental thing of learning all the complex and high-level skills involved in writing a book, only to be told you’re basically back to ground zero. Now you have to start all over and learn the equally complex and high-level skills of marketing a book. The difference is that most of us learned the art of fiction because we loved the process; few of us are equally attracted to learning the art of marketing.

Now, some writers may be perfectly clear that they are writing for reasons that do not require marketing. Perhaps they are writing a story for their grandchildren or a memoir for purely personal reasons, and it doesn’t matter much if they sell more than ten copies, if any. That approach is 100% legit. I am always a stand for getting clear with yourself about your own motives for writing and your own personal definition of success.

But most writers want to be published. More than that, most writers dream of making good money off their books, maybe even writing full-time. That’s also legit. But the dash of cold water is that this dream will not happen without the ability to market your book. Doesn’t matter if your intention is to publish traditionally or independently. Either way, more than half the job of being a successful writer is marketing.

I’m sometimes asked if I think a writer needs to go to college to get a degree in Literature or an MFA. My response (as someone for whom college wasn’t an option, so take this in light of its obvious bias) has always been, “No, you can learn everything you need to know about writing a book via the multitude of resources that are available online.” However, in recent years, I would amend that answer to suggest that, instead, if a person is serious about a writing career, they would do well to pursue a degree, or at least classes, in marketing or business. If I had it to do over again, that’s what I would do.

I say that to emphasize the sheer importance of marketing and business savvy as the leverage point to transforming writing into a viable and profitable career. If it sounds sobering, that’s because it is. However, it is also important to know that, just as the incredibly complex skill of writing a book can be learned by anyone with the initiative and discipline to study and practice, so too can the equally complex skill of marketing a book or creating a business around your writing be learned by anyone. The resources are literally at our fingertips. All that is required is the willingness to move past the initial (and often substantial) resistance that many of us feel and to begin putting in the work. After a while, marketing can turn out to be just as much a creative pursuit as writing.

. . . .

One of the most effective ways to move past limiting beliefs—such as “marketing is too hard” or “I’m a writer, not a marketer”—is to recognize those beliefs as such. In today’s post, I want to explore some of the reasons I believe marketing is hard for writers (at least in the beginning), and how writers need to flip their mindsets in order to embrace marketing and business as tremendous opportunities.

To my mind, the reasons marketing is hard for writers generally come down to two factors:

1. Writers don’t usually start out with any marketing skills.

The belief that “I’m a writer, not a marketer” is 100% true in the beginning. And in the immortal words of Carmine Falcone, “Ya always fear what ya don’t understand.”

2. Writers fail to recognize that writing full-time is a business and has to be run as such.

The idea that being a writer means you spend the majority of your time writing is a largely antiquated notion. Being a writer these days isn’t so different from being an entrepreneur.

All of this can seem scary and overwhelming to writers who are already nervous about marketing. The first thing to realize is that’s okay. You feel that way because you’re facing a challenge to expand your growth on a number of levels. Feeling this way is a sign you’re on a positive track that will transform your life.

The second thing to realize is you won’t always feel this way. If you’re truly committed to becoming a successful writer, there is no reason you can’t learn everything you need to know about how to market and sell your books. All it takes is the willingness to learn, put in the time and the effort, make mistakes, try again, and nurture your own experience as you go.

To get you started, here are five mindsets to balance out the fear that marketing is hard for writers. Just being able to recognize and acknowledge underlying reasons for those fears can help you move through them to the tremendous opportunities and rewards available on the other side.

1. Realize Writing and Marketing Are Different Areas of Expertise

Marketing is a field all its own. One of the reasons writers initially struggle with marketing is simply that writing and marketing are entirely different experiences. Being a writer is an entirely different identity from being a marketer. In many ways, the two can seem completely opposite. If nothing else, writing is a personal and introverted task, while marketing is a public and extroverted task.

Completing the feat of learning how to write a book is a mountaintop experience that can often lead writers to exhale in relief. You’ve done it! You’ve reached completion. But the journey isn’t over. No one will ever read a book unless they know about it. The simple fact that a great book exists will not draw readers. The only way to attract readers (and sales) is to embrace the next mountain. Beliefs that you shouldn’t have to learn both skills or that simply writing a book should be “enough” are counter-productive and will only hold you back.

All of that said, it’s also useful to recognize that despite all their differences, writing and marketing also share common ground. Both are, in fact, deeply creative and inventive acts, requiring keen awareness of self and others and an instinctive sensitivity and intuition about what works. Viewing marketing as an expression of creativity can help bridge what sometimes seems an insurmountable wall between marketing and writing.

2. Embrace Marketing as a High-Level Set of Skills

Marketing is an art form. It’s not just the fries added on to your burger combo meal. Just like writing, marketing is a full ten-course meal all unto itself. To truly thrive at marketing—and to truly appreciate the experience of marketing—writers must recognize that marketing represents a high-level skillset. Successful marketing requires respect for those skills.

It’s no different from writing a book: although formulae can be followed (and often are in the beginning when the person is still learning), the true magic doesn’t happen until the person grasps the deeper theory and applies those principles in a way that arises from their own unique creativity and intuition.

By all means, learn the marketing formulae. Pay attention when marketing gurus tell you to start a mailing list, run promos, buy ads, etc. But don’t treat it as a checklist. Like writing itself, marketing requires more respect and love than that. It requires not just a commitment to learning what to do but also to understanding why.

It’s true marketing is not easy. This is often what trips writers up. But just remember this: writing isn’t easy either. If one is worth mastering, so is the other.

Link to the rest at Helping Writers Become Authors

PG adds that most publishers are terrible marketers as well. They use the same recipe over and over again. How many great advertisements have you seen for a traditionally-published book?

A great advertisement is one people remember for years.

From Book Riot:

While authors often work in different genres or mediums, sometimes moving between novels and poetry or screenwriting, the majority of fiction writers are, first and foremost, exactly that — writers. Authors can become famous in their field, but, unsurprisingly, they are usually known for their stories. However, there are several well-known figures who you may be surprised to learn have also dabbled in writing, despite becoming famous — or infamous — for very different work.

Celebrity authors have been part of the publishing world for many years, most often working with ghostwriters to produce their novels. Some, like chef and baker Nadiya Hussein, have published contemporary adult fiction, while others, such as Madonna and Tom Fletcher, have branched into children’s literature. While the rise of celebrity authors adding a published novel or two to their brand has caused controversy, in part because of the impact on traditional authors, there are some celebrity writers who are unusual even within their particular field.

Most celebrity authors write novels that connect to the field that made them famous. Dolly Parton and James Patterson’s Run, Rose, Run is set in the world of country music, and “supervet” Noel Fitzpatrick’s Vetman is an animal-saving superhero

Hugh Laurie

One of the major criticisms of celebrity authors is that, rather than being a labour of love or a chosen career, their publishing a book seems to be part of creating a brand; a celebrity might release a book to have another product connected to their name, like a line of clothing or perfume. Even if we dismiss this view as cynical, we can see that many celebrity authors bypass the traditional hurdles of publishing by using their famous names — it’s obvious that Madonna’s manuscript wouldn’t have languished in the slush pile before being picked out by an editor ready to take a punt on this first-time author. However, actor Hugh Laurie took the hard route to publication with his satirical novel The Gun Seller. He submitted the manuscript under a pseudonym, and didn’t reveal his true identity until it had been accepted by his publishing house.

Link to the rest at Book Riot

From Fast Company:

Charlotte Strick was on a high.

She’d been tasked with designing the book covers for the English translations of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s six-part autobiographical novel, My Struggle—and she’d landed on a concept to tie the volumes together. Perhaps surprisingly, everyone else had, too. The collaged, Easter egg–laden set was an immediate hit in cover meetings at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, and the first book had hit shelves, but then Strick says a literary agent intervened. The books looked too artsy, and he wanted something more straightforward to reach the masses. So with only one installment on the market, the line got scrapped for a more traditional look—author photo with big, clean type, and a solid blurb.

“There’s nothing scarier than [someone saying], ‘this book is not going to sell with that cover,’” Strick says. “So any initial love kind of gets pushed aside.”

She was crushed (as are the people who still reach out to her to this day to ask where they can get the complete set). But the whole episode underscores a larger fact that I’ve come to believe after writing about book covers for years—killed covers are often where you can find the really great stuff. The surprising work. The refreshingly genre-breaking, exciting, unfiltered output that nudges the field toward its next evolution. 

. . . .

Ultimately, when you see a book cover in a store or online, you’re really just seeing the tip of the iceberg. Because at most of the really big imprints, that cover probably went through the ringer.

Strick says that in general, the process begins with a designer receiving the manuscript and a jacket brief outlining the mandatory elements (e.g., title, author name, maybe a blurb), and comparison titles for reference. The timeline is usually tight, and when it comes down to it, the creative stakes are high: You’re essentially tasked with creating a single image to brand thousands of words that could have been years in the making.

“It’s tough, because to the author, it’s their baby,” Strick says. “And in some cases, they’ve been working on this for a decade. And you have two weeks to come up with an idea.”

From there, designers create comps, or a series of proposed designs for the team to weigh. The reasons why some comps meet untimely ends are many, from an editor or marketing lead’s personal preferences to genre conventions to performance metrics of similar approaches to the author’s best friend’s opinion or, maybe, the sheer fact that an exec has a cold that day. Of course, this isn’t to say that what hits the market is bad—in fact, I’d contend we’re in a golden age of book cover design, with each publishing season bringing a deluge of insanely great jackets. But at the end of the day, a lot of fantastic and fascinating work hits the cutting room floor.

So as “Best Book Covers of the Year” lists pop off this month, let’s celebrate the work that didn’t win the day. Here are some of the best book covers of 2023 that you did not see—with insight directly from the designers who created them. The version that ended up being scrapped is on left, the final version is on the right.

Link to the rest at Fast Company

PG is somewhat conflicted in his response to the OP.

1. The principal purpose of a book cover is to sell the book. Regardless of how many plaudits the cover artist receives from the designing community for a cover, if the cover doesn’t sell the book, it’s failed in its principal purpose.

2. Typical publishing executives, English majors all, are almost certainly not experts on the design of marketing and promotional pieces. PG doubts that there is a “golden gut”, someone who is brilliant at selecting an image out of many possibilities that will sell a million books, that will stop someone browsing through Amazon books from just clicking past a book instantly.

3. In one of his ancient past lives, before personal computers and computerized design tools, PG worked for a large advertising agency.

While developing an ad campaign for a new product, a lot of smart people, usually including at least one person with a “golden gut” and a long track record of successful new product launches (and often more than one), looked at multiple mock-ups of print advertisements, television commercials, etc., before sending the creatives back to the drawing board for a new iteration of mock-ups based on the feedback from the first ads showing.

It was not unusual for a campaign to go through several more such meetings before a preliminary approval was agreed upon. Then, a series of more polished mockups based on the selected theme were created. Preliminary television commercials might be created.

The winners of the earlier rounds were then presented to groups of consumers that constituted the target market for the product to learn which messaging approach gained the most positive response and what the consumers thought about the product after seeing the various messaging. It was not unusual to go through this exercise with several groups of consumers.

At this point, a presentation was made to the client that was launching the new product, summarizing the research process results and the consumers’ reactions. Sometimes, proposed mocked-up versions of print, television, etc., based on consumer research, were shown to the client.

End of past lives.

PG’s disquisition concerning how serious marketing decisions involving millions of dollars were made was to contrast how unsophisticated the development and adoption of cover design at a typical traditional publisher, as depicted in the OP, is. Professionals do things much differently than publishing executives do.

PG has always liked interesting Typography.

First a definition:

Typography is the art of arranging letters and text in a way that makes the copy legible, clear, and visually appealing to the reader.

It involves font style, appearance, and structure, which aims to elicit certain emotions and convey specific messages. In short, typography is what brings the text to life.

From Typographic Design:

Link to the rest at Typographic Design

From Esquire:

The publishing industry is in flux. One major publisher has been acquired by a private equity firm, editors are departing (and getting laid off) from others, there are fewer book media outlets than ever, and most literary discourse is happening online. But what does it all mean for the books themselves, and the ways that readers are discovering them? Here, we make some predictions about the future of books.

It’ll be even harder to launch debut fiction.

“Celebrities and tastemakers are becoming the new medium for discovery,” says Ariele Fredman, a literary agent at United Talent Agency who previously launched eight #1 New York Times bestsellers as a publicist. As a result, it will be more important than ever for debut novels to land on book club rosters.

A Reese Witherspoon, Oprah, or Jenna Bush endorsement can be enough to not only secure a spot on the bestseller list, but anoint an author with a fanbase that lasts. “If you don’t get one of those coveted spots, it becomes even harder to break a new voice,” Fredman adds.

Outside of those chosen debuts, “we’re going to see a continued investment in bigger-name authors” from publishers, says former editor Molly McGhee, the author of Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind, “because they have guaranteed returns on investment.”

Literary genre fiction and autofiction will still be the most popular modes of storytelling.

According to Dan Sinykin, the author of Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature, the biggest trend on the page—also thanks to celebrity book clubs—will continue to be “literary genre fiction,” where “writers who are more artistic than they are entertaining” riff on genre tropes like dystopias, apocalypse tales, detective novels, and space operas. Think

It’ll be even harder to launch debut fiction.
“Celebrities and tastemakers are becoming the new medium for discovery,” says Ariele Fredman, a literary agent at United Talent Agency who previously launched eight #1 New York Times bestsellers as a publicist. As a result, it will be more important than ever for debut novels to land on book club rosters.

A Reese Witherspoon, Oprah, or Jenna Bush endorsement can be enough to not only secure a spot on the bestseller list, but anoint an author with a fanbase that lasts. “If you don’t get one of those coveted spots, it becomes even harder to break a new voice,” Fredman adds.

Outside of those chosen debuts, “we’re going to see a continued investment in bigger-name authors” from publishers, says former editor Molly McGhee, the author of Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind, “because they have guaranteed returns on investment.”

Literary genre fiction and autofiction will still be the most popular modes of storytelling.
According to Dan Sinykin, the author of Big Fiction: How Conglomeration Changed the Publishing Industry and American Literature, the biggest trend on the page—also thanks to celebrity book clubs—will continue to be “literary genre fiction,” where “writers who are more artistic than they are entertaining” riff on genre tropes like dystopias, apocalypse tales, detective novels, and space operas. Think Colson Whitehead, Marlon James, Emily St. John Mandel, and Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyeh.

. . . .

Book clubs and indie publishers will continue investing in multiplatform storytelling—especially audio.

“Stories are commodities now,” says Julie Grau, editor and publisher of Spiegel & Grau. “They’re not tied to a specific format.” These days, a story can take shape across print, audio, ebooks, film, and live events, which means readers who may not connect with a book might love it as an audio project. For this reason, “it’s actually never been a better time to be a creator,” says Michelle Weiner, co-head of the books department at Creative Artists Agency. Plus, she adds, there has been a surge in live book events since the pandemic. She foresees a new wave of “bespoke” book programming, with more interactive events like Channing Tatum’s live art launch party at Brooklyn’s Books Are Magic.

. . . .

People will pick up books not because of the plot, but because they want to *feel* a certain way (i.e. hopeful).

BookTok “prioritizes emotional release, storytelling, and romance,” McGhee says. As a result, TikTok has created a new way of talking about books. If you watch Today Show book segments, you might see Isaac Fitzgerald or Qian Julie Wang say that a book made them laugh! or cry! or feel alllllll the feelings. Influencer Zibby Owens has organized her Santa Monica bookstore around the feelings that books are intended to elicit, rather than topic or genre.

Publishers are thinking this way, too. In marketing language and jacket copy, One World senior editor Nicole Counts says, “what we have to communicate to the reader is how they’re going to feel.”

Link to the rest at Esquire

From WordsRated:

This report will focus on the consumer behavior of book buyers and avid readers in the United States. We will cover the process of book discovery, factors readers consider when choosing the next book, as well as why people like to read and engage with books across all formats.

Why do people like to read books?

Reading has multiple benefits for people’s overall well-being, development, and knowledge generation. However, the single most important reason why adult readers (over 18 years of age) decide to engage with books is pure entertainment and leisure:

• 50.10% of readers (people who engage with at least one book per year) say that the most important reason why they engage with books is for entertainment and leisure. Also, 82.90% of readers stated this as one of the reasons why they read books.
• For 25.00% of readers, self-improvement is the most important reason why they read books, and 41.40% of them say this is one of the reasons why they engage with reading.
• 12.80% of people who engage with books do so for the purpose of buying gifts for their friends, family, and colleagues, and 21.20% of people say this is one of the reasons why they engage with books.
• 11.10% of readers engage with this activity for the sake of education and work, while 18.40% of them state work and school as one of the factors of engaging with books.

Factors readers consider when buying books

• The most important factor for readers when choosing their next book is the category/genre of the book – 39.80% of readers consider it to be the most important factor, and over 66.50% of readers consider it to be one of the factors.
• 23.20% of readers primarily choose the book based on its author, while 61.50% of them consider the book’s author as one of the factors when picking the next read.
• 15.00% of readers lean on book reviews as the most important factor for the next read, with 43.00% of them having this as one of the factors they consider.
• Price is the most important factor for 9.20% of readers when it comes to choosing the next book, and 44.00% consider price, among other things.
• It’s interesting that 3.90% of readers think that the book’s front cover is the most important thing for them to choose the next book, while 23.50% of readers consider the front cover design among other things.

There are differences among genders when it comes to factors considered when choosing the next book to read. Men find a book’s genre/category and price more important in the process, while women value their favorite authors and publishers more than men:

Link to the rest at WordsRated

From Medium:

Keywords! Keywords! Keywords! Make sure your article is 2 pages long. Make sure to write a readable SEO friendly way. Don’t mess with the format too much because we won’t rank, son! Don’t use too many fancy words that people don’t google. Lists! Lists! Lists! Pad it out, boy! Keywords!

SEO has killed the internet. SEO has killed creativity. I am not even joking here. How many times in the last 5 years have you googled something and actually found what you were looking for without appending “Reddit” to the end of the query? The worst part is, even when you do find something, you have to sift through a boring, long article about something completely different until you find what you were looking for. If you ever do, that is.

Google is basically a search engine for finding Reddit posts nowadays. Intellectual writing is gone, there is a template for everything now. Writers end up horribly depressed or worse, give up writing altogether. Writing in today’s day and age is less about engaging in intellectual discourse, birthing a new world, and telling a story. Now it is all about selling a narrative, product, or service.

Think about it. Even fantasy writers have to write out an SEO-friendly blog post in order to sell their book.

Now, I can already see the comment: “You’re just angry because you don’t know how to write good SEO.” To you dear commenter, all I have to say is that it’s not about the SEO it’s the fact that all we read is SEO. There is a science to it and as always formulas ruin creativity. Sure, you can play around in the bounds of the template, but is that really what you want from an artform? It’s like Picasso using a coloring book and just choosing the colors.

Link to the rest at Medium

PG thought he was the only one seeing Reddit in all his online search results.

From Publishers Weekly:

When I sold my 15th novel, The Enlightenment Project, and my publicist asked for a list of people I could ask for blurbs, I faltered. I explained that my husband had been quite ill, and that I had been out of the loop for a while—that anyone I asked would likely say, “Lynn who?”

My publicist persisted. “Tell me who you know.” I mentioned that Wendell Berry, the great poet and writer, had been my teacher and my mentor. “Perfect,” she said. “Ask him.”

So I did. I sent a typed letter, reminding Wendell rather shyly who I was. I addressed him as Dr. Berry, and apologized for the audacity of my request. Three days later I received a response—handwritten on a sheet of yellow legal pad, in pencil. Wendell has been known to write on a feed sack, but I believe such surfaces are reserved for poetry.

I sat at my desk, dog at my feet, and read the letter, my hand shaking, just a little, as a slow smile of joy spread across my face. Wendell began by telling me that what I called audacity, he remembered as “your good sense and a vivid spiritedness, that I saw in you when you were a student and remember very well. But I quit writing blurbs a long time ago, just because I didn’t have the time to make honest work of it. I am not sorry I quit, but I’m sorry to say no to you.”

He said that he hoped I was all right, and to please stop calling him Dr. Berry, as he was my old friend, Wendell. He sent me a signed copy of his book of essays, Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer, and I read it right there at my desk, happy just to hear his voice in his work, remembering when I had stormed the University of Kentucky, a 16-year-old freshman, seeking out every writing class offered.

Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly

From Publishers Weekly:

As a former acquisitions editor at a publishing company, I well remember the ritual wherein executives gathered in a conference room armed with their tabbed notebooks. Once a month, department leaders—including those in editorial, marketing, and sales—and key sales representatives arrived for the pub board meeting. As a new editor, I had my spot on the schedule to present several books from my authors. Authors, retailers, librarians, and others in the publishing business never see or attend these sessions. I could feel the tension and intensity in the room. Each person knew the high stakes built into these meetings. Every book involves cost and risk to the publisher, and the pub board is where individuals are held accountable for their choices.

To get on the pub board agenda, a book passes through a number of checkpoints. An agent or the author pitched the book to the editor (me), and if I believed the proposal had merit for our house, I presented the book to our editorial team. They had to agree with my assessment before it was added to the agenda. Finally, editors prepared specific P&L documents for the pub board, to highlight our reasons for the book to be acquired before we made our in-person presentation to the department heads.

For decades, before attending pub board, I had been writing books for various traditional publishers. Until I joined a publishing house, I had never witnessed how they made the acquisition decisions. My experience was eye-opening and at times brutal. Occasionally, when I began to present a book and author, the COO would pipe up: “Terry, we could sell two of these books. One to me and one to someone else.” His statement was a deal killer for that book. We were looking for bestsellers. My presentation for that book was finished.

As I presented books at pub board meetings, there were many instances when writers missed an opportunity to get the attention of the board because of poorly written book proposals. While there isn’t an industry standard proposal, each should include an overview, author background, potential buyers, author marketing plans, competing books, and possible endorsers. Some agents have proposal templates for authors to submit and refine before going to publishers.

Often author pitches I saw were missing key elements in the competition section or were filled with untrue statements like, “My book is unique and has no competition.” With thousands of new books entering the market every day, the competition within publishing is fierce. There are no unique books—every book competes. Writers need to complete this section and detail their competitive titles. Imagine their books in bookstores. Which titles are beside them? These competitive titles need to be included.

Every author should treat a proposal as the book’s business plan. Authors should take their time in developing a proposal to ensure they make all of the points they want to make. A solid proposal typically runs 30–50 pages and can be the difference between getting a contract or losing a deal.

In 2004, I was a frustrated editor who wanted to get better submissions from authors. After reading many submissions, I wrote Book Proposals That $ell, 21 Secrets to Speed Your Success, and my book has since helped countless writers find a literary agent and a book deal. The publishing world has changed a great deal over the past 17 years. For example, one of my “secrets” was to always include a SASE (self-addressed stamped envelope). At that time, publishers received and processed piles of paper submissions. If the author didn’t include the return postage, they did not get their submissions returned.

Today, submissions are received electronically, but even these require care to avoid sending viruses and malware. In my attempt to get rid of typographical errors in submissions, another secret was never to trust a spellchecker. Instead, one should read one’s work aloud before submitting, since the ear is less forgiving than the eye.

Link to the rest at Publishers Weekly

PG looked for the book pitched in the OP, Book Proposals That $ell, 21 Secrets to Speed Your Success, on Amazon to see how it has done during its first six weeks of sales.

He couldn’t find any Amazon listing for the book on Amazon.

PG then searched Amazon for the publisher of the book, Morgan James Publishing and still couldn’t find any Amazon listing for the book.

That lead to PG discovering that Morgan James had only 8 books listed on Amazon that showed a publication date in 2021.

The 2021 Morgan James book with the most Amazon ratings was Your Pocket Therapist: Quick Hacks for Dealing with Toxic People While Empowering Yourself, published in January, 2021, with 105 ratings and a five-star average. The book ranked 85,923 in Kindle Store and 169 in Dysfunctional Families (Books).

Digging a little deeper into the ratings, PG discovered that the Pocket Therapist book had:

• 96 global five-star ratings
• 3 four-star ratings
• 4 three-star ratings
• 1 two-star ratings
• 1 one-star rating

These ratings averaged 4.8, which PG thought was a little high for a non-fiction book that had not sold very well. The only critical review asked, “Why is the print so small?”

PG checked the latest Amazon Charts data for the Top 20 Most Read and Most Sold Nonfiction Books for the week of November 14. He discovered that 11 of the top 20 had average star ratings below 4.8. Only Barack Obama’s autobiography, A Promised Land, had an average star rating above 4.8.

From The Book Designer:

If you’ve never formatted a book before, you might not know exactly how much work goes into it. It might seem easy and uniform—it just needs to look like a book, right?—but you’d be surprised just how many decisions you’ll need to make if you’re formatting on your own. Among the most important of these will be the font you choose for your book. 

Think of it like this: picking a bad font for your book is much like picking a bad cover. Even if you’ve got the best content in the world, a reader is much less likely to buy or read it if it looks cheaply or badly made. 

Let’s talk a little about fonts, why they matter, and how to pick the perfect one for your project. 

. . . .

What is the easiest font to read in a book?

So, before we talk about exactly which fonts to use, let’s go over some terminology. The first choice you’ll need to make is serif v. sans serif. What does that mean? 

Serif Fonts:

Serif fonts are those fonts with little ridges on them. Think Times New Roman or Georgia—the little feet and embellishments on certain letters make the words flow together in a way that isn’t confusing. It keeps the eye moving, basically. 

Sans-Serif Fonts:

A sans-serif font does exactly the opposite. These fonts don’t have these details on them, making the letters smooth and unconnected. Think Arial or Calibri. The space between letters makes each letter clearer, which can enhance readability. 

Generally, books are written in serif fonts because of how they lead the reader’s eye. Because the space between letters helps readability, sans serif fonts are generally reserved for large text editions of books. 

While there’s no solid consensus on exactly which font is the best for your book, a few popular choices are: Georgia, Tisa, Merriweather, and Rooney.

. . . .

You don’t want to stick out

When you’re picking a font for a book, you don’t want something that the reader is going to notice. You don’t want it to stick out as a strange choice—in something like a logo, you might want a memorable, notable font, but in a book, you want it to blend in.

Sometimes, on the copyright page of a book, the font will be listed with the other publication info. Check for this the next time you’re reading a physical book and see if you notice any patterns. Do fantasy books tend to stick to a certain font family? Do nonfiction books? Keep that info in mind when you go to pick out a font for yourself, so you’re picking something that will blend in without the reader even realizing it.

You want to stay on-theme

Picking a neutral font, or a font you’ve seen before, shouldn’t be a choice you make at random. While you don’t want your choice to be overt to the reader, you also want it to be intentional. 

We rarely think of words and letters as ‘images,’ but they are! And the way you choose to present your words will impact the way a reader thinks about the text, even if only in a very subtle way. You know how some people get flashbacks to college papers when they see Times New Roman? We want to avoid that. 

Link to the rest at The Book Designer

From Publishing Perspectives:

In its second-quarter report today (August 6), Sweden’s Storytel–the international marketplace’s most aggressively expansive service in the audiobook field–has reported streaming sales up 19 percent over Q2 2020 and a deepening subscriber base that jumped 29 percent year-over-year.

An understandable point of pride leads the report from Jonas Tellander and his team in Stockholm, writing to shareholders, “On July 20, 2021, Storytel met yet another important milestone when the service surpassed 1 million paying subscribers in the Nordic region.” Always loyal base of operations to Storytel, the Nordic markets clearly have established themselves now as a secure, responsive foundation for the company’s growth.

That milestone of 1 million Nordic subscribers, the company writes, “indicates an average penetration level of the adult population in the Nordic countries of 5 percent. With an 18-percent subscriber growth and 16-percent revenue growth year-over-year in Q2 2021, the Nordic countries form a solid and profitable base for continuous growth.”

Outside the Nordic concentration, Storytel saw an average 643,300 paying subscribers in its second quarter. It’s interesting to watch the company make pricing adjustments in its 25 markets, some of them quite distinct in their challenges—especially during the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, and always watching average revenue per user as a guide.

. . . .

In its home market of Sweden, Storytel raised its price from 169 to 179 kroner (US$19.49 to $20.65). There were also 9-percent price hikes in the Netherlands (both on unlimited and family subscription models) and a 6-percent rise in price in Belgium. Even in hard-hit India—where prices of books and digital media products run far lower than in many other markets of the world–Storytel was able to make an 18-percent price raise on some products.

By contrast, “The price in Spain,” today’s report reads, “has been lowered from €12.99 to €10.99 (US$15.28 to $12.92) to better reflect the reduced purchasing power in the country.”

. . . .

On the broader scale, it’s still expected that we’ll see a rollout this year of the partnership with Spotify announced by Storytel on May 20. “We want everyone to have access to great stories,” Tellander said at the time, “and today Storytel offers more than 500,000 audiobooks on a global basis across 25 markets. 

Link to the rest at Publishing Perspectives

PG noted the average Revenue per User metric that Storytel uses to guide its pricing decisions.

He regards this as a much smarter pricing approach than most of the book business uses. Rather than focusing on sales or revenues for a single book (typical of a lot of traditional publishers), the revenue per user applies a longer time horizon and is focused on overall long-term user satisfaction with the service.

He’s reminded of a conversation he had with a fellow employee at a large financial services firm during PG’s first job out of college. One day, during a casual not-particularly-work-related conversation with a work friend, PG opined that most successful businesses focused on maximizing their profits.

PG’s fellow worker, an economist, corrected him. “When pricing its goods or services, a successful business focuses on optimizing its profits.”

PG’s friend continued to explain that maximizing profit invariably evolved into a short-term mindset – what is the highest price we can get for this product right now – whereas focusing on profit optimization was a much more successful approach because it included factors like “How can we price the product to sell the most units?” and “How can we price the product so customers will purchase it over and over for a period of years?”

From focusing on profit optimization comes measurements like average revenue per user, the lifetime value of a customer, overall customer satisfaction and teaching the customer that it’s worth looking for future products from a business (including an author) because they offer good value at a reasonable price.

From an advertising and promotion standpoint, it often requires the most spending and effort to catch a customer’s attention and persuade hin/her to try out the product. This is one reason why offering a free book, a free first month of service, free candy bar, etc., is used so often.

Prospective customers, at least in most capitalist economies, have a lot of different choices about what they spend their money on. The reader can, of course, choose from a great many different books, but the reader can also choose to watch a streaming movie instead of reading a book (or see the movie instead of reading the book from which the movie originated), go out to lunch or dinner with friends, watch a sporting event, surf the web, etc., etc.

Even voracious readers do other things sometimes. A business can’t take its customers for granted. An author can’t take her readers for granted. Additionally, no author can write fast enough to keep up with the reading speed of her most enthusiastic fans. Unless they’re very strange, they’re certain to read other books by other authors.

Average revenue per user, optimizing sales and profits, attracting a loyal reader base and similar marketing strategies lead to the last metric PG will mention.

The lifetime value of a customer.

Unless you provide a product that a customer will age out of – clothes for teenagers pops into PG’s head – the longer you can keep a customer happy, the more money you will earn from their purchases, assuming you provide more quality products for them to purchase.

As mentioned above, it took time, effort and, quite possibly money, to acquire that customer in the first place. You may have provided the customer something of value – a free or underpriced book (AKA loss-leader) in order to gain them as a reader initially, but when they read that first book, enjoyed it and looked for another book you wrote, the cost of generating the second sale required only a fraction of the effort and money the first sale required.

You never “own” or “capture” a customer or reader. In an economy that offers more books to read than any single person could ever consume in a dozen lifetimes, you still need to please that reader with books that follow your first, second, third, etc., book. But the direct value to you of a customer who purchase 20, 30 or more books you have written is quite substantial. Unless that customer is a hermit, she/he will have told other people about your books and your reader’s recommendations will have sold additional books.

PG probably made his point several paragraphs ago, but it’s amazing how many authors, musicians, etc., end up being one-hit wonders.

You don’t need to walk around with a marching band and a megaphone, but never stop thinking about how you can delight your customers. AKA, never stop selling.